The First Orders Through Our Virtual Assistant Alice

The past few weeks have been dedicated to optimizing our virtual assistant Alice, which we developed at #DCDW for use on Marktplaats and with Marktplaats leads. The development was carried out in collaboration with AutoChat, making it a true partnership between #DCDW, with all its knowledge of lead follow-up, and AutoChat, the AI specialist in the automotive sector.

The Perfect Pilot Store

I am also a Ligier dealer and sell used cars through the Experience Store Doesburg, which I advertise on Marktplaats. Marktplaats is by far the best lead provider in terms of the number of leads and sales; see also this article about the deep dive. It’s a platform where communication happens through the Marktplaats platform and not specifically via email or WhatsApp. That’s what makes the platform so great because customers expect a response within their Marktplaats app, not in their email. The same applies to the car dealership: Marktplaats leads need to be followed up differently from leads from other portals to be successful. You need to respond informally and primarily communicate via the Marktplaats app.

Who is Alice?

You can also respond via Alice, our virtual assistant, who answers all messages on Marktplaats 24/7 and makes concrete, high-quality appointments. Alice responds personally to all messages and truly engages with the consumer, striving to maintain that contact. The consumer gets answers they can use or is assisted with a concrete call or FaceTime appointment for more information.

Better Than a Real Salesperson?

Of course, a good salesperson can do this too! With one lead, a good salesperson will always outperform Alice, but it’s about those 100 leads from Marktplaats, even the ones that come in on Saturday evening or Sunday morning. Alice handles those immediately as well. When it comes to 100 leads, Alice wins in terms of conversions to appointments and sales.

With Alice, you have 100% follow-up on all leads, with correct communication in all languages! So, even customers who want to export a car and communicate, for example, in English or German are effortlessly helped by Alice. Well, “effortlessly”… We invested a lot of energy with the pilot dealers to ensure questions were correctly answered in the right language. What do you do, for example, when a customer speaks English but uses words from another language? Which language do you choose then?

100% Handled by Alice

Over the past month, we handled 100% of leads through Alice. Our sales conversion on Marktplaats leads reached 29.2%. The conversion was, as described in the article, 11.6% in the first six months of this year. So, we’ve managed to achieve significant growth. The question is whether this is all due to Alice. No, not entirely. The market was favorable, and we had attractive cars at the right prices. And Gaspedaal and Autotrack performed better this month than the conversions in the article.

What Did I Learn?

I really had to learn not to step in immediately during every conversation Alice had. Yes, every conversation can be better. Or, if I had done it myself, I might have done it differently. But sometimes, you have to be willing and brave enough to wait. You can always adjust the prompt (the instruction to Alice) later. And no, our salespeople would sometimes prefer to handle that “easy” lead themselves, but we let Alice handle everything: the easy and the difficult leads, as far as you can even determine that… The option always remains to take over any conversation in the Calldrip Alice dashboard, so you’re always in control.

Now the question is: how can I participate? Let us know via support@dcdw.nl. We’d be happy to help, especially if you’re an Autochat and Calldrip customer!