—
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (June 26, 2019) — Retail automotive industry vendors, dealer groups, IT specialists, and anyone who understands and appreciates the power of extracting critical intelligence from sales and service calls to a dealership will quickly realize the value in Proactive Dealer Solutions’ (PDS) new Proactive Speech Analytics API.
The powerful new tool is the result of gathering and analyzing data over more than two decades and applying Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to learn more about the effectiveness of dealership managers and employees and customer interaction. The API ultimately helps the automotive industry connect more calls, increase marketing ROI, train staff on skills and technique, and convert more deals.
“The Proactive Speech Analytics API was built from and is used by our own software that’s used by more than 1,500 dealerships across the U.S. and Canada,” said Jason Beckett, COO at PDS. “Over the last few years, we’ve created a very accurate AI-powered speech platform that we are now exposing through our robust API so other developers and data specialists can pull critical intelligence from their calls in minutes from the call ending.”
The API provides over 60 metrics including the transcription of the call, redaction of personal information, call classification, failed call detection, call stats, agent identification, call summaries, vehicle of interest, whether the agent requested an appointment, was an appointment booked, customer sentiment and CSI, and whether a manager should be alerted if the call was mishandled.
The list of potential users of this product, Beckett said, would include major inventory marketing platforms, dealer groups who take in thousands of inbound calls every week, large call centers who need to develop and train their staff to provide a great customer experience, and marketing and advertising agencies who need this data to measure metrics, make ad buys, and measure advertising spend effectiveness.
Shaun Sullivan, PDS’ CTO, said applications integrate with Proactive’s Speech Analytics API using a combination of standard API interfaces and Webhooks to process call recordings and extract actionable results. The results are generated in JSON format and are available almost immediately when a call is completed.
“The beauty of the system is the powerful AI algorithms are constantly learning and improving the effectiveness of the system,” Sullivan said. “If you’ve noticed in recent months improvements in speech-to-text capabilities on your cell phone or the improved effectiveness of AI products like Siri and Alexa, it’s because the algorithms are now hitting their stride. They’re learning the nuances of human speech, understanding things like attitude and double-meanings, and much more. Our API is doing the same thing, and it never sleeps.”
PDS’ BDC Central and Call Management Solutions platforms already helps thousands of dealers manage their business development initiative by assisting sales and service associates to better handle inbound calls. One of the biggest problems with inbound calls to a dealership is that nearly 20 percent of total inbound calls are lost, dropped, or abandoned. PDS’ platform monitors those calls for effectiveness of the agent and ensuring appointment efficacy.
“This API can take all the information gathered from these calls and assist in analyzing that data,” Beckett said. “We continue to expand the analytics and data returned from the API. Soon, we’ll be able to predict with high probability whether an inbound call will result in a sale based off the machine learning and integrations with the CRMs, DMS’ and census data.”
Sullivan said major automotive marketing lead provider platforms will be able to assist their clients in improving the effectiveness of how their leads are managed, and also improve the quality of their leads.
“Marketing agencies will have a wealth of data to make ad buy decisions, be able to tell what type of call to action works most effectively, and so much more,” Sullivan added.
Beckett said the most important result for automotive retailers is improving profitability. Using this API and its powerful AI and machine learning to generate highly valuable information regarding sales and agent performance, lead quality, and phone call abandonment.
“The goal here is give dealership staff and agencies relevant information from the call to better serve the customer and ultimately driving more sales and profitability,” he added.
Automotive vendors, manufacturers and dealer groups can now leverage the Proactive Speech Analytics API to extract critical intelligence from sales and service calls into the dealership. Applications integrate with Proactive’s Speech Analytics API using a combination of standard REST API interfaces and Webhooks to process call recordings and extract actionable results in near real time.
Proactive Speech Analytics API
• Call classification
• Identify inhouse agent
• Identify failed calls
• Determine if agent acquired customer and vehicle information
• Identify if caller was satisfied with the call
• Score agent’s phone skills
• Determine appointment efficacy
• Provide a summary of the call
• Identify customer’s objections
• Determine call efficacy, Need for follow-up
These capabilities are critical for businesses to be able to identify signals and act on key insights in real time, to both accelerate sales and ensure positive customer experiences.
Proactive Dealer Solutions has recorded more than 4.5 million calls at dealerships across North America, and as a result have collected terabytes of data now being constantly analyzed by powerful, artificial intelligent algorithms to generate a wealth of predictive data.
Consumers interact with their automobile retailers through email, text, social media, instant messaging, online chat, and more, yet for all these new ways consumers communicate with a dealership’s various departments, consumer studies consistently show that more than 80 percent of customers will opt to speak directly to an agent, primarily over the phone.
For more information about Proactive Dealer Solutions Proactive Speech Analytics API, contact Tony Colan, Director of Enterprise Sales at 855.411.7723.
Release ID: 88890234