AI (Artificial Intelligence) - Anyone Benefitting from it?

[Alex Snyder]

How would you have your company absorb it into its inner workings?

Don't hold your breath on a meaningful reply. This guy's post reeks of SEO spam. DealerRefresh does quite well in the search engine results, and that, unfortunately, comes with a bunch of grammatically incorrect jackasses trying to pimp their own crap.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

Don't hold your breath on a meaningful reply. This guy's post reeks of SEO spam. DealerRefresh does quite well in the search engine results, and that, unfortunately, comes with a bunch of grammatically incorrect jackasses trying to pimp their own crap.

Always beware of a first comment that includes a link and a phrase like "this company is doing this thing you are talking about."

 

[NIOMARVIN83]

It's interesting to see the buzz around AI, isn't it? John, your point system for evaluating AI companies is clever – thanks for sharing! Todd, using AI to generate responses for incoming leads sounds like a smart move. It's all about efficiency, right?

Marc, your experiments with AI for car dealerships are intriguing. And Doug, looking forward to your article on practical uses of AI in enhancing customer experiences. The video suggestions are appreciated too!

Personally, I'm curious about Google's Gemini AI and how it could be used creatively. John, your observation about talking to bots becoming more common is spot on. Exciting times ahead!

Let's keep sharing insights and experiences – it's how we navigate this AI landscape together.

 

[NIOMARVIN83]

For sure, AI is changing how things work, especially in car sales. It's not just about making jobs quicker; it's also about finding new ways to help out and talk to customers. Some places are already using AI to chat with customers or handle tasks that used to take a lot of time. This means people have more time for the important stuff.

Even companies that work a lot with car dealerships are starting to use AI. They're trying to make sure it helps without making everything feel less personal. It's all about trying things out and seeing what works best.

It's exciting to see how AI will keep making things better in the future!

 

[GeoMoD]

I believe that the industry will soon be filled with AI agents to such an extent that it may seem ridiculous. However, this is similar to the notion that programmers will no longer be needed, which is entirely untrue. The same applies to AI agents overpromising results; they will not replace BDC agents in making calls and setting appointments. Instead, BDC agents will need to adapt and embrace the technology. Recently, news circulated about Devin, the first AI software engineer, and how programmers may become obsolete. However, the truth is that for both programmers and BDCs, these tools will enhance the performance of agents rather than replace them entirely.

The real beneficiaries will be those who adopt this technology early to improve their agents' capabilities, minimize human error, generate faster reports (hourly or even in real-time), automate tedious and repetitive tasks, help agents pursue every appointment source, and seize every opportunity. Eventually, every BDC or dealership will have AI-powered systems trained on their own data, providing a significant competitive advantage to early adopters of the technology. The key lies in effectively integrating AI to augment and support human agents, rather than aiming for complete replacement.

 

[Nathan F]

Wow some valuable insights in here!

Full disclosure, I own a company that specialises in lead nurturing and customer experience using automated systems and AI. I have friends in the automotive industry in Sydney, Australia, NSW that indicated there is a need for automated lead nurturing, so I conducted a study into response times and types to enquiries into the dealership after hours in my state. It clearly identified a gap in response times and customer service. So we then spent quite a while building out a conversational AI product that instantly engages leads via sms when an enquiry comes through the CRM and opens up a line of communication with the dealership for after hours leads. It also has a follow-up sequence involving some creative marketing. Its main objective is to get the lead to commit to coming into the dealership for a test drive.

So we are still in the early stages and have just secured a local dealership for a pilot project. Really keen to get some statistics and feedback after we implement!

Our main hurdles moving forward;
1. As many of you have indicated dealer principles and sales managers are hammered with people selling shit. One friend of mine in the industry indicated to expect over 2/3 of dealership decision makers to not listen from the start because they are just fed up with it. So I guess it all comes down to value we can add. If we do not see the results we expect, we go back to the drawing board. We wont try and push an inferior product it wouldnt be viable.
2. Peoples fears around security and potential negative impact on the brand. Completely understand this one and we have used a fine-tuning feature in the OpenAi assistant platform to significantly reduce the chance of a harmful output. We have been testing for 4 months and have not seen one yet. We also use an extensive knowledge base for the assistant to retrieve in addition to the GPT-4 model. This dials the AI into its role and objectives.

If you are interested check out the slide deck I used to approach dealerships for the pilot project. It also has the findings from my study.

I would be interested to know if you guys think dealerships in your area are using the same techniques for after hour enquires.

Feedback welcome.

Cheers
Nathan

 

[GeoMoD]

Wow some valuable insights in here!

Full disclosure, I own a company that specialises in lead nurturing and customer experience using automated systems and AI. I have friends in the automotive industry in Sydney, Australia, NSW that indicated there is a need for automated lead nurturing, so I conducted a study into response times and types to enquiries into the dealership after hours in my state. It clearly identified a gap in response times and customer service. So we then spent quite a while building out a conversational AI product that instantly engages leads via sms when an enquiry comes through the CRM and opens up a line of communication with the dealership for after hours leads. It also has a follow-up sequence involving some creative marketing. Its main objective is to get the lead to commit to coming into the dealership for a test drive.

So we are still in the early stages and have just secured a local dealership for a pilot project. Really keen to get some statistics and feedback after we implement!

Our main hurdles moving forward;
1. As many of you have indicated dealer principles and sales managers are hammered with people selling shit. One friend of mine in the industry indicated to expect over 2/3 of dealership decision makers to not listen from the start because they are just fed up with it. So I guess it all comes down to value we can add. If we do not see the results we expect, we go back to the drawing board. We wont try and push an inferior product it wouldnt be viable.
2. Peoples fears around security and potential negative impact on the brand. Completely understand this one and we have used a fine-tuning feature in the OpenAi assistant platform to significantly reduce the chance of a harmful output. We have been testing for 4 months and have not seen one yet. We also use an extensive knowledge base for the assistant to retrieve in addition to the GPT-4 model. This dials the AI into its role and objectives.

If you are interested check out the slide deck I used to approach dealerships for the pilot project. It also has the findings from my study.

I would be interested to know if you guys think dealerships in your area are using the same techniques for after hour enquires.

Feedback welcome.

Cheers
Nathan

Great Job Nathan, looks neat, wish you the best, be sure to post results after some months running it, systems like yours is what is going to mark a difference for dealerships. I like your way of doing it, for leads that comes after hours, I built a similar system where an AI analyzes the conversation, uses a knowledge database, trained with data from hundreds of successful sms responses that ends up in an appointment, and proper techniques for how the gpt assistant should work the lead, the idea behind it is to help the agent capitalize on every sms response from a lead, and give the same agent the option to see how the AI approached the customer, this not only helps to get the best possible result but also shows the agent alternatives on how to get the customer interested in coming in to the dealership.
Once again Nathan, wish you the best, clean presentation too, try gamma.app to create the presentation, beyond a pdf you can create a website, present yourself the document, an even have data on how many people saw your presentation and you could also create a contact form.

 

[Nathan F]

Great Job Nathan, looks neat, wish you the best, be sure to post results after some months running it, systems like yours is what is going to mark a difference for dealerships. I like your way of doing it, for leads that comes after hours, I built a similar system where an AI analyzes the conversation, uses a knowledge database, trained with data from hundreds of successful sms responses that ends up in an appointment, and proper techniques for how the gpt assistant should work the lead, the idea behind it is to help the agent capitalize on every sms response from a lead, and give the same agent the option to see how the AI approached the customer, this not only helps to get the best possible result but also shows the agent alternatives on how to get the customer interested in coming in to the dealership.
Once again Nathan, wish you the best, clean presentation too, try gamma.app to create the presentation, beyond a pdf you can create a website, present yourself the document, an even have data on how many people saw your presentation and you could also create a contact form.

Appreciate you taking the time to have a look Alex and thank you for the advice I’ll be sure to check out gamma.app. I was planning to incorporate a loom type video of my preso into my landing page for the system so I’ll explore all options before hand.
Your systems training process sounds really smart. Were you using human sms conversations that were successful or AI training itself on its own previous conversations like a self learning system?

 

[GeoMoD]

Appreciate you taking the time to have a look Alex and thank you for the advice I’ll be sure to check out gamma.app. I was planning to incorporate a loom type video of my preso into my landing page for the system so I’ll explore all options before hand.
Your systems training process sounds really smart. Were you using human sms conversations that were successful or AI training itself on its own previous conversations like a self learning system?

Exactly, so it is not only the directives in how it should respond, but also real life cases of how others text got positive results, of course it is not just adding simple cases, but cases where there were rebuttals, but finally the appt was made.
I'm sure your idea could also evolve into something amazing, and you're going to have a pilot, find a way to document it as well, so you can review and study case by case to polish it further.
A quick video is a nice idea too, but also explore other options, since you're offering an AI service, try to make the presentation more visually appealing, might not be needed right now, but it's just an idea you could explore.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

Ignoring our bot friend, but I posted earlier in this thread about an AI product that we tried in our CRM and how we quickly turned it off as it was replying to sold customers, finance declined customers, etc. They got this fixed, so we started it up again. Those issues are resolved, but there just seems to be way to many variables to make it work overall. I don't know how all of these variables could ever be solved for no matter how advanced AI gets.