COLORADO SPRINGS — Consumers seem to be learning so much through artificial intelligence platforms, but some small businesses find it difficult to keep up with the ever-changing landscape.
For Sevan Stryker, general manager and COO of Bob Penkhus Motor Company in Colorado Springs, he’s even posted that many of his customers know more than his sales staff at this point.
“We have to understand customers are far more educated. Things like comparisons and things like that are at their fingertips in seconds,” said Stryker. “And many times the consumers are far more educated than we are because we study our brand and we know it, but we don't necessarily know it against everything else.”
As a result of this new age in consumer shopping and research, Stryker said his company has reformatted the website and changed how his store operates.
When a customer queries, for example, “Where to buy a car in Colorado?” or “What’s the best deal on a new car near me?”, on an AI platform like ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude, Mr. Stryker said these customers will even come in and ask for a specific customer service representative who was recommended by AI.
Apart from just buying cars, Stryker said consumers are now using AI platforms to find the best and cheapest services like oil changes and other automobile needs, which means he’s now having to reevaluate all aspects of his business.
“What once was built for a world of Google is now a world of AI,” said Stryker. “So if they ask a specific question, ‘Why the Mazda CX-5?’ You need to have wordings like that and then support it. But even a step further than that. As a brand or a dealership, we'll say they're also looking at what are the accolades that you get from third parties like the [Better Business Bureau]?”
Bon Penkhus Motor Company is one of about 2,000 companies that the Better Business Bureau (BBB) of Southern Colorado works with in the area. The BBB currently offers three AI training classes a year, but that number is doubling next year as AI becomes more vital to business operations in addition to the constant changes in the sector.
Jonathan Liebert, the CEO of BBB Southern Colorado, said six months ago, about 20 to 30% of his classes were utilizing AI. Today, he said that the number is close to 60%.
“Most people are familiar with SEO, search engine optimization. Now there's a newer way to look at it called Answer Engine Optimization,” said Liebert. “There's a couple of different terms for it, but it really is people using an AI engine to ask a question, and it gives them an answer.”
Liebert said AI has allowed organizations like his to “punch above their weight” because it eliminates the need to hire outside marketing companies to produce content that AI can produce quickly (like photos and videos). He said it can also help complete some tasks more quickly like answering online questions or emails.
Liebert said AI platforms often seek out “trustworthiness” when searching the internet and synthesizing its answers to customer queries. That’s where the BBB comes in to help companies be labeled as “trustworthy” through accreditation, thus improving their AEO.
“[The AI is] going to make sure that there are certain trust signals that are out there that are going to verify or validate that it's coming from,” said Liebert. “It loves authoritative content. It loves expert content. It loves information that's thereby an authority, a subject matter expert, and it's going to cite that at a higher level, a higher rate. So it sees BBB as an expert, and there's again, we're a third party review site, and so there's other ways to get third party verification or third party validation. BBB is just one of them.”
Moving forward, Liebert said businesses won’t only be competing on the quality of their products, but on the quality of their answers through AI platforms.
For Sevan Stryker, he said the advent and surge of artificial intelligence has also allowed him and his company to become better at what they do. And he’s pushing to stay ahead of the curve since AI seems to change and update almost every day.
“I think there's definitely a challenge, but I really think at the end of the day, it's the ones that are getting on board now that are going to be able to fare the weather and ride the wave a whole lot better than some that I think are still fighting it and thinking it's going to go away,” said Stryker.
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