Increased trust in the new breed of dealer chatbots has seen a dramatic shift away from customers requesting callbacks and basic information toward discussing specific service and sales needs, new analysis shows. As AI makes the latest generation of chatbots more credible as ‘expert contacts’ for dealerships, customers increasingly trust them, like real dealership staff, to have detailed conversations about their needs, says UK automotive chatbot developer AutoConverse. Analysis of consumer interactions with AutoConverse bots across the UK market over the past 15 months shows that general information-seeking and requests for a call-back have been replaced by more detailed interactions about specific customer requirements. As a proportion of total interactions between customers and chatbots the analysis reveals: A rise from 12.8% to 36.2% for specific car servicing discussions Chats about buying a car or trading in a customer’s vehicle rising from 13.1% to 37.5% of conversations Miscellaneous enquiries for information falling from 69.2% of interactions to 21.7% Requests for a call-back dropping from 10.2% to 4% AutoConverse stresses that bots are not designed to replace dealer staff, but to focus on qualifying individual customer requirements before delivering them to relevant dealer teams as carefully qualified leads. Using AI to continually train bots on how best to advise and serve customers in a UK market-specific context, AutoConverse develops bespoke bots to act as a ‘mirror’ of the business team that they support. This means passing customer enquiries to the virtual equivalents of sales, service or aftersales departments at any moment of the day or night. The latest analysis of customer/bot interactions suggests a growing familiarity and trust among consumers for such technology, with more meaningful and productive interactions than the most early generation chatbots used in a commercial setting. “The latest figures suggest that people are now getting down to talk business with bots, rather than simply using them as a timesaving device to find an email address or request a call-back,” said AutoConverse co-founder, Ross Olsen. “A year ago the majority of customer-bot conversations were inquiries for miscellaneous bits of information but today the biggest slice of time is spent discussing sales or trade-ins.” “The bots were always providing a useful link with customers and delivering leads to the dealership, but now that the topics of conversation have become more focused on specific customer needs, those interactions are producing much higher quality leads.” With a year-on-year increase in customer-bot conversations of over 40%, this represents fast-growing additional business generated for dealers. And, as the bots’ training makes them more capable of getting into detail with customers, the quality of resulting leads is constantly improving. This year almost half of all chats resulted in a high-quality lead, compared to a third 12 months ago. Ross Olsen adds that the improving performance of bots as a business growth tool is also due to growing public acceptance of virtual staff as a first point of contact. “We are seeing an increased willingness from people to treat a well-trained chatbot as if it were a friendly, well-informed member of the dealer’s staff and therefore trust it with more relevant information. This trend is repeated across all commercial sectors as people grow generally more used to using technology such as AI assistants in their own devices. “The best evidence for that comfort is now revealed by the increased focus of dealership customers on discussing their specific needs rather than scrolling through a website for answers that may not even be there.”