AI for car dealers: stock and service questions at all hours

How can car dealers use AI?

Car dealers use AI to answer buyers and drivers when nobody on the team is free. An AI employee answers stock questions on your website and picks up the service desk phone. It takes test-drive and service requests, and your team confirms every time slot, price and deal.

Take Quillfield Motors, a fictional dealer with a busy workshop. At 10pm, a buyer asks if the blue estate has a tow bar. The AI employee answers from the listing and takes a test-drive request for Saturday.

• On your website, it answers from your stock pages, brochures and service menu.
• On the phone, it answers from a call prompt you write, not from your documents.
• It takes test-drive and service requests. It doesn’t put them in your diary.
• It answers incoming calls only, on your own Twilio number.
• Website chat starts on Hobby ($10 a month). Phone answering starts on Starter ($99 a month).

Which questions should it answer first?

Start where buyers already are. In Cox Automotive’s 2025 Car Buyer Journey Study, 59% of buyers visited dealership websites. Yet 53% still completed every buying step at the dealership.

So your website handles the early questions, and your showroom closes the deal. List the questions your team answers ten times a day. Then sort them by department, because each one needs different facts.

• Sales: price, mileage, colour, features and whether a car is still listed. It takes test-drive requests with a preferred time.
• Trade-ins: it takes the make, model, year and mileage. Your team does the valuation.
• Service: what each service includes, what it costs and how long it takes. It takes requests with a callback number.
• Parts: opening hours and who to ask. It takes the part and the car’s details for your parts desk.
• Rentals or courtesy cars, if you offer them: prices, deposits and what drivers need to bring.

How do you keep stock answers right?

Stock changes every day, so this is the job to get right. Your AI employee answers from the pages and documents you give it, so an old page means an old answer. When a car sells, remove its link, or swap in a fresh stock list.

Tell it how to talk about availability. A sold car should never become a broken promise. A safe line is: “This car is listed today, and a salesperson will confirm it’s still here before you visit.”

Give it your warranty facts in writing, too. In the US, the FTC’s Used Car Rule requires dealers to post a Buyers Guide on the used cars they offer for sale. The guide says whether the car is sold as is or with a warranty, so check your answers match it.

How do you set up the service desk phone?

Service calls often come in at drop-off time, when your advisers have customers at the counter. You can set up phone answering in an afternoon. Here are the steps.

1. Hire an AI employee from the Front desk template, or describe the job in your own words.
2. Connect your number from Twilio, the phone service your number runs on. Turn on Twilio’s Elastic SIP Trunking, then add the number under Deploy → Phone numbers. The number stays in your Twilio account.
3. Under Call persona, pick a call role. Front desk suits the service desk, and Sales qualifier suits a sales line.
4. Read the drafted call prompt. Remove anything that offers or confirms a time, then add your facts (next section).
5. Pick the voice callers hear, then call the number from your own mobile.
6. Ask a price, describe a grinding noise and ask for Thursday. Fix anything that sounds wrong.
7. Open Insights → Call history each morning and call back every request.

What should the call prompt say?

On a call, your AI employee answers from the call prompt, not from its documents. The call prompt is the short set of instructions it follows on every call. So put the facts callers ask for most into it.

Here is an example for the Quillfield Motors service desk. The prices and hours are made up.

• “Greet callers as the Quillfield Motors service desk.”
• “A full service for a small car is $229 and takes about three hours.”
• “We open at 7:30am on weekdays and 8am on Saturdays.”
• “If a warning light is red or the brakes feel wrong, tell the caller not to drive. Never guess what’s wrong.”
• “Take the name, number, car, mileage, the problem and a preferred day. Read them back.”
• “Say an adviser will call back to confirm a time.”

What does your team get each morning?

Test-drive requests from your website land in Insights → Leads, each with the chat behind it. Insights is where Aivah keeps every chat, lead and call. The lead form shows before the chat starts and asks for a name, email and phone.

Add your own question to that form, such as whether the buyer has a car to trade in. Your sales team then calls back knowing what the buyer wants. You can also export leads as a CSV file.

Calls land in Insights → Call history, each with a transcript and the credits it used. Credits are what your AI employee spends when it chats or talks.

Reminders keep the callbacks moving. They arrive on WhatsApp or in Slack, which are for you and your team, not for customers. Ask your AI employee in chat: “At 9am every day, remind me to call back yesterday’s requests.”

What to watch before you switch it on

An AI employee is only as good as the limits you set. Agree these with your sales and service managers before launch.

• It takes requests. It doesn’t put test drives or services in your diary.
• It doesn’t diagnose faults, estimate repairs or value trade-ins.
• It doesn’t give finance advice or approve credit. It explains what you offer and says who to talk to.
• There’s no built-in link to dealer or workshop systems. Leads export as a CSV file instead.
• It answers incoming calls only, and it never transfers a call. It takes a message instead.
• Aivah connects one phone number per account. Start with the line that misses the most calls.
• Tell callers they’re talking to an AI employee, and check local rules on call recording first.

Questions car dealers ask about AI

Try it on your busiest line

Start free, add your stock pages and ask it a buyer’s question tonight. Then move to Starter, connect your service line and call it before your customers do.