As the automotive industry continues to evolve, it’s more important than ever to understand uses for AI within the dealership and how these can streamline customer communication, increase efficiency, and gain valuable insights into customer behavior.

When deciding upon an AI-directed solution, determining the best platform for your organization is key. Here are three platform options to consider:

Toolkit: This approach uses a framework of services to build conversational platforms and solutions. It is suitable when deep technical customization capabilities are required, addressing unique business, end-user, or integration requirements.

Platform: Platform-based solutions provide centralized operations and conversational management, while covering a broad range of use cases. They offer coding capabilities for additional customization but focus on ease of use, access to multiple capabilities, and a growing set of templates for prebuilt starting points.

Targeted service: These solutions focus on a particular vertical, use case, or requirement specific to the automotive retail industry. They offer easy integration and quick deployment but may be difficult to customize.

Once you determine the correct platform for your needs, the next step is to determine the correct capabilities needed. Key capability areas of conversational platforms in the automotive retail industry include: channel integration, application building, and testing, prebuilt components, application integration, data integration, natural language understanding, response generation, management, reporting and analytics, and platform administration and security.

While looking through the right mix of solutions out there, engineering leaders should avoid common pitfalls. Here are some tactics for not getting overwhelmed:

• Avoid big-bang, complex projects.
• Start with small use cases and expand conversational flow and capabilities as you identify usage patterns and user adoption grows.
• Disaggregate design and planning of initiatives from the data and underlying technology.
• Consider a centralized platform for managing multiple implementations.
• Use a centralized platform for consistent performance, monitoring, and analytics

Now to the good part! Once you have an AI-enabled solution set up, how can it help your dealership thrive?

• Sales Assistance: AI-aided solutions can assist customers in finding the perfect vehicle by understanding their preferences and requirements, providing personalized recommendations, and answering any questions they may have.

• Service Scheduling: Customers can easily schedule service appointments, streamlining the process and reducing the workload on service department staff.

• Financing and Insurance: Simplify the financing and insurance process by guiding customers through the necessary steps and answering any questions they may have with automated responses.

• Enhanced Customer Experience: AI-driven conversational solutions can provide real-time assistance to customers, offering personalized recommendations and swift problem resolution.

• Increased Efficiency: By automating repetitive tasks, AI solutions can significantly reduce the workload of employees, enabling them to focus on more critical tasks.

• Valuable Insights: Through advanced analytics, AI tools can offer insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends, helping businesses make more informed decisions.

The automotive retail industry is ripe for disruption by AI-driven conversational solutions. Look to AI providers who offer tailored platforms that cater specifically to the needs of automotive software companies and manufacturers. This allows you to enhance your digital retail processes and provide a seamless customer experience. By choosing the right conversational solution and ensuring the required capabilities are provided, you can optimize your operations, improve customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition.