We were recently at NADA in Las Vegas, and on the expo floor it was remarkably hard to find a single booth where AI wasn’t a topic. It was all about AI, as if it were the diet pill for every problem in the automotive world. AI is the solution: just sit back and make lots of money! It’s a bit like hearing my 17-year-old teenager Daniel talk in the kitchen.

Whether it’s for the service, sales, finance or marketing department, at NADA there was an AI solution for every problem. Wonderful, of course, but I don’t buy into it. Not now, and not later either. Because sometimes ‘something’ simply remains human work.

Big fan

That said, I’m a big fan of AI solutions. Together with Novaco I’ve already made quite a few automation improvements on our website. Just take a look at the VDP page of the Experience Store Doesburg: no form, but a conversational chat that gives you answers and may well generate a lead. But answering the question comes first! We’ve also implemented AI with Calldrip and assess thousands of conversations a day. Alice uses the same technology to independently follow up on leads from Marktplaats.

On top of that, we use AI in Walcu for long-term lead follow-up, where customers who don’t respond are systematically followed up until the moment they do respond. And at that point I want my salespeople to respond, pick up the contact and communicate with the lead, rather than AI doing it! The heavy lifting done by AI? Fine. The one-on-one communication, preferably not….

A New Player on the Market: Ekonsilio

At CARMEN Automotive BDC we work the same way. Some calls are better handled with AI, such as voice AI from CarQall – Voice AI, or via the manual chat we run at Carmen. Of course I understand that more than 50% of web chats can be handled perfectly well by AI, but there’s also room for the hybrid variant. A version that eKonsilio, for example, offers at most MG importers in Europe. There, the chat on the website is handled by both people and AI, simply because some customers prefer that. The combination of AI and human is very powerful.

I don’t believe AI can be imagined away anymore; it’s here to stay. But companies like Ekonsilio, which have the courage in this day and age to put people back in first place, deserve praise. They show that there’s certainly room for both.