Up to 95 percent of today’s shoppers go online to research vehicles. But they still want a personal connection. According to the Local Search Association, 61 percent of new and used vehicle shoppers call a dealership once they’ve completed their online research. This number is likely to grow due to the prevalence of smart phones and click-to-call buttons.

A phone system that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI) combined with trained human agents to transcribe conversations helps your dealership pinpoint and fix phone system problems. The result?  You win more appointments and ultimately sell more cars. 

This AI-human pairing is commonly used by huge technology companies including Microsoft and Amazon. You likely use Microsoft’s Skype or Amazon’s Alexa. These applications are AI-driven. They “learn” words and speech patterns so you get a better and more personalized customer experience every time you use them.

This pairing is necessary because AI isn’t perfect. It’s hard to transcribe human voices when the accent, tone, speed, and diction vary, or if there is background noise. This is a problem because with AI it’s critical to comprehend the words, establish context, and determine the speaker’s intent. These three elements are crucial to understand the information so the AI application can automate the next move.

That’s where humans come in. We still need humans to help the applications analyze and then confirm, correct, or decline, the next action. This helps the computer “learn” and enrich its taxonomy for future analysis.

How does this AI and human pairing work in your dealership phone system? It helps you understand what is happening on your phones so you can fix problems before they cost you a sale.

Behind the scenes, this pairing analyzes calls to understand the content, what the customer wants, how the person answering the phone handles the call, and the outcome of the call. Did it end in a missed opportunity, an appointment, or a sale? All this information is sent to you in an easy-to-understand, real-time alert so you can improve your team’s phone performance.

As an example, let’s say you have one salesperson with a 40 percent phone appointment rate. Another salesperson is seriously lagging behind with only a 10 percent phone appointment rate. Why is there such a big discrepancy? An AI application backed by human agents will analyze speech patterns to determine why one salesperson is leaps and bounds ahead of another, and what you can do in terms of training to improve the results of the under-performer.

The best phone system providers use this AI and human pairing to capture customer data, automatically add the information to your CRM, transcribe calls, categorize follow-up, and send real-time reporting with details about what happened and how you can improve sales personnel and BDC phone performance. This allows you to save customer relationships before you lose a deal.

Before you choose a provider, do your homework. The best solutions have at least half a million data points behind them. Only with massive amounts of data can a solution create reasonable predications about customer intent and act on those predications.

They also have auto-only data sets. A provider working in multiple verticals may create generic data sets that limit capability and lead to a poor customer experience.

Detailed data analysis is also key. Any provider can gather and report data. You need a provider that does the data interpretation for you and delivers recipes to fix any problems.

Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of the human component. A good provider will have agents trained in the automotive space who listen to call recordings, fix transcription errors, and provide more context.

At a time when dealership calls are on the rise and there is fierce competition among dealerships to win customers, a phone system that combines AI and human agents can be the solution you need to deliver an exceptional customer experience, set more appointments, and win more sales.

While much has been written about how the “bots” are coming and will threaten to automate everyone’s job, the reality is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is about automating mundane tasks to improve the customer experience and better scale human interactions for solving the complex and unique issues.

Machine Learning (ML) is all about feeding the algorithm “training data” so that the computer can understand the questions, responses, and best paths for a positive experience. But the old adage holds true, “garbage in, garbage out.” This is particularly important in automotive, where you have a vocabulary that doesn’t translate to all industries and thus a “horizontal” approach frequently fails.

In the automotive space, AI and ML work behind the scenes. Examples like digital retailing, inventory analysis, and lead response tools are examples of how data-gathering and analysis can be automated to understand trends and thresholds. Another technology that is leveraging AI and ML is phone systems and customer experience.

According to the Local Search Association (LSA), 61% of shoppers call a dealership after doing initial research. Thus, it is critical that your phone system and phone-handling skills are top-notch to convert those leads into appointments and sales. This is a great opportunity to apply AI and ML to segment calls for greater prioritization and handling.

Historically, a phone system provider could gather and report volume data, like which campaigns generated the most calls and which calls led to sales appointments. But, AI takes this to whole a new level of capability. Today, with AI, we can move beyond "volumes" to "value," differentiating what trends, actions, insights, and alerts are needed to segment potential buyers from robocalls and noise.

For example, let’s say Beth is your best salesperson. She routinely posts a 40% appointment rate for calls she answers. John, however, is a staff member that’s struggling. His appointment rate hovers around 10%. Without AI, you are constantly running in circles to achieve consistency. But with AI, this can immediately be improved with real-time data where Human and Computer work in Harmony to improve the customer experience.

AI’s strength is finding patterns in what and how staff talks to customers then harnessing what works so insights can be operationalized, ultimately setting more appointments and closing more sales. Now you have the what and the why you can train John to interact on the phone like Beth. AI helps everyone do their job better so they can meet individual and collective sales goals to contribute to the dealership's growth.

The key to ML is training data, the more examples you can “feed” the algorithm, the better the outcomes. Frequently, this means you need at least a half-million automotive industry-specific data points to provide quality outcomes. This quality training data can be the difference between success and failure. You don't know if the algorithm is working correctly or not without the right volume of quality data to feed it. No short-cuts!

AI and ML can be revolutionary in the value they bring to an organization, but there are no short-cuts. It takes quality and quantity to achieve automation and positive customer experiences. Make sure you partner with organizations that can articulate the quality, quantity, and automotive industry-specific inputs that make AI a success.