In our September 2025 issue, we featured an article, “The Road Ahead for Auto Finance CX,” which examined automotive finance lending and included an interview with Tod Chisholm, President of Integrated Financial Technologies (IFT).
Following on that story, we wanted to share what happens once the deal is made to purchase the vehicle. We found just such an organization, JM&A Group, to share how they support the unique complexity of serving both consumers and dealers with the same customer service team, and how automation and AI are adding value by enabling greater efficiency and smoother customer experiences.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Justin Pecaut. He is the Vice President of Customer Services at JM&A Group, a subsidiary of JM Family Enterprises. Over the past 18 years, Justin has worked in various roles within JM Family, including Total Rewards, Human Resources, Sales, and Operations. Outside of his professional life, he loves spending time outdoors and embarking on adventures with his five children.
Q. Justin, you have an amazing story to share about the JM&A organization and its founder, Jim Moran. Please introduce us to you, your organization, and what you do.
I have had the privilege of working with JM Family for 18 years. My current role is leading our Claims and Customer Services team. The organization and culture are very unique - we truly live up to the “Family” in our name, and the company invests time and resources into our associates’ success at home and at work.
The company was founded by Mr. Moran, a fantastic businessman and an even better human. His leadership and intention in creating our company are why our culture and our ability to invest in our clients, consumers, and associates are top tier. The way we treat our associates is undoubtedly why we have a company where our teams feel connected and our customers are well taken care of.
Q. Please share with us any “stats” about your organization. We would love to know a little about that. What does your customer service team look like? How are you structured? How many agents? Hours of operation? Types of communications and how many handled?
JM&A Group’s primary service is centered on products that protect vehicles, and we have more than 14 million contracts in force across all 50 states and Puerto Rico. To support our dealer customers and contract-holders, we have a Customer Services team of more than 400 people. We have around 280 associates who process claims on vehicle mechanical failures, GAP, and Road Hazard Tire.
Alongside the claims processing teams, we have Customer Experience and Dealer Assistance teams. Their role is to support consumers in navigating the use of their contracts and dealers with technology and administrative questions around our product. This team consists of about 60 associates.
The remaining teams are Quality Assurance, Operational Analytics, Recruiting & Training, as well as a Field Claims Team, which are associates across the country supporting unique escalations and helping our dealers improve processes, and finally a project team focused on scaling new and innovative processes across the contact centers.
Q. I would expect that you serve two audiences in your Claims and Customer Service Center. First, your dealers and second, your customers. They could seem a bit at odds with each other. How do you manage to foster loyalty and trust for both audiences while creating meaningful interactions? Do you have separate groups to handle dealers and customers, or are they shared among agents?
As you noted, our two main audiences are dealers and consumers, and while you may think their interests are at odds, we believe that what’s right for the customer is ultimately right for the dealer and is simply good business. Our dealer body wants to keep a customer for life, so we have a lot of discussions on customer retention, ways to increase the consumer experience and ultimately expand our ability to serve the customer through our dealers. It’s through that lens that our company has operated for nearly 60 years and maintained our reputation and high integrity. To drive loyalty and trust, we ensure our teams understand what customers and dealers value and work to preserve and advance that in every interaction.
We are structured to support both dealers and customers together, not separately, because of how connected the relationship is. The dealer sells our contract to the customer, and the customer comes back to the dealer to have their vehicle repaired and maintained, which are critical retention points for the customer-dealer relationship.
We believe strongly as an organization in the intersection of technology and human touchpoints.
Therefore, supporting both audiences enables greater efficiency and a smoother customer experience. We are designed to be able to solve inquiries in as few contact points as possible, which is a benefit to everyone. The trade-off we make is that it takes more time for an associate to gain full proficiency in their role because they need to understand both the dealer and customer needs.
We offset this with very low turnover for a contact center. We have about 5% of people exit the organization and another 5% of people who move to other parts of the organization each year. Across our contact centers, the average tenure is 10 years, which is a testament to the way our associates support each other and the culture within our organization.
We also leverage technology to handle contacts more seamlessly, including dealer and consumer portals built on the same database and CRM. This allows us to leverage the same processes and streamline interactions by having a single source of truth. If we didn’t design our processes like this, we estimate we would need 25-33% more associates.
Q. You are integrating AI into your customer service center. Since so much of your business is managing relationships between dealers and consumers, are there any challenges to keeping your “human touch” experience part of your interactions? If so, how are you incorporating that? If not, what have you done to minimize that?
We believe strongly as an organization in the intersection of technology and human touchpoints. While we leverage both traditional (rules-based) intelligence and generative AI, we are a people-first company so the majority of our processes have people in the loop. The complexity of claims decisions - no two are alike - maintains the need for our teams to play a vital role in our service delivery.
We have found that many people don't want to talk to a human for simple tasks until something isn't going right, and then they expect someone to help right away.
I’ll give you a quick example: When a consumer calls us to file a GAP claim, they have just experienced a total loss of their vehicle, likely from theft or accident. Our associates are phenomenal at supporting the emotions of the customer and helping them navigate the local and state laws to get their claim paid. We cannot replicate that people-first experience with technology, but we can augment what our agents can do to provide a faster and more convenient experience.
In the cases where a process is fully self-service, we are careful to make sure these are transactional in nature. We only deploy those processes where the customer or dealer wants the convenience of self-service.
On top of that, if something in our self-service processes doesn’t go as planned, we have an associate support that transaction immediately. We have found that many people don’t want to talk to a human for simple tasks until something isn’t going right, and then they expect someone to help right away. We want to deliver that level of service for those who want it, “meeting our customers where they are.”
Q. Is AI serving your Claims and Customer Service Center to improve accessibility and efficiency? If so, how?
Yes, to both. One example of efficiency is our internal AI agent. We sell products on thousands of different forms, which can be governed by different processes or policies. Additionally, each form has to comply with 50 distinct sets of state laws. This agent acts similarly to how we all use ChatGPT, it takes key information of the transaction and provides a response on how to move forward with a link to the document for reference. Without AI, we couldn’t accomplish this. It saves us time on every call and provides extra bandwidth by providing accurate information and limiting questions.
Thank you, Justin. We appreciate you sharing your insights about your contact center experiences. Find out more details about the JM Family organization.