In football, set pieces used to be something managers squeezed in at the end of training, writes James Leese, managing director UK & Ireland at Impel, writes James Leese, managing director UK & Ireland, Impel.
Now the top clubs employ specialist set piece coaches whose entire job is to improve one specific part of the game. As football became more analytical and performance focused, specialist roles appeared around the core team. Set piece coaches study routines, identify weaknesses, review performance and look for small gains that add up over a season.
They do not replace managers or players. They help the whole operation perform better. Dealer groups are moving in the same direction with AI.
Right now, many retailers are still thinking about AI in technology terms rather than business ones. But the groups achieving the best results are beginning to realise something else: AI creates a new layer inside the dealership and, increasingly, somebody needs to own how it performs.
We have seen this pattern before. Twenty years ago, digital enquiries were squeezed into existing showroom roles. Sales teams handled them between walk-ins, phone calls and handovers until the cracks started to appear. Leads piled up, follow-up became inconsistent, and nobody really owned what happened after the enquiry landed.
So the industry adapted and dealer groups created new roles around changing customer behaviour, because the old structure no longer reflected how people wanted to buy cars. AI feels very similar to me.
Changing customer expectations
This is not just about putting new technology into the business. It is about adapting dealership operations around changing customer expectations. Customers now expect fast answers, replies outside traditional working hours and continuity across channels. They expect businesses to remember context and keep the process moving.
That creates both opportunity and a new pressure.
AI allows dealerships to handle larger volumes of conversations, interactions and engagement more consistently. In doing so, it often exposes problems already sitting inside the process. The difference now is that those gaps become much more visible, much faster.
That is why I think a new role category is starting to appear inside progressive dealer groups. It could be called an AI lead, an enquiry performance manager or an AI operations role. The title matters less than the responsibility behind it.
A lot of AI discussion drifts toward the technology itself. Prompts, bots, automation and integrations all matter, but the bigger challenge is operational.
Who monitors engagement quality? Who reviews failed handoffs? Who spots recurring friction in the customer experience? Who decides where AI helps and where a human needs to step in faster?
The best dealer groups are already moving in this direction, whether formally or informally.
One retailer we work with recently hired an enquiry manager to oversee engaged and handed-off leads flowing through their AI system. Their role is not to replace the sales team, but to triage opportunities, assign leads, monitor follow-up quality and keep the process moving.
Within weeks, conversion improved by 10%. That is not really a technology story. It is a performance story.
Roles like this start to appear when complexity increases, and that is exactly what AI is doing inside dealerships.
Without clear ownership, things drift
There are more conversations taking place, more engagement outside business hours, more systems and platforms, and greater pressure to maintain consistency across every channel. In many groups, that responsibility still falls on several disconnected roles.
One person owns the CRM. Another owns lead management. Someone else manages process. The sales team handles follow up. Marketing controls messaging. Then AI gets layered on top of all of it.
Without clear ownership, things drift.
Customers get inconsistent experiences, good leads lose momentum and teams stop trusting the process because nobody is properly monitoring how it all fits together day to day.
That means monitoring conversations, improving workflows, tightening the handoff between AI and human teams, spotting recurring friction and feeding what they learn back into the setup.
This is not an IT role, and it is not a traditional sales management role either. It sits somewhere between customer experience, operations, lead management and performance improvement.
I also think suppliers have a responsibility here. As dealer groups work out how these new responsibilities fit into the business, technology partners should be helping them understand what good looks like, sharing best practice and supporting the people taking ownership of AI day to day.
In many groups, parts of this responsibility are already spread across several people. The issue is that fragmented ownership often creates inconsistent outcomes, and that becomes risky as AI handles more customer interactions across the business.
AI is changing workload distribution
One of the common misunderstandings around AI is that its main value sits in reducing staff. That has not been my experience.
What I am seeing instead is dealer groups rethinking where people add the most value.
AI is good at repetitive operational tasks like responding quickly to enquiries, handling follow-ups, confirming appointments and keeping conversations moving outside business hours. Dealerships are under pressure to stay responsive across more channels, more enquiries and longer buying cycles than ever before.
But there are still parts of the process where people matter most. Helping customers make decisions, building trust, handling nuance and resolving problems that do not fit a script still rely heavily on human judgement and experience.
The strongest dealer groups are not removing people from the process. They are redesigning roles to focus where humans can have the greatest impact.
In many cases, AI is not removing jobs. It is changing workload distribution. It is reducing repetitive admin and creating space for staff to spend more time on higher value activity. At the same time, new skill sets are emerging in AI performance, workflow management and customer coordination.
The football clubs that embraced specialist coaching early gained an edge before everyone else caught up. The advantage rarely comes from one dramatic breakthrough. It comes from reviewing details consistently and improving small things over time. I think dealer groups will look back at AI in much the same way.
The real differentiator will not be who bought the technology first. It will be who built the right processes around it, maintained consistency and created accountability around how it performs inside the business.
That is why I believe the industry is moving toward a new kind of dealership role, not because AI replaces people, but because AI creates a new layer of performance that somebody needs to own.
Author: James Leese, managing director UK & Ireland, Impel
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