Australian Automobile Industry
Since 1931, the Australian automobile industry has been predominantly populated with cars like Holden, Ford, and Toyota. When General Motors shutdown production in 2016 due to low demand, Holden and Toyota Australia remained committed to producing cars locally. The vastness of the country and the extensive road network with the vast outback make automobiles a defining part of the Australian culture.
Get closer, friendlier and more responsive
As cars get more technology added to make them faster, safer, better there is an increasing drive to get closer, friendlier and more responsive to customers The digital age is around us. Facebook messenger and others are now part of our daily life with users across generations. Messaging worldwide is now more popular than social media and has increasingly become a part of Australia’s cultural fabric. How does one connect a rich history of the Australian automobile industry to new age changing consumer habits?
The automobile dealer is the key connection between manufacturers and consumers. A challenge dealers face is how does one connect better with customers on the channels they prefer as part of the get closer, friendlier and more responsive drive? Technology is the only enabler.
But how?
Mobile apps and websites have been prevalent with mixed success. They are more pull type channels for customers. It becomes difficult for local brands to stay current with the consumers using this traditional pull channels. Pull channels also require a lot of push advertising and spend.
Mobile apps tend to have mobile fatigue and get uninstalled for more messaging, social, entertainment and shopping apps. Consistency of engagement is lacking forcing dealers to fall back on inefficient old age channels like phones and manning service desks with people. How does technology help dealers being proactive rather than just reactive?
Chatbots seem to be the answer. They are a new age medium that does not require the traditional app download saving consumers bandwidth and smartphone memory and have much lower uninstall rates. Moreover apps tend to be clunky with the inherent difficulty in providing a rich interface that is intuitive given the small mobile phone screen size.
The world of the consumer is also changing with information overload and the need for precise conversational type interactions that the customers are increasingly getting used to.
Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies make chatbots a very viable medium to capture new consumers and interact and deepen the relationships with existing ones.
Want your very own google, Wikipedia and Amazon?
Automobile dealerships the world over are adopting chatbots to provide rich pinpoint information, insights and help people find information, buy, maintain, insure and service our automobiles. Its like having google to answer questions, wikipedia to provide information about products and services and an amazon to perform transactions for your own brand — all with a query type conversational interface.
The automobile industry will need to however pickup in their adoption of this new generation access channel driven by the latest advances in Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to keep innovating as they have typically done over the years.
12 ways in which chatbots can achieve this
Sales and promotions
- Generate sales leads
- Push promotional, new launch announcements, sales and discount messages
- Provide information about features, configurations and estimates — based on question you have
- Provide financing, lease and purchasing options quickly
- Help you organize and schedule a test drive; and add it to your calendar too
Service and bookings
- Remind and schedule service bookings
- Send alerts for manufacturer recommended service
- Locate a service center closer to where customers live
- Check up on previous service bookings
Insurance
- Provide for insurance comparison quotes
- Insurance renewal reminders
- Collect insurance payments
What about Rental cars?
For rental fleets chatbots can be very useful in providing information about the rental, starting readings, terms and conditions, booking information, distance, tow service listings, instructions to follow, accident assurance, insurance information, drop offs and receipts.
And Contract cars?
Similarly for contract cars or leased vehicles a complete set of terms and conditions, monthly payments and receipts, service schedules, mileage, insurance coverage and a lot more can be provided to every consumer via chatbots in a friendly conversational interface.
And finally…
Chatbots are here to stay, the earlier dealerships sign up for a chatbot the more intelligent it grows over time as it handles more volumes and learns from interactions. Engati has developed various dealership chatbots and can help for all of the above.
Do reach out to us contact@engati.com or http://www.engati.com to learn more and schedule a demo. Its cheaper than you think and a fraction of the cost of websites and mobile apps. We will get you setup in no time. Get your own intelligent assistant 24 hours a day…
By: Sridevi
Originally published at blog.engati.com on March 3, 2018.
