In this episode of Behind the Bubble in our Fully-Engaged series, we take you behind the scenes of ActivEngage’s human-powered automotive chat operations. This series highlights what makes our unscripted approach unique—fostering authentic, meaningful conversations that drive results for our automotive dealer partners.
This episode features Randy, our Director of Messaging Operations, sharing his 11.5-year journey with ActivEngage. Starting as an automotive live chat agent, Randy’s career has grown to include leading quality, training, and conversational operations. His story reflects ActivEngage’s dedication to promoting from within and developing top talent.
Highlights of the Episode:
- The Power of Unscripted Conversations: Randy discusses how our team strikes a balance between structure and creativity using our proprietary acronym, LAUGHS:
- Listen and Acknowledge: Building trust through active listening.
- Understand and Guide: Navigating conversations to provide meaningful insights.
- Have Fun: Bring personality and energy to each chat.
- Set Expectations: Ensuring seamless transitions to dealership follow-ups.
- The Evolution of Metrics: Randy explains how ActivEngage measures both quantitative success (e.g., leads, response times) and qualitative excellence (e.g., customer satisfaction, authentic engagement).
- Adapting Post-COVID: The pandemic transformed our operations. Randy shares how our fully remote team embraced technology and transparency to excel, maintaining high performance in a new environment.
- A Commitment to Learning: At ActivEngage, our culture emphasizes continuous improvement—enhancing internal communication, building customer relationships, or supporting our dealer partners.
Randy showcases the heart of ActivEngage: delivering human-powered, impactful conversations that make a difference for auto dealers and customers alike. Stay tuned for more insights in Behind the Bubble—your window into how we create success, one chat at a time.
Hello and welcome to Behind the Bubble. This will be our series to kind of uncover our secret sauce behind our 100 percent human powered unscripted conversations. And I am excited to have Randy join me this morning. Randy is our Director of Messaging Operations. Um, So, How long have you been with us? 11 and a half years.
11 and a half years. So I'm going to let Randy talk a little bit about his background, but just so we understand Randy, um, is leading that team. That is the quality team training. messaging operations, including supervisors and agents, um, and works very closely with our workforce manager director as well to ensure the, the doors are always open and the lights are on.
So Randy, thanks for joining me. Tell us a little bit about your background. Sure. Sure. Um, my name is Randy. Um, I was born in Michigan. I was born in a little town in Greenbush, but I claim Detroit because Eminem's cool. Um, um, I have three brothers. On September 11th, um, 2001, things happened and my family, I have a military background, so I decided I needed to do that thing during that time, so I enlisted in the Air Force.
I spent eight years in the Air Force as a military police officer and specializing communications. Uh, eight years later, after having lots of fun, I decided it was time to end that fun. Uh, when I got out, I spent some time raising my kids at home and at the time I need, I need to go back to work. So, uh, there was a, Toyota dealer in Florida, Georgia was like, I need to give something new a shot.
I went there, went through the training, spent a couple months learning how to sell cars, realized this is a really tough industry and it's neat what you can do with humans. But it wasn't for me when I got done with my time there, there was this really neat ad that said, do you want to talk to people online and I said yes, um, I prefer not to be cursed at, so let me, let me give this thing a shot.
Face to face? Face to face, yeah. Yeah, this place was active, engaged, and it sounded wonky, and it sounded fun and quirky, and I said yes please. Yeah. So, um, in 2013 ish, I signed up and said, let me give this a go. Yeah. And so you started as a chat agent? I did. I virtual sales associate is what? At at the time?
Yep. At the time I, I came in chatting. The company was very, very different at the time. We had, um, it was a different time in the world, so we had different standards. Our technology was different. Yeah. But the function of who we were is still who we are today. I was told. Talk to people, bring out, just be you, do your thing.
And, and that's how I started. Yep. Yeah. And so from that chat position, what was your next position with that AE? Um, six months after chatting, positions came up to first supervisor. And I said, I've done this kind of work before, so I put in for it, was accepted, and I got a chance to Be developed by some of the leaders that were here.
Yeah. Lead teams of virtual sales associates at the time. So chat folks, I did that for about a year. Another position came up that at the time was performance manager led by you. I was like, sure, let me give this a go. And I applied. Um, you respectfully said there was someone better for the position at the time, which there was, um, I continued managing teams as a team leader for about another year at the year later.
You said, I think there's, there's another opportunity to. See who else may be interested and you brought me on board at that time. And so for the next eight years I spent time doing performance management, learning and development, training, leading a training team, training remotely, and then director of messaging to where I oversee the groups that you had brought me on to lead.
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate your completely candid rendering of your path here. Yeah. And I think that's a really special and important part of behind the bubble. Yeah. We have a team that is dedicated to the mission. And do we promote from within? Absolutely. Are we growing? Almost constantly, but it's got to be the right position at the right time for the right person.
And I'm super proud of the way that our culture and our company has been built and people, people can see, and they can understand if it's not quite your time. And, and luckily for us, a lot of the times people are patient and wait, and sometimes an even better position that. Um, comes along. I, I love the flexibility.
That's, that's my favorite part of this position is the flexibility of growing the organization and fitting the right people at the right time to deliver exactly what are our dealer clients and our partners are. Are depending on us for, so yeah. Um, of course, 11 and a half years ago, our metrics, our measurements, our standards were completely different.
Yeah. Um, they have evolved through the years as they need to, you know, we're not quite the dealership where every 30 days it's a different goal that you need to hit. Um, but, um, we do constantly. Survey the marketplace and how the conversations are happening and what's bringing results and what our partners are looking for.
So if you can shed some light on what are those key metrics and items that we're working on currently that we measure currently. So I think there's two different approaches that we take to it. There's quantitative metrics and there's qualitative. And they are two very uniquely different things, but without a marriage of both, they're equally useless.
Both are extremely important, and both have changed tremendously from the 15, 16 years this company's been around. Um, so the quantitative metrics, if you're looking at just straight quantity and numbers, There are things we need, we need to get. We need to get leads. We need to get email addresses. We need to get phone numbers.
We need to get appointments. We need, we need to help our partners sell cars. That's part of what we do. Um, those, those have been around from the beginning. Those haven't changed much, but what has changed both from COVID or from our dealer partners saying like it, it would be great if you looked into this a little more response times.
The age of Google means that people get responses so fast that if we're not able to do that, people leave. And every lost opportunity, that's a, that's a crush. We can't have that happen. So response times in the chat, responding to chats that are waiting to be answered, responding to these customers. On top of that, from a quantitative side, we're watching in the chat how many responses there are throughout, how long it takes to get to certain points, all of those on the quantitative number side.
Qualitatively, so again, if we're measuring the yin and the yang here. What we say matters when there was this slogan by this wonderful woman created years and years ago every chat every word every time That was the qualitative side. It literally has not changed and on the qualitative side. We're looking for Is it come is a consumer feeling helped we're looking for keywords in there matters quite a lot to us the appreciation coming back from a customer when you when you hear that It matters quite a lot.
We're looking for the word bought in a chat. If you're getting called a chat bot, you're not giving the human element that our company so desperately is looking to make sure that we're doing in these chats. So those being erased to, um, we're also looking through the wording that's being used to make sure that we're hitting the key things that the dealers are talking about.
What are the new cars coming out? Are we bringing up all the things that our partner is saying? Hey, this this new car just released. Can you put it into there? Absolutely. So our conversations are unscripted, um, but there's a structure, and we use an acronym, um, that, I, I developed all those years ago, laughs.
L is listen, A is acknowledge, U understand, G guide, H is have fun, um, and then S it can be setting expectations and that's usually what we're using that for, especially for overnight conversations or, um, whatever that expectation is with the client. We always want to hold our partner dealers in mind when we're closing out the conversation.
So, laughs was something, I still have the Dr. Seuss notebook, I wrote it in. It was, it was, When I joined the company and I was chatting, um, and it just came to me as this is an effective way to have a two way conversation. I mean, 17 years ago, people were not accustomed to chatting online. They, you kind of had to help them and guide them through that conversation and understanding what our dealers Need to sell and service a vehicle.
What's that pertinent information? That's kind of how laughs came together. And all of these years later, still taught, still taught, still in training. Tell us a little bit about how we're executing that today. Sure. Sure. I remember being taught it too. I remember first thinking unscripted, that sounds great coming in, but then going through the training, like, Oh, I don't have the training wheels that I think I might need.
And then laughs was taught to me. I'm like, okay, I can get where we're going here. Laughs is neat because the beginning part you talk about, listen and acknowledge, um, it's possible in society today that maybe if we used laughs at least the first two letters a little more, things might be a little different, but we've heard even after people get trained with laughs, they chat, they go on to other things, they'll let us know, like, you made me a better communicator.
Laughs does that so the beginning listen and acknowledge if you can't listen to what the customer's saying Digest it and make sure you really need to understand the acronyms They're using why they're wanting to buy where they're at in the funnel. You're really not going to be so helpful So the listen part of it Again being a good communicator that that part of it was genius.
So listen to what the consumer is saying and then acknowledge it It's great. We're doing everything through the internet through chat So I may be sitting on the other end of the computer listening But if I don't say, if I don't let you know I'm listening, this isn't face to face. You do have to acknowledge, like, like we're acknowledging to this with head nods and with smiles.
Right. You can't do that through the computer. You don't get that. You don't. We used to use the example, if you're in the drive thru and you ordered a milkshake and fries. If that voice doesn't come through the box and say one milkshake and fry, what do you do? You just sit there. Right. You don't move forward.
No. Because you're like, my God, did they hear me? Yeah. So that's why acknowledge is so important to allow the shopper to move forward. Forward in that funnel. It is like we can try it through. We can, we can acknowledge through emojis also want, but we really need to use words so they get it. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then there's the understand part.
You're using, using wording. So the customer, I get why you're looking for this car. I get that you're a single mom and you're needing this band for this reason. I have to understand that the next part guiding. So we talked about during the COVID and we needed to let customers talk a little more and now post COVID guiding, you know, now people are back out talking.
So the chatty Cathy's they made. They may need guided because at the end of the day, people need to know what's going to be the next step of that and guiding is the way to do that. So we'll help guide conversations and guiding maybe this is where I'm trying to take this or guiding maybe I need you to talk to the store.
The store is where you're going to do this next part of it. Right. To have fun. Um, that's the part, that's the, have fun is a hiring thing that we have to work through. So hiring people that want to have fun in their job, that want to let their, let their Very great personalities come through. That's the have fun part.
All of this, all the people in this room have done it. The having fun part. So that may be, someone's picking up on some sarcasm through a chat that may be taking a joke at something you're saying here, laughing at the loss of the Pittsburgh Steelers game or something that happened recently. Like, I don't know that hasn't happened recently, Randy.
We're 3 0, man. That may be fair. That may be fair. We support different footballs. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then the end of it, the. The signing off or signature service or setting expectations. We're, we're here as a conduit to help the dealers. We're here as a conduit to have the customers have a voice. And at the end of the chat, the setting expectations.
We need to make sure they understand this is the dealership that you're going to be working with, this is the team, this is any expectations that they have to help them to transition the relationship. They start with us setting expectations for the dealer to follow up and do the promises that they're ready to deliver on and set the expectations of all the great things that they're going to do afterwards.
That's right. It's all about building that relationship. Yep. It's building the relationship for that dealership because we know shoppers today will visit. Less than three dealerships, sometimes less than two. So we really take it to heart. It's our job to ensure our partner is that dealership they visit.
So building that relationship is key. And on searching for the word bot, you know, most of the time that word is happening at the very start of the conversation where the shopper is saying, are you a bot? One of my favorite things is to drill down in that report and see what our agent's response is. Oh, those are fun.
Yeah. Those are fun. They're very creative. Yeah, I mean, we don't have a response that we train our team. Like, when they bring up the bot, you need to say this. Because then you may as well have just programmed the same bot that you're. Right. So you'll see people bringing up their days that have come up.
Their energy drinks that they're drinking. The scores of the game of the area that they're in. Yeah. And that's not something the team is trained to do. Yeah. They're just like. Bring up what you would bring up if you're sitting in a room and someone's saying to you that you're not genuine. This is a chance for you to be that.
Yeah, be human. That's right. Yes, ma'am. That's what it's all about. Okay, so prior to COVID, We had everyone in office. We had a couple of different locations. Yep. Yep. Um, and then we had to go home, but just for two weeks, just, it was only two weeks. It was just two weeks. Cause COVID was, the news said it was going away.
We were flattening the curve. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, March 13th, it was an afternoon. We let people take home their desktop, their monitor, their keyboard, whatever they needed to work. And everyone went home. And so for the next two years, Everyone worked from home. And as we started to gather ourselves and bring people back in office and huddles were happening with our, um, customer engagement experts, our chat agents, um, the question came up, why, why do we have to come back in office?
Um, and that question was brought to me. Love, I love why questions. They're my favorite. And I paused and I thought That's a really good question. Because this team of agents had been handling 30 percent more in volume because the chat volume spiked. There were no vehicles. Everyone knows this. So they chat more, right?
Yeah. So the volume had spiked. They're killing the metrics. The conversations are longer, which you can talk about, and yet they're still killing it. And so, um, I did not have a good answer for the why, and that is why today our chat agents are all remote. So if you can touch a little bit on that COVID conversation and how now the coaching and management.
has evolved with 100 percent remote agents. Yeah, yeah, quite a unique experience. That was I, I do. I didn't remember the exact date, but I remember the feeling of We pulled all of the team off the floor, went into the break room, and tried to come up with an impromptu, this is what we're going to do. We had never done remote work.
Um, being able to convey a message in person was really important to us, and we didn't know how we were going to pull this off. We didn't even know what Slack and Teams were at the time. Yeah, we were doing, to your point, we were doing huddles, and people kept bringing up, can we do this? And your point is spot on about how they were performing.
It was It shouldn't be shocking, but it was. We were expecting the market was doing crazy things and the team at home, they, they were just able to be more naturally in their environment. So the conversations came out in a new way. Um, we found that our really talkative, Introverts were online talking with extroverts who wanted a longer conversation because everyone's at home.
You're stuck at home. You all the people needing that the passionate talk you couldn't get because we couldn't go out. And if you did, you're doing it with a mask, and it was challenging. Our chats went up by, we went from roughly a seven to nine minute conversation up to roughly 12 minutes, so almost four minutes more, because people just wanted to talk.
How does coaching happen now? So as your point, it's all remote. Everything we do at this point is remote through a couple different platforms. Um, we're able, we look at reporting more than we had to before, doing things, um, doing things the way we do. We can't do it in person, so we do have to rely more on, on looking through numbers and dashboards.
Um, we find now with reporting that The agents, when you're able to put the data in front of them in ways that we didn't do when we were in person, because we relied more on this, but now we're doing it more with straight data, we're much more transparent, because we're, that's what they're looking for.
They want to see, people want to see what they're doing. With the coaching remotely, we had to take a lot of courses to see how we, how our body language is, how to use the cameras. We learned a lot, watching people's eyes and watch where they're looking to see when we're talking with people. If something's not going right, we can catch it so much easier because now we're trained to watch people.
But at the end of the day, the coaching is still, let's get this through how to talk to people. So although so much has changed about how you need to go about it, the execution of let's work on making sure that humans feel heard, same as it was 15 years ago. Awesome. I love, you brought up some great points about how we studied of how to communicate internally.
Yeah. Um, and I think that's the biggest behind the bubble secret is. We all walk in with humility, understanding that we've got to learn, whether that's learning how to communicate with the consumer, with our partners or with each other. Um, we place all the value on that communication and how can we be better at it.
So, um, thank you so much for your time and all you're sharing today. Uh, we will continue this conversation. Please connect with us. Uh, so you can stay. Fully engaged.