Strolid’s vCon Revolution: Bringing Automotive Insight to the Future of Digital Conversations

HYANNISPORT, MA - “We thought we were listening to the customer—until we actually did,” said Thomas McCarthy-Howe, CTO, Strolid. The first-ever vCon Conference wrapped up in Cape Cod with a surprising yet visionary host: Strolid, a company known for advancing the automotive sales process. But as CTO Thomas McCarthy-Howe explained, Strolid’s role in the conference reflects something much deeper — a transformational shift in how businesses truly hear and act on the voice of the customer. “Once you're able to actually capture the conversations in this format,” McCarthy-Howe said, “you always hear all the things your customers say — all the time.”

Why vCon, and Why Now?

Strolid specializes in helping automotive dealerships convert leads into in-person visits, operating at the front lines of high-stakes customer interaction. Yet their interest in vCon — a standardized container format for digital conversations — has taken the company beyond automotive and into the heart of digital transformation.

“At first, we thought we were collecting feedback,” said McCarthy-Howe. “But we were getting an estimate, a filtered sliver. With vCons, we realized we had been missing most of what customers were actually saying.”

Surfacing Operational Blind Spots

Strolid’s use of vCons revealed what McCarthy-Howe called “dark operational data.” In one example, he described how customers were often frustrated not because of poor service, but because they drove long distances to view cars that had already been sold — a disconnect caused by inaccurate online listings.

“That kind of insight doesn't come from hold-time metrics,” he noted. “It comes from capturing and analyzing the full customer conversation.”

Enabling Ethical, Scalable Customer Understanding

In addition to insight, vCons offer a scalable way to ensure ethical data handling. “Because we can now see everything, it becomes even more urgent to manage consent, protect privacy, and respect customer data,” McCarthy-Howe said.

The vCon standard, supported by the IETF working group and open-source ecosystem, enables organizations to share, analyze, and protect conversational data in a consistent, privacy-respecting manner.

From Car Lots to Cross-Industry Change

Although Strolid is rooted in the automotive world, the lessons apply broadly. “A dealership is just a proxy for any store,” McCarthy-Howe said. “There’s a sales cycle, a customer journey, and a need for trust and transparency. We designed this not just for automotive, but for the market.”

Learn More

Company site: strolid.com

Tech insights: strolid.ai

vCon standard: ietf.org