How do you think car retailers can make best use of AI?

A good example is the way buyers typically interact with websites to find a vehicle. They might start off saying they want a red MINI with less than 20,000 miles and then typically go through lots of filters and dropdowns to select something like heated seats, which can be laborious. Websites tend to require buyers to know what they need in terms of specification and when they don’t, it can get complicated.

So if they could use AI to just say: “I want a red MINI with 20,000 miles and it’s got to have heated seats.” AI should be able to find the appropriate cars. That simplifies the whole user experience and that’s a big thing.

The typical retailer may have an IT department but will not have programmers, so what’s the best way for them to access AI tools?

I think OpenAI, who’s the provider of ChatGPT, is probably, one of the safest options.

The products they have are high quality. AI is one of those industries where who’s leading is always changing and OpenAI is always at the top of the charts.

It’s good technology and they’re very open about their T&Cs, whereas some other providers are a bit more obscure.

The nice thing about most of this technology is that you don’t need to be an AI expert because you’re just interacting through an API. So, if you want to take some data from somewhere on your website and process it through OpenAI, then all you’re doing is taking your data and then putting it into what’s called a prompt, which is just the message that you send to the AI. And you send that through an API. And then since that’s OpenAI, it sends the message back. So pretty much any software developer worth their salt would be able to build something that interacts through it. It’s straightforward.

What do you think would be good examples for retailers to think about in terms of the practical uses of AI to deliver customer satisfaction in aftersales?

As a customer, I don’t particularly want to be interacting with a person. I want to get my car dropped off and I want the job to be done. To avoid playing telephone tag with customers, AI can be utilised to send me a message saying something needs to be approved or my car’s ready. Much of the process could be automated. It doesn’t require an awful lot of human interaction.

AI is moving fast with the technology becoming increasingly accessible to businesses and individuals. For dealers the key is to identify areas where it can improve the customer journey across sales and aftersales.

To find out more about CitNOW Group’s AI technologies, contact your Account Manager or email to team@citnowgroup.com.