New PCG Research on the Automotive Industry Finds That Conversica AI Solutions Are ‘Bursting With Exponential Opportunity for Dealers’

Conversational AI Paired With Smart Follow-up Can Help Dealers Boost Customer Retention, New Research Reveals

Conversica, the leader in conversational AI for business, today announced a new report by PCG Research which concluded that Conversica’s AI sales and service assistants improve customer satisfaction, generate greater revenue opportunities, influence higher service department traffic, and ultimately perform as a critical customer retention tool for automotive dealerships of all sizes.

“When AI and machine learning are put into the context of the auto industry, they are bursting with exponential opportunity for dealers,” said Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Research. “Conversica has been on the leading edge of harnessing that power, offering dealers sophisticated yet easy-to-implement tools that significantly impact sales and service revenue and customer retention.”

The new research report, a follow-on to PCG’s earlier report exploring AI’s impact on the sales department, investigates the power of using Conversica’s Automotive Service Assistant to:

• Engage new car buyers to make their first service appointment, as well as booking future visits
• Re-engage customers who have defected or abandoned service
• Follow up to remind customers of services previously recommended but not performed
• Encourage customers to have factory recall service performed
• Alert customers to the need for a state inspection appointment
• Follow up to gauge customer satisfaction after a service visit

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Average Auto Customer Is Worth $517,000
The report details Conversica’s success at integrating the use of personable and extremely helpful AI assistants to touch far more service customers, more persistently and with greater individual attention, than would be possible for dealership service staff alone. This is important because, as Carl Sewell notes in Customers for Life, an average auto customer is worth $517,000 over their lifetime.

Many dealers are still trying to fill their service drives with more customers through traditional direct mail and m********* campaigns—tactics they have been using for decades. However, the report reveals the new approach made possible with Conversica: to mine the dealer’s CRM and DMS information and identify the exact right time to reach out, to whom and with what message, to boost customer response, loyalty and retention. The AI assistant is polite but persistent, resulting in more dealership service appointments and, ultimately, more repair orders being written.

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“We are excited to share the results of the study by Brian Pasch and team, the foremost experts in automotive marketing best practices,” said John Ruble, Director of Fixed Operations Solution Sales at Conversica. “The fact that Conversica’s Automotive Service Assistant typically engages a dealership’s customers at a 10X greater rate is revolutionary in an industry that has for too long relied on traditional marketing outreach tactics. Boosting engagement through the use of AI is now a proven technique for increasing service visits and retaining customers.”

AI to Power the Future of Auto Sales and Service Conversica is the only provider of AI assistants for sales and service departments, used in hundreds of dealerships around the world, including large groups such as MileOne Autogroup, Galpin Motors and the Faulkner Organization.

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With an engagement rate far greater than that of traditional email and direct mail outreach, Conversica’s sales and service assistants significantly increase the number of quality conversations with real customers and reduce the time salespeople, BDC reps and service advisors spend chasing leads. From more conversations come more showroom and service drive visits and, from that, more vehicles sold, more ROs written and more customers retained.