Driving IVA into Automotive
The automotive industry is one of the most exciting sectors that 4-Roads works in. At times, we encounter cutting-edge technology, marvels of engineering, and manufacturing processes so detailed you wouldn’t believe it. The industry’s history is steeped in innovation, from Henry Ford’s assembly line to the future, where technology will soon drive our cars.
With such a meticulously designed product, we far too often see the automotive industry lag behind in one element: customer support. With the right approach, technology will not only shape how we drive but also how we care for our vehicles.
Supporting Customers with AI
The automotive industry has relayed data to its customers since the 1930’s. The Hudson Motor Car Company installed the first warning lights to warn of problems with the oil pressure and the voltmeter in the car.
Today, a vehicle can have as many as 200 different sensors, from rain and light sensors that control your wipers and headlights to mass airflow sensors that calculate the appropriate fuel injection quantity to sensors within the engine that can alert you of faults.
Your car generates and uses vast amounts of data, data that can be processed in real time, keeping your car functioning and also warning you about anomalies and potential issues before they become serious problems. This data can also be used to act as a pre-warning light, making it much easier to know when to have our cars looked at before a situation becomes severe and potentially dangerous.
When all this data is formulated into a predictive maintenance system, applied machine learning will combine historical data and predict when a component will likely fail. For the customer, this means even more reliability and security in knowing that a problem can be fixed before there is even a potential risk of breakdown.
As your car becomes increasingly a piece of driven technology, there may even be cases where you might never need to know there was a problem—Tesla’s AI-powered diagnostic system can identify and address issues remotely.
Not all problems can be solved remotely, and this is where customer-based technology solutions can elevate every driver’s safety and experience with their own car.
Integrating vehicles with an intelligent virtual assistant
One of the most frustrating aspects of owning a car is what happens when that warning light flashes on your display. Most modern vehicles will have a warning section on the infotainment screen, but here, you will mostly see the warning elaborated into an error code and instructions to call your garage.
You call your garage and explain the situation. Then, while on the phone that you most likely use as your calendar, you have to book a time to bring your vehicle in for it to be diagnosed by a mechanic and then fixed. At this point, you still don’t know what is wrong with your car. Will it explode? Probably not. Will it make it to the garage? Hopefully.
The whole after-sales support of the automotive industry can be revolutionised by introducing an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA). Some people still call these chatbots, but that doesn’t do them justice.
What can an IVA Bring?
It is impractical for OEMs to add an assistant directly to the car interface, but this will likely happen in the future. Integrating a phone app with an IVA that harnesses natural language processing will change customers’ conversations. If this IVA accesses the vast vehicle data, it can help move a customer from feeling helpless in the care of their vehicle to the experience all customers in every industry wish to have: self-service.
Self-service removes the reliance a customer has on your support. The IVA chatbot can assist you with troubleshooting and basic diagnostics. We can all be guided through simple checks and offered explanations and guides towards potential solutions. Minor issues can be resolved at home with the IVA’s help, removing the need to visit a garage.
Self-service has become a fundamental expectation for customers across all industries. While a vehicle is a complicated piece of machinery, being empowered and guided through simple maintenance and fixes will improve safety and increase customer experience and with that comes brand loyalty.
An IVA built for customers will also serve the garages. Reminders, prompts, and warnings can be linked to local service garages to help plan logistics for demand at various times of the year. It might be time for a customer to book an oil change, a battery test, or a service. Knowing in advance the number of people who require this will allow for better planning.
Reminders are only the start of the benefits to the customer and the garage. Housing the IVA in your brand app makes it easier to guide a customer towards your brand services. The IVA can handle scheduling and booking appointments. You can book your car into your local garage with a few simple clicks. The hassle of booking on the phone or an outdated website is gone, and the administrative burden is removed from the garage. Staff can provide a better service to customers who are physically in the garage rather than being called away to answer phone calls or reply to email enquiries.
Not quite plug-and-play simple
One of the automotive industry’s issues is that the customer-facing and garage-operating systems are legacy systems. Many need better architecture, leading to a better customer and staff experience. Before applying a chatbot to the ecosystem, automotive companies need to ensure the IVA can seamlessly interact with a CRM, inventory management, and other systems to ensure accurate and up-to-date information can be provided to a customer.
The industry must invest in a well-structured knowledge base for the IVA to work effectively. This is more complicated than other industries, with cars typically having over 30,000 parts. We take our vehicles for granted, but these are highly intricate and complexly engineered systems. Distilling the vital information and creating a knowledge base for an IVA to assist a customer will take a lot of work, but it will certainly provide value for both the business and the customer.
IVA technology offers considerable options to the automotive industry. We have touched upon how customer service can be enhanced through after-sales support, but there are applications across the entire process, including marketing and sales support. With the right approach to IVAs, an automotive OEM can change our relationship with their car and brand.
Revolutionising Automotive Customer Support with Intelligent Virtual Assistants
Ready to transform your automotive customer support with cutting-edge AI technology? Discover how 4 Roads can help you implement Intelligent Virtual Assistants to enhance customer experience, boost loyalty, and streamline maintenance. Contact us today to learn more and get started!