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AGENTIC AI

Your Showroom Closes at 7pm. Your Buyers Don't.

If you're a dealer principal watching leads ghost between Saturday test-drive and Monday follow-up, you're bleeding six-figure deals to 24/7 competitors.

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AI DEVELOPMENT AT A GLANCE
  • Next.js
  • Vercel
  • Supabase
  • OpenAI API
  • LangChain
  • PostgreSQL
  • 95+LIGHTHOUSE AVG
  • 12+ yrsSENIOR-LED
  • Fixed feeNO SCOPE CREEP
  • 200+PROJECTS SHIPPED
CLUTCH 5.0 VERIFIED

Overview — 01

Custom AI assistants that handle inventory questions, score leads by purchase intent, and deliver instant trade-in valuations -- integrated directly with your DMS and CRM.

Automotive AI Chatbot

An automotive AI chatbot is a dealership-specific conversational assistant trained on your live inventory, financing options, and trade-in logic. It connects to your DMS and CRM to read stock levels, push qualified lead records, and trigger follow-up workflows without staff intervention. Unlike generic chat widgets, it is built to handle the specific objections, comparisons, and valuation questions that move a car buyer from browsing to booked appointment.

The gap — 02

What is holding your current website back?

Common gaps we find in nearly every audit.

Serious buyers research after hours and on weekends, when your sales floor is dark and your chat widget shows an offline badge.
Risk: Those buyers submit a lead to the next dealer who answers them in real time, and your team inherits a cold list on Monday morning.
Trade-in questions stall deals because shoppers want a number before they will commit to coming in, and your team cannot price trades at 11pm.
Risk: Without an instant estimate, buyers pivot to instant-offer platforms and never return to your lot, even when your price would have been competitive.
Your CRM is full of leads scored identically as inquiries, so salespeople waste time on tire-kickers while hot buyers go cold waiting for a callback.
Risk: High-intent buyers who asked specific financing and availability questions get the same follow-up cadence as someone who clicked an ad by accident, costing you the deal and the gross.

Safeguards — 03

How we build this right

Every safeguard, built in from Day 1.

TCPA-Aware Consent Handling

The chatbot captures and records explicit opt-in consent before sending any follow-up texts or emails, logging timestamps and consent language to satisfy TCPA requirements and protect the dealership from class-action exposure.

Accurate Valuation Disclaimers

Every trade-in estimate surfaces a compliant disclaimer that the figure is a preliminary range based on market data and is subject to physical inspection, keeping your estimates useful without creating binding representations under consumer protection statutes.

Data Handling and DMS Access Controls

Integration credentials are scoped to read-only inventory and write-only lead creation where possible, and all data in transit between the chatbot, DMS, and CRM is encrypted. Access logs are retained to support any audit or data subject request.

Scope — 04

What we build

Purpose-built features for your industry.

Live Inventory Question Answering

The assistant queries your DMS in real time so it can confirm whether a specific trim, color, and package is on the lot right now, provide an accurate out-the-door estimate, and flag incoming stock -- without a salesperson touching the conversation.

Purchase Intent Scoring

Each conversation is scored based on signals like financing questions, trade-in disclosures, specific VIN inquiries, and appointment requests. Scored records are written to your CRM with a priority tier so your BDC calls the right people first.

Instant Trade-In Valuation

Buyers enter year, make, model, mileage, and condition through a guided chat flow. The assistant returns a market-range estimate drawn from a configurable pricing data source and books the appraisal appointment before the conversation ends.

DMS and CRM Integration

Native connectors for common dealer platforms push complete conversation transcripts, contact details, vehicle interest, and intent scores directly into your existing lead management workflow, eliminating manual data entry and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks between a chat and a follow-up call.

Stack — 05

Built on a modern, secure stack

Next.jsVercelSupabaseOpenAI APILangChainPostgreSQLRedisCDK Global APIDealerSocket APITwilio

Process — 06

Our development process

From discovery to launch. Quality at every step.

01

Discovery and Data Audit

1 week

We map your current lead flow, identify the DMS and CRM platforms in use, and document the inventory, financing, and trade-in questions your sales team fields most often. This shapes the conversation logic and integration scope before a single line of code is written.

02

Integration and Data Pipeline Build

2 weeks

We connect the assistant to your DMS inventory feed and CRM lead intake, configure the trade-in valuation data source, and establish the intent-scoring schema. All credentials and access controls are reviewed with your IT or vendor contacts at this stage.

03

Conversation Design and Training

1-2 weeks

We build and test the dialogue flows covering inventory lookup, trade-in valuation, financing FAQs, and appointment booking. The assistant is tested against real buyer conversation samples from your CRM history to surface edge cases before go-live.

04

Deployment and Performance Review

2 weeks

The chatbot goes live on your website and any connected platforms. We monitor conversation completion rates, lead score distribution, and CRM data quality for the first two weeks and deliver a tuning report with adjustments based on live buyer behavior.

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Related resources — 07

Questions — 08

Frequently asked questions

We build direct API integrations with CDK Global, DealerSocket, Reynolds & Reynolds, and DealerTrack. The chatbot queries your DMS in real time for inventory, pricing, and availability. If your DMS doesn't have a modern API, we set up a scheduled sync layer that refreshes data every 5-15 minutes to keep responses accurate.
The trade-in engine pulls from live wholesale auction data, local market comps, and condition-adjusted depreciation models. Estimates typically land within 5-8% of final appraisal value. The goal isn't to replace your appraiser -- it's to give the customer a credible number that keeps them engaged instead of bouncing to a competitor who will.
Yes. The multi-rooftop architecture routes conversations based on location, brand, and inventory availability. Each location can have its own greeting, hours, and escalation rules while sharing a single AI brain and admin dashboard. Lead scoring models can also be calibrated per rooftop based on each location's historical close rates.
The bot runs confidence scoring on every response. When confidence drops below a configurable threshold -- or when the customer just asks for a person -- the conversation escalates to a live agent through your preferred channel. The agent gets the full chat transcript, lead score, and customer preferences before they say a single word.
The scoring engine analyzes conversation signals: specific vehicle mentions, budget disclosure, trade-in discussion, financing questions, urgency language, and return visit frequency. Each signal carries a weighted score calibrated against your dealership's own conversion data -- not someone else's. Leads get classified into tiers and routed to the right salesperson or drip sequence automatically.
You own the codebase and the trained model. We build on open infrastructure -- Next.js, Supabase, and open-source LLM frameworks -- so there's no per-seat SaaS lock-in waiting to bite you when you grow. Your only recurring costs are hosting (typically $50-$200/month on Vercel) and API usage for the language model, which scales with actual conversation volume.

More solutions — 09

Explore related industries

Need enterprise scale?

200+ employee company? Complex multi-tenant, auction, or multi-location requirement? We have a dedicated enterprise capability track.

View Enterprise Hub

Get started — 10

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