Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a tricky subject for many businesses. Some dealership employees may be worried that artificial intelligence is a threat to their jobs. Dealer management teams may be interested in the potential of AI but unsure of its benefits. 

More than two-thirds of dealers expect to use AI to improve their business in the near future, and more than half are already enjoying the benefits.¹

The truth is, a voice assistant powered by AI can seriously help your dealership retain your employees and improve the customer experience, which is especially important as twice as many consumers start their search digitally versus at a dealership.²

What Is an AI Voice Assistant?

An AI voice assistant uses natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) to decipher and respond to questions or voice commands. The voice assistant can then provide information or answer questions according to preprogrammed information. A smart speaker (Alexa, Siri®) is an example of an AI voice assistant.

AI and Voice Assistant Roles in Your Dealership

Dealers have limited resources. After all, it’s a people business that relies on employees to interact with and satisfy prospects and clients. However, repetitive or mundane tasks frequently bog down these employees, leaving them much less time to close the deal. Consider how a voice assistant could help you dealership in these three areas:

Customer Interaction

Prospects may have many questions before deciding to buy, and existing customers may have follow-up queries. These customer interactions can eat up time for dealership staff, but an AI voice assistant can certainly help. They can supply information about vehicle rates and features or availability, schedule appointments, and set test drives.

The software can also engage in “conversational AI” to analyze and understand each customer interaction. It’ll help the client to find the ideal vehicle based on their budget, requirements, and preferences.

Appointment Scheduling

It may take a staff member a long time to research or confirm a customer appointment. However, the AI voice assistant can do this in the background instead. The customer will interact with the AI software to look at available time slots, select the most convenient date or time, and avoid manual intervention.

Further, the AI algorithm can look at the dealership staff calendars and consider factors like expertise, workload, or availability to fine-tune the process.

Post-Sales Support

Customer service chatbots can help after the sale by answering any questions about vehicle maintenance, service appointments, warranty information, or troubleshooting. This will free up the time employees may otherwise devote to handling these predictable questions.

AI can also recommend certain upgrades or accessories and even notify customers about software updates or product recalls.

How Voice Assistance Can Improve the Customer Experience

When your customer has a problem, they’ll want a swift resolution, possibly outside business hours. You may be behind the eight ball if you don’t have an AI/virtual assistant system in this situation. And according to some reports, 76% of consumers will stop doing business with a company after just one bad experience, so there’s a great deal at stake.¹

With a voice assistance system in place, you can deal with and manage interactions more efficiently, building trust along the way. A proactive and individualized AI service can promote improved customer loyalty and happiness.

How Voice Assistance May Help Retain Employees

The threat of burnout is all too real in the typically busy dealership of today. This can make retaining talented people hard due to high turnover rates and general dissatisfaction in the workplace. However, you can streamline your dealership processes with an AI system and hand off those monotonous tasks. 

This will put less pressure on employees, giving them more time to fulfill tasks as they help develop long-lasting customer relationships. In another survey, 61% of workers believe that AI adoption in the workplace has boosted productivity.³

Using the Power of a Voice Assistant To Grow a Dealership

AI and voice assistance technologies are sophisticated and can help to grow a dealership. This technology can improve the customer experience and retain employees by cutting down on tedious and time-consuming tasks that the tech itself would better serve.

AI can improve the customer experience at your dealership and may even help you to retain employees, reducing turnover. 

Meanwhile, you can also work with other companies that are also making full use of modern technology, to improve the vehicle buying and selling process. For example, ACV's new inspection hardware is powered by AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics, which enables it to identify defects and damage that would otherwise be missed. Register to become a member with ACV today and find out how we can help your dealership succeed.

Sources

1. Now Is the Time to Learn and Lead With AI. May 11, 2022, CDK Global, https://www.cdkglobal.com/insights/now-time-learn-and-lead-ai

2. Google Consumer Insights. Retrieved in July 2023 from https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-trends/digital-car-research-statistics/

3. Boost employee retention and customer experience with AI voice assistance for dealerships. Retrieved in July 2023 from https://www.cdkglobal.com/insights/boost-employee-retention-and-customer-experience-ai-voice-assistants-dealerships.

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