EPISODE 07
Texting and Tech: Modernizing Dealership Communication for the Digital Age
Featuring Guests Charity Dunning & Russell Hill
Episode Description
If your fixed ops department still relies on outdated marketing or thinks coupons are enough, you’re leaving serious money on the table. But how can dealerships transform their service departments? Why is it so important to build real customer relationships? It’s time to rethink everything about marketing fixed ops!
In this episode of Retention Roadmap, Charity Dunning, Chief Marketing Officer, and Russell Hill, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Fixed Ops Marketing,and Co-Hosts of the What the Fixed Ops?! Podcast join us to discuss how dealerships can optimize their marketing. We explore common pitfalls and emphasize the need for a paradigm shift, as well as the importance of customer experience from the moment a guest arrives. We also look at the underwhelming or nonexistent digital marketing strategies that many dealerships have in place.
Takeaways from this episode:
- Revolutionizing dealership marketing with video, AI, and automation
- Shifting customer communication preferences
- The importance of awareness around dealership services
- The value of transparent communication in driving dealership success

BILL SPRINGER
and president of Krex Inc.

CHARITY DUNNING
Chief Marketing Officer at Fixed Ops Marketing and Co-Host of What the Fixed Ops?!

RUSSELL HILL
Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Fixed Ops Marketing and Co-Host of What the Fixed Ops?!
Would you like to Be a guest on our podcast?
How Digital Friction Drives Dealership Service Defection
Your dealership may be spending thousands to bring in new customers while quietly losing the ones already in your database. And often, they’re not leaving because of one major failure, but because the experience feels disconnected, inconvenient, or harder than it should be. The solution starts with treating retention as an operating system.
The Convenience Economy: What Customers Actually Value in Service
Convenience isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore, but that doesn’t mean every “convenient” option carries the same weight. Customers are telling dealerships exactly what would make service easier, more valuable, and more worth returning for. The problem is that many of those benefits are either under-promoted, misunderstood, or completely invisible to the people most likely to use them.
The Vanishing Customer: Why Service Customers Leave Without Saying a Word
Customers don’t always leave with a complaint, a bad survey, or a dramatic service lane moment. Sometimes they leave quietly, choosing the path that feels easier the next time they need an oil change, tire replacement, recall repair, or routine maintenance.


