10:00 am, March 25, 2025
AI technology is like having an ’employee that never takes time off’ and can help car dealers offer round-the-clock customer service.
That is according to one leading expert, who believes that the systems can ‘mesh with humans’ to help drive retailer efficiency.
Ben Cooper, Impel’s international MD, says that dealers could be using AI to book in appointments and chase up leads, as well as interacting with customers.
Appearing on the latest episode of the Car Dealer Podcast, he explained the importance of having a good chatbot, which can engage with buyers ‘meaningfully’ outside of usual business hours.
He also encouraged retailers thinking about implementing new systems to treat them like a new member of staff, who needs training up in the correct ways of working.
‘It’s the it’s the employee that never takes time off, they’re never sick, they’re never on a cigarette break, they never take holiday –they’re on 24/7,’ he told host James Baggott and Jon Reay.
‘We integrate globally with over 8,000 dealers now and so we see a lot of activity from a CRM perspective. On average, we see 40 to 45% of all sales inquiries and finance inquiries coming in outside of dealership hours.
‘Now, every dealership has different hours, but we set them in our system, so we see that out as of hours.
‘If you’re looking for a new vehicle, you’re online at 10 o’clock at night, you submit an inquiry. In the best case scenario, maybe you get a call back at 10 o’clock the next morning, but you’re likely at work, you’re busy, you’re doing things.
‘Having the ability to have AI follow up, not just immediately, but meaningfully as well, being able to answer customers’ questions means that you can take that customer out of the market, you can book an appointment and teams are able to walk in in the morning and there’ll be appointments rather than leads to follow up with.’
Impel offers AI solutions exclusive to the automotive industry, including end-to-end customer lifecycle management platforms.
The services enable car dealers of all sizes to deliver ‘seamless customer experiences at every touchpoint’.
Explaining the benefits of the firm’s services, Cooper added: ‘It’s really meshing humans – the team members – with that technology in the most efficient ways.
‘When we first launched the products in the UK market, which would have been late 2023, we did a mystery shop activity across 100 of the biggest dealership groups in the UK market, just to see what the lead response was like from the team members.
‘It was really interesting just from an average perspective. Of all the inquiries that we submitted, 10% of them never got a response at all – not a call, not an email, not a text message
‘Of the ones that we did get a response to, we’d asked three basic questions within the inquiries and they weren’t all answered – maybe one was, maybe a couple were – and we were stopped being followed up with between one and two days.
‘It’s the challenge of having enough human capital within the dealership to follow up with leads over time. That’s something that technology can do and just follow up for 30, 40, 50 days, especially with new car leads.’
The Car Dealer Podcast, sponsored by Carwow, sees an industry guest join our hosts to discuss the motor trade’s biggest headlines of every week.
A full list of the stories discussed on this week’s episode can be found here.
You can listen to all episodes of the Car Dealer Podcast on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
