Slowly but surely, auto dealers test ChatGPT waters

With all the attention ChatGPT has generated since its explosive debut last fall, Jason Bickford felt intrigued enough to experiment with it at work.

Bickford, vice president of sales and operations at Bickford Ford, in Snohomish, Wash., was curious about what he could accomplish with the artificial intelligence-driven conversational chatbot. It turned out to be plenty, even at the start. The dealership began to use ChatGPT in January to automate sales correspondence, compose memos and write job postings complete with better wording and grammar. It even helped measure customer sentiment.

"We're definitely happy with it," Bickford said. "The content is getting better, and the support is getting better. It helps people realize ... there is a better way to work."

Since ChatGPT's launch by San Francisco private research laboratory OpenAI, the technology has wowed the world with its ability to converse on human terms and learn from its mistakes. Users have applied the technology to write books, compose correspondence and talk to customers. On the other hand, as Harvard Business Review and others have reported, ChatGPT can be a weapon to help spread malicious code. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and many others released a statement at the end of May expressing concern that ChatGPT and other AI-driven bots, if left unchecked, could cause human extinction.

Auto dealerships aren't expressing existential concern about using ChatGPT. So far, they are dabbling with it in various parts of their business, testing how it works with existing retail technology products and tools, said Rich Sands, CEO of Stella Automotive AI, which provides conversational AI technology for dealerships. (Automakers are also exploring ChatGPT or related generative AI technology.)

"It's about how they apply this powerful new tool into their dealership without losing control of their customers in their workflow and in their business processes," Sands said.

It is hard to track how many dealerships are using ChatGPT because the practice is new. The National Automobile Dealers Association, for example, told Automotive News it "is not tracking the number of dealerships using ChatGPT or similar technology."

Still, anecdotal accounts paint a picture of growing interest.

Shift Digital President Matt VanDyke said he's seeing a huge ChatGPT uptake in his dealership customer base. Shift, in Birmingham, Mich., provides digital marketing analytics and services to automakers and their franchised dealerships. It also coordinates with more than 220 software suppliers for both segments. Many dealerships are trying ChatGPT or generative AI in applications such as live chats on websites and handling inbound calls to service departments, he said. The chatbot also can dive into customer details, vehicle specifics and preemptively ask about scheduling service.

"If you turn that process into ChatGPT-based tools or generative AI, they can solve between 60 percent to 80 percent of customer needs when calling into a service department in order to schedule the service," VanDyke said.

Dealers can use ChatGPT and similar technology to obtain talking points on a shopper's interest and vehicle history; produce quick information about vehicles for call center sales efforts; and generate marketing analysis of competitors, said Aharon Horwitz, CEO of Fullpath. The Miami developer of a customer data and experience platform was formerly called AutoLeadStar.

Fullpath added two versions of ChatGPT to its platform in May, which Horwitz said aids in the online shopping process.

"We turned it into a shopper bot that lives on the dealer website," Horwitz said. "It can communicate with shoppers, answer their questions, help them get information, and then ultimately also convert them into a lead for the dealership to follow up."

Elk Grove Buick-GMC in California has been using ChatGPT since late fall through Impel, said General Manager Yama Popal.

Impel markets a digital engagement platform for dealerships, automakers and third-party marketplaces.

So far, ChatGPT has helped the sales department track customer leads and the service department make appointments. The technology, he said, has improved over time.

"In the beginning they had some glitches," Popal told Automotive News. "We were able to give our feedback [to Impel]. They fixed it, and we've had really good results."

ChatGPT has helped boost efficiency considerably, Popal said.

"Our lead time [to answer questions] went down significantly, our volume increased, our profit increased, and our customer satisfaction increased," Popal said. "AI was part of it. It was not the whole thing, but it definitely helped us take it to the next level."

Van Nuys Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in California has deployed ChatGPT in its training to help enhance how the sales team interacts with customers, said Raed Malaeb, the dealership's general manager.

"Some of the salespeople we hire, they may be the best salespeople ever, but the way that they respond to customers sometimes grammatically — I am guilty of this myself — and also the way you answer customers through emails doesn't always look very professional," Malaeb said.

Salespeople at the dealership ask ChatGPT how to respond to a customer, and the technology supplies an answer.

"I was like, 'Let's try to make it more personal, and if you don't know how to do it, it's totally fine — you can ask ChatGPT,' " Malaeb said.

Dealerships may be dabbling in ChatGPT right now, but some of their technology providers believe adoption will happen swiftly.

"I think we're talking a year to a year and a half where [ChatGPT is] doing a huge amount of the car-buying process itself in an automated way," Horwitz said.

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TruVideo — maker of a messaging, video and AI platform for dealerships — added ChatGPT to its communications software and started a rollout of its updated technology in April, said CEO Joe Shaker.

Shaker, who also is owner of Shaker Auto Group in New England, said the technology enables the platform to respond to customers and provide assistance.

An initial rollout of the enhanced ChatGPT to 200 dealerships elicited positive feedback, he said.

By the end of 2023, Shaker expects dealerships to move from being curious and excited about the technology's potential to a much wider adoption rate as ChatGPT is woven into dealership systems.

"It will touch every department more or less to an extent," Shaker said. "I think it is going to be incredible ... a lot of people won't even realize they're using ChatGPT."

VanDyke did not disagree, but he cautioned that the process of incorporating ChatGPT into a dealership can be complex, and there will be bumps along the way.

"It's an exciting time, and it's moving extremely rapidly, but [it] requires expertise on the side of vendors — meaning you can't just take your chat tool and plug in ChatGPT," VanDyke said. "We're looking carefully at who are the companies who are very smartly programming the underlying tech to work for their systems."

While not naming specific companies, VanDyke said he had seen "examples" of some that were trying to implement ChatGPT technology for dealerships or automakers and then have it accidentally promote competitors.

"It's an iterative process," he said. "There are definitely products on the market that are working today and working successfully, and there is a huge rush of everybody else who are trying to get into the space and figure it out."

Shaker, in a follow-up email to Automotive News, offered similar sentiment.

"As the use of ChatGPT continues to gain momentum, it's becoming clear that this powerful language model has a wide range of applications," Shaker wrote. "However, it's also becoming evident that the tool has its limitations, particularly when it comes to meeting the unique demands of certain industries."

That includes the auto industry, Shaker said, because it requires "a high level of precision" in terms of information about the latest vehicles. ChatGPT isn't always going to be up to date or accurate, he said, which means the industry will need "custom training, prompt engineering and the integration of other AI models" to support its specific needs.

Bickford, of the Washington Ford dealership, is enthusiastic about what ChatGPT has done for his dealership so far.

The sales team typically generates quick templates for emailing clients, Bickford said. If they take 10 to 15 seconds with ChatGPT, however, they can customize the message to address clients' needs with more personalized prose. Analyzing customer sentiment also has shown promise, he said, through chatbot conversations with customers on the website or through email interactions. In these situations, the ChatGPT-driven interaction asks customers, for example, if an alternative vehicle might suit them better.

If the technology is successful, could it lead to job cuts?

Bickford said the possibility is there, especially as ChatGPT or other generative AI technology becomes more sophisticated in customer service capability and reliability. Another option, he said, is to keep growing market share using the technology along with better training for employees already on staff.

"The personal touch our staff has is everything to us," Bickford said. "We could never replace them."