The rising wave of digitization has engulfed industries, organizations, people from all age and walks of life. In the contemporary era, consumers, especially millennials, are actively engaging in chat and messenger applications (that is chatbots) for purchasing, research purpose and interact on a real-time basis with businesses and their products. With advancement in Artificial Intelligence, these platforms provide a real-time experience to engage with their preferred brands, negating the need to stay on hold or wait to speak with a customer care representative. A recent survey reports that around 90% of consumers prefer using instant messaging to communicate with any business, and around 66% of consumers prefer messaging over any other communication channel.
In the automotive sector, integrating conversational artificial intelligence into marketers’ key strategies is promising since chatbots become an integral part of a consumer’s experience. It also helps marketers drive both online and in-store traffic, which in turn is a win-win scenario. Chatbots, apart from increasing sales and improving customer experience, provide accurate information to its buyers. And with time (capturing more and more data), they are being smarter and might eventually drive the entire cycle of purchasing, selling and after-sales services.
Let us move further to understand how chatbots transform the entire car buying experience.
Enhance Visibility And Awareness
Dealer websites provide with an array of required information for potential buyers to understand and absorb in their early stages of a car-buying process. But, more often than not, these dealers are at the mercy of traditional channels such as paid search, ads, newsletters, emails to enhance visibility and drive traffic to their site. Conversational marketing provides an opportunity for dealers to educate more about the features and exclusivity of their website into a channel preferred by any consumer to communicate. For chatbots that are embedded in applications like Facebook (having an active user base of over 1.3 billion), help to reach an expanse of an audience and driving potential customers. Gaining visibility on these messaging platforms helps dealers to broaden their awareness and simplify the information with respect to a customer’s need.
Required Information With No Hassle
Purchasing a car is a tedious task for it involves a lot of planning, first-hand information. Consumers face ample stress and pressure while looking forward to buying a car. Chatbots can help in solving problems and queries more effectively and efficiently. Powered by artificial technology, chatbots are capable of answering complex questions without relying much on human intervention, especially at the beginning of a car purchasing experience. Chatbots are ‘trained’ (learning from algorithms and experience) to answer customer-dealer-centric inquires such as checking credit scores, browsing inventory, car-trade value etc. This results in ultimate customer satisfaction as they have precise answers to all the questions before they enter a dealership. It’s not just the potential customers that benefit from the use of Chabot technology. Automation in the research and discovery process also streamlines the early stages of the dealership sales cycle. Chatbots help dealers to drive more qualified and involved buyers, closer to the point of purchase.
24*7 Availability
Today’s digital economy has increased customer expectations in terms of convenience and accessibility. To remain in the competitive field, automotive dealers should always be prepared to deliver an engaging and meaningful customer-first experience. To cater to this need, chatbots help dealers to catch their target customer’s ever-evolving expectations.
Beyond helping consumers with necessary information, chatbots provide a personalized 24*7 experience. Customers no longer need to wait for a salesperson to respond to an email query or deal with phone calls. Chatbots enable customers to own their car-buying experience and gain access to whatever information they seek, in any channel of their preference. On the dealer’s end, chatbots take the baggage of excess load off their heads. After the necessary information, chatbots can them pass along the requests to a human agent.
After-Sales Services
The ultimate aim is never to simply just sell a car to an interested buyer, it’s a complete cycle (in an overall customer experience) to further assist with after-sales services. On the operations side, during the time of service and repair, dealers are inundated with calls. Service bays are crammed with repair and service orders. Chatbots can help to automate schedules, decipher the problem while connecting them with the right dealer. When a customer schedules an appointment for a service, they want to know an estimate cost and time. These simple tasks are effectively managed by bots, creating a valuable customer relationship.
Chatbots are effective in increasing customer engagement and dealer retention. It can touch every aspect of the delivery chain, right from consumers, dealers, retailers, manufacturers, salesmen and service technicians. Banking upon the power of technology, the auto industry continues to evolve and embrace the future of car buying and driving personalized experience for every consumer.