MISSION, Kan. -

Car buyers are doing more advance research than ever. Because of that, they often know more about the dealership than the dealership knows about them. Connect Automotive Intelligence is a new product that VinSolutions believes will close that gap.

VinSolutions notes in a press release that Connect Automotive Intelligence will help dealers better act on customer engagement and data. The tools will analyze customer communications and behaviors to help dealers find the best opportunities to deliver a more personalized experience.

VinSolutions, currently in the pilot phase, includes three new artificial intelligence-enabled tools for Connect CRM, which is a dealership customer relationship management system:

1.    Engagement strength, which measures a salesperson’s interactions with an existing prospect or customer. By tracking a salesperson’s customer interaction frequency, the tool highlights engagement trends and helps managers better visualize how a salesperson is performing in the CRM.

2.    Sentiment analysis, which uses artificial intelligence to determine customer sentiment and intent by analyzing text messages and emails. This analysis helps identify revenue opportunities and highlight the customer interactions that will build satisfaction.

3.    Buying Signals, which captures and analyzes shoppers’ online behaviors and distills them to predict shopping personas, shopping preferences and the sense of urgency. Rather than leads coming into the CRM without any context of the prior online shopping behavior, this new enhancement uses known online traffic to increase speed of sale and build trust with the shopper.

“Modern businesses today excel by being more consumer-facing,” Kevin Frye, eCommerce director, Jeff Wyler Automotive Family, said in a press release. “For us, personalizing each customer experience is a high priority. Connect Automotive Intelligence will allow us to deliver a more consumer-facing journey with timely, relevant and personalized communications.”

For new technologies like artificial intelligence to be most effective, VINSolutions says technology integrations must also take place. As part of Cox Automotive, Connect Automotive Intelligence works with products from its sister companies, including Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, vAuto, Dealer.com and Xtime, to streamline workflows, reduce duplicate data entry and ensure dealers get more value from their software investments. Those integrations, which help improve personalization across the entire consumer lifecycle, will also be filtered through these artificial intelligence-enabled enhancements to bring the most opportunity out of the marketplace for dealers.

Connect Automotive Intelligence will be available to view at the NADA convention later this month in San Francisco.