Long gone are the days when we had to remember dates for our next free service, oil change, tire rotation, wheel alignment, etc., but time has changed now, these days we receive notifications about these things via SMS, calls or e-mails.
Do we comprehend what happens, what components come together so that your mobile phone can chime in a juicy offer on your next car service?
Let’s just clear the air about Artificial Intelligence (AI) first to completely understand why it is a driving force that every organization wants to do something with it. AI in its crudest form is reacting to scenarios with actions that are meaningful but isn’t that what we humans do! Yes, but when we consider thousands of customers with vehicles bought at various times, with multiple requirements and problems, the number of data points run into billions, and it becomes humanly impossible to make even a tiny impact. This is where AI becomes the pivot to recreate success in all the scenarios and for all the data points.
With the vast amount of data, a human would get overwhelmed to act accurately, whereas an AI works better with a large number of data, it can create and evaluate patterns in the data that hold good and learn from them. It can create new actions and repeat old actions to any amount of data points without fatigue.
Aftermarket is the perfect place for an AI system, the vast dealer network, millions of vehicles, each with thousands of components that are serialized, and many more non-serialized parts, numerous variants, and configurations.
That’s all well and good only if it benefits all the stakeholders in the aftermarket process, customer, manufacturer and the dealer. As a manufacturer, they can benefit at every stage of the product lifecycle; AI can help with product design, product safety, R&D, Material design, and styling. It can speed up the design and production of new products; AI can manage the supply volume better and in a streamlined manner. All these improvements add up to provide an edge over other players in the market in cost and market share.
Like all businesses, the dealer will always benefit the most from a returning customer than a new one. The real money is in service, spares, and campaigns on the existing models of vehicles. AI can help with a predictive and preventive plan for thousands of customers and help improve the total earnings of the dealership. Additionally, the credibility that the dealer amasses with these transparent campaigns would be immense and everlasting with the existing customers and new customers as well.
Most of the customers know little about servicing the vehicle that they are driving, many would not even know all the components, this lack of knowledge is a curse to the customer.
Customers will want to come back to authorized service centers if there is a transparency, constant support system as well as a positive experience with the brand. AI can help with all these scenarios, help in the analysis of the vehicle for faults, DIY repairs, deploying services such as road assistance and service dealers and make driving more convenient.
In Conclusion:
We are always in search of a better solution, a better way to deal with issues and problems, AI is that tool that can deliver at all the above and many more scenarios and help grow Aftermarket revenues, after all, everything from lead-scoring to car-sharing to vacation-rentals has been disrupted through AI.
Customer Convenience is essential for brand survival. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning can increasingly be deployed to manage customer experience across ecosystems.
