Introduction.
For car dealerships, providing empathetic responses to every customer review is crucial.
However, managing this at a high frequency and volume can overwhelm sales and administrative teams.
Discover how our AI review responder for a car dealership group cut the administrative workload by 90%.
Challenge.
JT Hughes Group, a multi-franchise dealer for Hyundai, Honda, Kia, Isuzu, KGM, and INEOS Grenadier in the West Midlands, became overwhelmed by the volume of reviews that required responses.
They were dedicating extensive hours to address numerous review responses across all platforms, from Google to JudgeService, Trustpilot to Facebook, and beyond, severely impacting productivity and their reputation management strategy.
With each new location or brand addition, the challenge of manually managing customer feedback across various review platforms became a significant bottleneck.
This situation puts sales and admin teams in a difficult position, as they had to prioritise their response efforts on one or two review channels, as managing all was becoming impractical.
Moreover, it resulted in a lack of consistency in brand voice, diminished empathy in responses, grammatical errors, and non-SEO-optimised replies, all of which negatively impacted their review response management.
Solution.
At this critical juncture, Built For Now was advancing the development of BFN-AI, an AI review response assistant for car dealerships in the UK.
Recognising the potential for synergistic collaboration, JT Hughes Group became a testing partner.
BFN-AI is the only AI that answers dealership reviews like a human. Its 99.9% indistinguishable: VIEW DEMO
Implementation.
BFN-AI was trained using custom AI prompts derived from years of data on human-powered responses, ensuring highly accurate and strategically aligned replies.
By leveraging JT Hughes' first-party review data and engaging in a 6-month testing period with real-time data from Google and the JudgeService platform, BFN-AI excelled at producing tailored, human-like responses.
Key Features Include:
- Unified Dashboard: Visualise all reviews in one place for streamlined management.
- Administrative Controls: Offers flexible manual approval and full automation options.
- Intelligent Sorting: Prioritises reviews by star rating for targeted engagement.
- Auto-Pilot Mode: Enables autonomous response capability without manual oversight, eliminating the need for copy & paste.
- Natural Language Processing: Produces SEO-ready, human-like replies.
- Strategic Upselling: Includes tactful promotion of F&I products in responses.
- Alert System: Provides instant alerts for negative reviews to facilitate swift, human-authored responses.
- Negative First-Draft Reviews: Generates quick draft responses to assist in personalising replies to negative feedback.
Personalised and individualised Responses.
BFN-AI is designed with an advanced level of customisation. It delivers review replies that are finely tailored to each interaction, intelligently incorporating details such as the dealership name, customer names, vehicle brands and models, and service offerings.
Finance and insurance (F&I) products.
Additionally, it subtly integrates promotions for finance and insurance (F&I) products, making these suggestions feel natural and unobtrusive.
SEO-Ready Responses.
Beyond personalisation, BFN-AI excels at incorporating industry-specific keywords into its responses, ensuring they are optimised for search engines.
This sophisticated approach not only elevates the quality of customer interactions but also significantly enhances the effectiveness of local search engine optimisation strategies, thereby improving online visibility.
Adds Emojis.
BFN-AI effortlessly incorporates emojis into its responses, adding a layer of warmth and personality to make review replies feel more human and approachable.
This strategy ensures that communications convey a friendlier and more relatable tone.
No-Context Reviews (Star Ratings Only)
BFN-AI is specifically trained to engage with no-context reviews, which consist of only star ratings without any accompanying text.
Results.
Impact.
Implementing BFN-AI led to a 90% reduction in the time spent responding to customer reviews.
This significant efficiency gain has allowed JT Hughes's sales and service teams more time to focus on direct customer interactions and enhance their after-sales service quality.
The integration of BFN-AI did more than just address the logistical challenge of managing numerous customer reviews; it established a new standard for delivering personalised, empathetic customer service at scale.
By leveraging AI while maintaining a human touch, JT Hughes Group has set a new benchmark in the automotive dealership industry.
"Before BFN, we were swamped replying to reviews. The time saving is incredible."
Paul Tench, Group Sales Director, JT Hughes Group.
Conclusion.
For UK car dealership marketing managers, integrating AI-powered content generation into their review response strategy presents a revolutionary approach.
It enables sales and admin teams to scale empathetic, brand-aligned interactions with customers effectively.
Moreover, BFN-AI’s hybrid human-machine approach offers an ideal solution for dealerships hesitant about adopting fully automated responses.
This strategy ensures significant savings in time, resources, and costs, without sacrificing the personal touch that customers value.