Modern automotive dealerships are undergoing role reconfiguration. Conventionally, the automotive industry had been a product-centric industry and it was the products (cars/services) that fetched customers to the dealerships. Not anymore. Today in an increasingly digital marketplace, the auto industry is continually evolving as a customer-centric industry wherein customer engagement and customer experiences are driving the auto industry.
Moreover, the real essence of customer engagement lies in personalization. Customers, expect a seamless, easy and cross-channel customer experience that is personalized to their specific needs. In car dealerships, hospitality essentially depends on how a customer feels while dealing with them. This blog will describe how can implementing chatbots in car dealership improve customer experience. So, what are chatbots? Chatbots (Chat ROBOT) can be defined as a software that offers conversational experience by providing a textual or verbal interaction with real-world people using the native language. Chatbots are primarily designed to imitate normal human responses. Chatbots are a great way to drive customer engagement and help streamline dealership’s in-house operations with a contextual helper without ever involving a human.The chatbot adoption in the car dealerships is targeted at improving Customer Experience by handling interaction towards some kind of smart assistance. Their purpose is catering informed answers, help in direct channel interaction, cues, possibly catering relevant answers in a timely fashion.
Chatbots result as an important medium to improve customer interaction, experience, and their engagement by helping customers make better-informed and faster decisions, thereby augmenting their productivity, comfort, and safety. Capabilities of advanced chatbots like contextualization, personalization, and interoperability generate a deeply-personalized and connected customer experience in car dealerships.
How can Chatbots help Automotive Dealers? Chatbots in car dealerships can efficiently handle customer interactions while smartly dealing with a spectrum of topics like car configuration, customer survey, pre-sales, post-sales and more. The chatbot implementations in car dealerships are not limited to real-time messaging but can further be extended to CRM auto sync, credit applications, customer profiling, visitor profiling, scheduling test drives, staff alerts, programmable website widgets, inventory sync, service requests and more.
Product discovery
The digital chat assistant greets the customer upon landing on the car dealership website or mobile app. Alternatively, the user can also interact with the chatbot on a social channel. The idea is to help customers to look for the best-fit car models, compare car models of choice, know more about different car features and other preferences from various channels
Intuitive Smart 24/7 Messenger
The chatbot delivers instant, real-time sales conversations, 24*7 right from your car dealership website/mobile app. During open business hours of car dealership operation, customers can still interact with a staff member through the chatbot and when the car dealership is closed, chatbots can lead them through inventory checking, service appointment scheduling or even test-drive scheduling. This enables dealership’s call center, business development center to never miss out on a lead as the chatbot works without a pause, catering responses as and when demanded by the customers.
Chatbot for Lead Generation
Chat bot enables to convert customer’s public social media profile information into insightful data for instant lead generation. The customer profile can be instantaneously synced via user updates and inputs to reveal customer behavior, interests and a possible fit for services and products. Also, subscription to car dealership chatbot, allows the customer to automatically receive daily vehicle feed comprising of cars similar to their choice based on favorited cars in your inventory.
Chatbot enabled Text Messaging Service
Chatbots offer text messaging service exclusively for the customers who do not have social media accounts.
Chatbots for car dealerships automatically collect customer contact information, integrates with dealership CRM and routes potential customers to car dealership staff.
This way they can have personalized two-way text message conversations.
Staff Text Alerts
Staff alerts in the form of texts are sent to the car dealership’s staff whenever a customer or a potential customer fills out a form, leaves a message, schedules an appointment or requests to speak to a staff member.
In order to cut down the waiting time for the customer, staff alerts are promptly delivered. As a dealership owner, one can also administer who can receive these staff text alerts.
Reduction in customer waiting time enables customer to respond favorably with buying dealership services.
Chatbot enabled Inventory Sync
Chatbots allows periodic automatic syncing of car inventory and with powerful search features enables customers to find cars categorized on VIN number, model, color and more.
It also sends personalized notifications to the customers when their favorited cars undergo price reductions or in case they are sold.
Instant Conversations
With 24*7 operation and availability of the chatbot, the car dealership chatbot makes sure that dealership doesn’t miss any lead.
The chatbots enable instant two-way communication between a car dealership and its customers.
Chatbots ensures a seamless personalized customer interaction by managing and archiving chat history and anticipating customer requirements.
Promotional Offers
Chatbots in car dealerships can assist in airing the new car offers, discounts, sales and service promotions to large customer bases and thereby contributing to increase sales.
It can also broadcast newly launched vehicles, price reduction on favorited cars by the customers, and other relevant incentives and promotions to customers in the course of conversation.
Schedule Test Drives
Chatbots easily schedules test drives and engages with potential customers. While helping customers with scheduling test drives they also build a customer profile, recommend test-drives to them, suggests financing options and also helps with the trade-ins.
Customers can schedule test-drives at their own time convenience.
Schedule Services
Convert customers into repeat customers by making it hassle-free for them to schedule their own car service appointments. Service requests enables customers to pick a time and date for their service appointment. Chatbots can further keep the customers engaged by offering service discounts without the hassle of looking for coupons or codes.
Financing tools/EMI calculators
Chatbots in car dealerships helps in evaluating the cost needed to buy or service the car. It makes the car buying process easier for customers by providing them with information beforehand and hence making the car buying experience smoother.Why chatbots for customer service in car dealerships? Auto sales is a competitive forte, and as the administrator of a car dealership, you need to make sure that your website and apps has everything it needs to deliver exceptional customer experience. Among everything, there is an online chatbot. To understand, why car dealership needs one, let us look at some crucial factors.
Continuous Learning for Quality Management from Endless Data
An enormous amount of data is collected by brands with varied data sources like CRM systems, live call transcripts, internal databases, voice transcripts and FAQs which provides valuable information to chatbots. It is analyzed by the AI system.
The more data one feed to the AI system, the more it learns from the data, the more patterns it identifies and the more correctly it can communicate with customers in real time. This data can further be translated into deep machine learning that creates a higher level of intelligence and catering them with the ability to ‘learn’ the correct answer to any question over the time.
Omnichannel Personalization
Considering the ever-evolving customer expectations to receive personal digital experience across all channels at all times, chatbots can be deployed on almost every digital interface like mobile apps, the web, SMS, instant messaging, and voice response. To keep pace with the rise in the digital channels, brands can make use of chatbots to meet the growing volume of support requests. Additionally, chatbots deliver a personalized customer experience.
Unlike the search results provided by the internet searches, which merely match keywords to the requested topic, chatbots are initiating to use natural language processing so that they actually understand what the customer is asking, thus catering personalized and on-demand service around the clock.
Faster Customer Service
According to a research by Forrester, 77% of the customers consider “valuing my time” as the most crucial element of customer service. Chatbots can greatly reduce the time it takes to resolve customer issues. A chatbot that is 24/7 available quickly answers customer queries across multiple channels while eliminating long wait times or having to be transferred to different representatives in order to solve their query.
Cost Effective Customer Experience
Chatbot deployment can greatly impact brand costs. For brands with a lot of volumes, rising automation rates for everyday customer requests allows brands to essentially improve customer service levels with fewer agents needed to operate their call centers. This means usage of less space, which altogether can save millions of dollars on overall contact center infrastructure.
Optimizing the human side
While chatbots have the proficiency to automate several basic customer service functions, the aim is not just performing the job with fewer agents, but transforming the role of human agents to focus on the more complex cases. This will enable them to cater better customer service. This will in turn not only boost customer loyalty but also will improve the motivational level for agents who can connect to the human element of customer service. Chatbots can even reduce the need to keep training new staff with a traditionally high turnover Wrapping Up Chatbots are an assuring addition to the customer service segment in automotive. They are the exact answer to the evolving requirements of online shoppers and extend the potential to intensify sales as well as expand customer loyalty through personalized customer experience. For a free consultation on how digital solutions can help automotive dealers retain and acquire new customers email us on marketing@aimdek.com
