What if the biggest growth opportunity in automotive isn't selling more cars—it's bringing customers back to service before they ever think about going somewhere else?

McKenna Valley, co-founder of SparkServ, joins Greenfield to discuss how a simple conversation with her father, a dealership veteran, uncovered a massive inefficiency hiding inside fixed operations. What started as a coaching platform quickly evolved into a technology company helping dealerships automate customer outreach, improve service BDC productivity, and recover customers who have quietly disappeared from the service lane.

McKenna shares SparkServ's vision for a future where dealerships proactively educate customers, schedule maintenance automatically, and leverage AI to handle repetitive work while employees focus on high-value interactions. The conversation explores the role of AI in fixed ops, why customer communication remains one of the industry's biggest untapped opportunities, and how the most successful dealer groups create alignment across every level of their organization.

Timestamped Takeaways

0:00 Intro

0:23 McKenna Valley's background before SparkServ

1:23 The dealership problem that inspired SparkServ

2:12 The company's first major pivot

3:01 SparkServ's product suite today

3:26 Using AI to reactivate lost service customers

4:00 The vision for the future of vehicle maintenance

5:24 AI's role in dealership operations

6:52 Lessons from two years of entrepreneurship

7:06 Why customer curiosity drives innovation

8:03 The biggest surprises inside dealerships

8:17 Why fixed ops marketing still relies on mailers

8:48 What high-performing dealer groups do differently

9:41 Advice McKenna would give her younger self

10:35 How to connect with McKenna Valley

Connect with McKenna Valley at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mckennavalley/

Learn more about SparkServe at https://www.sparkserv.com/

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