Forbes: Car Owners Have New Tool To Avoid Service Upsells Through UVeye, MyKaarma Partnership

Auto dealers make a big percentage of their profits on service while customers who bring their vehicles in to dealerships for repairs want to avoid being upsold unnecessary and costly work.

A new partnership between drive-through inspection technology company UVeye and service management platform provider myKaarma, announced Wednesday, aims to satisfy both side of that equation by integrating the two systems.

Once a vehicle drives through a UVeye inspection station when it enters a dealership’s service department, the myKaarma platform allows the dealership to send inspection results directly to the customer's phone.

Customers also receive a welcome text alongside their inspection results, giving them the opportunity to review them or share the results in order to receive a second opinion.

The idea, says UVeye chief marketing officer Yaron Saghiv, is transparency for the customer to assist them in deciding what services they want to purchase.

“If anything, what it does, it just puts real safety hazards and issues in the hands of the consumer in real time,” said Saghiv, in an interview. “If, God forbid, there was an issue, obviously, you'd want to fix it before it becomes something much worse. So the power and the decision is in the hands of the customer. This is exactly the opposite of upselling.”

The idea to meld the two technologies was initially suggested by John Kaufman, vice president of marketing at the Manhattan Motorcars dealerships after strolling the floor at this year’s National Automobile Dealers Association show in Las Vegas.

Manhattan Motorcars was already a myKaarma client so, as Kaufman explained it, he asked the rep in their booth if they would consider partnering with UVeye since there appeared to be synergies that would benefit both companies, and dealerships.

Kaufman then made introductions, which led to this new partnership.

“myKaarma is a very good tool for communications with customers for scheduling, for just simplifying the whole service process, and a lot of the myKaarma data relies on video, and the video is not automated. It’s operated by dealership staff. This automates it. There’s no variance. It’s very consistent,” Kaufman said, in an interview.

"This collaboration with UVeye underscores our commitment to innovation in the automotive service industry. Together, we're setting a new standard for how dealerships communicate with their customers, ensuring every vehicle is inspected thoroughly and every customer is informed,” said Ujj Nath, CEO of myKaarma, in a statement.

There’s no extra cost to the dealership or to the customer, according to Saghiv.

Founded in 2016 in Israel, UVeye now has a headquarters in the United States along with offices in Europe and Asia.

Its drive-through vehicle inspection technology originally used as security devices at border crossings to detect contraband, UVeye rapidly expanded into automotive quality control at assembly plants and now has stations at more than 300 dealerships, according to Saghiv.

Using a combination of artificial intelligence and other technologies, UVeye stations instantly detect myriad of defects ranging from tire wear to physical flaws throughout the vehicle.

Indeed, UVeye’s tire inspection stations were one of the first to detect how the weight of electric vehicle batteries causes tires to wear out faster.

More than 2,000 dealerships are on the myKaarma system—an advanced end-to-end platform with scheduling, communications, payment, pickup and delivery capabilities.

That brings us back to the other end of the equation—how integrating myKaarma with UVeye not only creates transparency for consumers, but the potential for added dealership revenues.

“It's a great retention tool, because the more and more confident your clients feel with the work that has been done to the car, the more likely they are to continue to do business with you,” said Kaufman. “I think it’s going to gain a lot of traction very quickly.”

*This article was first published on Forbes by Ed Garsten.