4 days Ago
New survey shows auto dealers are accelerating their use of artificial intelligence to boost ...
[+] efficiency, sales and revenues. Car dealers were initially sluggish in adopting artificial intelligence but a new study reveals not only are they embracing the technology, many are finding AI improves efficiency, but boosts sales and revenue. The study was commissioned by Fullpath, a customer data platform firm that works with dealers, surveying 200 senior decision makers at dealerships with more than 50 vehicles on their lots in the U.
S. and Canada. The results most surprising to Fullpath CEO Aharon Horwitz was 80% of the dealers responding said they are already using AI or plan to deploy it in 2025 while 100% of the dealerships using AI said their revenues increased in the past year.
In addition, 81% said they plan to increase their AI budgets in 2025 compared with 2024. Aharon Horwitz, CEO, Fullpath, a customer data platform firm. “I think that there's a clear indication of a phase shift where dealers are looking to have connected data, have real automation and then use AI as operationally, as an operationalization engine for different aspects of the business,” said Horwitz, in an interview.
New Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge Warning—Do Not Shop On These Websites Don’t Hold Down The Ctrl Key—New Warning As Cyber Attacks Confirmed Now Hackers Are Using Snail Mail In Cyber Attacks—Here’s How The chart below from the survey shows how dealership executives said their businesses are using, or plan to use AI currently and in the future with customer relations management topping the list. Chart from Fullpath dealer survey on artificial intelligence use showing how dealers are using, or ..
. [+] intend to use AI. Case in point, Braintree, Massachusetts-based Quirk Cars , with 18 dealerships in its home state and New Hampshire, a Fullpath client.
Director of marketing Sean Western says in the seven years since Quirk adopted AI, the technology has made it possible to better target sales leads more effectively as well as streamline dealership management. Sean Western, director of marketing at Quirk Cars, an 18-dealership group in New England. “We now use it in automating our Google AdWords campaigns.
We use AI to basically siphon all of our first-party data from our website, our CRM, our DMS,” said Western, in an interview. “AI is able to take all that and then put it in one place and allow us to make smart decisions as far as what campaigns we want to run. The great thing is with this technology, it gives the user a better experience because there's more, I'd say, personalization and one-on-one communications, rather than, like a big email blast where you send the same thing to 10,000 people.
” While Quirk Cars latched onto AI almost a decade ago, many other dealerships sat on the sidelines before taking the plunge. Fullpath’s Horwitz attributes that initial reluctance to the culture of the business. “In many ways, it is a traditional industry and has some conservative elements around new technology adoption, even the regulatory environment, given the traditional family-owned nature of the business,” Horwitz noted.
The survey results attest to his belief the pace of AI adoption has greatly accelerated . The chart below reveals 95% of dealer executives responding to the survey said AI is “very important” or “important” for future dealership success. Chart from Fullpath dealer AI sentiment survey showing 95% dealers said artificial intelligence is .
.. [+] important for future dealership success.
Much of that sentiment appears to be based on how the use of artificial intelligence has resulted in actual improvement to their bottom lines, where every dealership using it said it helped them make more money. Chart from Fullpath dealer AI sentiment survey showing how the technology has boosted revenues in ..
. [+] the past 12 months. That’s certainly the case at Quirk Cars where the company has been able to use the technology to reduce, and make better use, of its marketing budget.
“We have, I'd say, capitalized on opportunities we would have missed, just based on the customer follow-up and things like that,” noted Western. “So it definitely has positively affected our bottom line.” So often, slinging the word efficiency is construed as meaning job loss.
But survey results would seem to dampen that sentiment with 72% strongly agreeing that AI enhances jobs without replacing them. “I think if you'd ask most people, what AI is going to do, they envision, you know, Tesla style robots running the show, and full, full replacement of humans. That's not what dealers are talking about,” said Horwitz.
What they are talking about, Horwitz noted, is using AI as more of job enhancement tool rather than a replacement for humans. Quirk Cars’s Western agrees, saying, “I don't look at it as, hey, I'm scared this is going to take over my job. This is just like a tool that helps me give my customers a better experience.
I'm essentially at the the wheel of this ship, and I have all the cadence that makes driving easy.” While using AI may offer operational and financial improvements, challenges remain to using it, according to the survey. The top challenges mentioned by respondents include: · Obtaining real-time customer insights and preferences (28%) · Providing predictive maintenance alerts for customers (20%) · Access to the right technology(18%) · Integrating multiple data sources into a single, unified view of the customer (18%) At Quirk Cars, one challenge was dealing with people who tried to manipulate virtual conversations.
“We ran into an issue where people were trying to essentially hack the chat bot, trying to get it to say things,” said Western. “You have some people trying to play with the technology in a kind of malicious way.” The company was able to fix that by setting parameters to detect when people were moving off-topic and either re-directing them, or ending the chat, Western said.
Fullpath’s Horwitz believes the future of AI use at dealerships is tying together its customer management, business and employee management systems, and email and advertising systems. Looking even further ahead, he sees a new element to the traditional “up” system of how customers are handled. There’s the walk-in or drive-by up where the customer stops by the dealership, phone up for those who make inquiries by phone and internet up representing someone who expresses interest in a vehicle or vehicle-type online.
“We believe AI is going to usher in the era of what we're calling a data up, where a dealer will identify a great sales opportunity in their data,” predicted Horwitz..
