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
