Pinkstones Motor Group is crediting AI Assistant with supporting 89 vehicle transactions worth £2 million during a six-month period.
The Stoke-on-Trent group which represents Toyota, Lexus and MG across three dealerships said the AI-powered customer communication platform had enabled more consistent contact with sales and aftersales customers.
Its workshop diary has also remained fully booked eight weeks in advance following the roll-out of the technology.
AI targets existing customers
AI Assistant searches Pinkstones’ existing customer database to identify sales and aftersales opportunities.
These include service and MOT reminders, overdue vehicle health check work, finance renewals and customers who may be considering changing their vehicle.
The platform manages two-way conversations through email and WhatsApp, interprets customer responses and refers relevant enquiries to dealership employees.
Curtis Hague, group marketing manager at Pinkstones, said: “We’re very human-focused as a business. If we’ve got a customer in front of us, whether that’s at the service desk or in a sales environment, we’re really good at giving that customer a special experience.
“But we’ve also got a lot of customers in the database that we don’t see. The challenge for us was how to deliver that human touch at volume.”
Pinkstones previously relied on one-way service and MOT communications, including HTML emails sent from a no-reply address.
Hague added: “The real differentiator now is the two-way conversation. With our AI Assistants, we can email a customer in a way that looks like it’s coming from someone within the business and then start off natural back-and-forth conversations really easily.”
Workshop booked eight weeks
Pinkstones said the technology had helped the business remain closer to customers, maintain workshop activity and generate more vehicle sales opportunities from data it already held.
Hague continued: “We’re not just sending reminders and hoping something comes back. We’re starting conversations, understanding what customers need and making sure the right opportunities get picked up by the team.
“That has made a real difference across the business. It has helped us stay closer to customers, keep the workshop moving and create more sales opportunities from the data we already had.”
Ritchie Kelk, director at AI Assistant, said: “Pinkstones is a strong example of AI being used in a practical, measurable way inside a retail business. The results show the value AI Assistants can add to businesses of all sizes – using existing customer data to identify live opportunities, start relevant conversations and pass appropriate enquiries back to the team.”
AI Assistant provides AI-powered data cleansing and customer engagement tools for car dealers. Its technology supports sales follow-up, service and MOT reminders, vehicle health check follow-up, service retention and finance renewal engagement.
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