The enquiries that arrive after the showroom closes

When the buyer is actually looking

Car buying research happens in the evening, after dinner, and across the weekend - precisely because the buyer spends your opening hours at their own job. Look at your own website analytics by hour before you accept anyone's claim about this, including ours: the shape of the curve is specific to your market and your stock, and it is the only number that should drive what you do next.

What an unanswered enquiry actually costs

The buyer considering your car is rarely considering only your car. The same question tends to go to two or three dealers in the same evening, and whoever answers first is the one who gets to frame the comparison - which car, which finance structure, which trade-in assumption. By the time a Monday morning reply goes out, the frame has usually been set by somebody else, and the reply is now arguing against it rather than setting it.

What can honestly be answered without a salesperson

A good deal more than most managers expect, and less than most vendors promise. Stock and specification, how finance and leasing differ in practice, what the trade-in process involves and what documents it needs, warranty terms, service intervals, opening hours, booking a test drive - all of these are published facts and answerable at any hour. A specific price on a specific unit, a trade-in valuation, and anything involving a discount are not: they depend on judgement and on numbers that move, and an answer invented at midnight costs more than silence.

Two things to fix before automating anything

First, write down what the dealership is willing to say in public. Most of the difficulty in this project turns out not to be technical - it is that nobody has ever decided, in writing, what the answer to "how much will you give me for my car" should be before a valuation. Second, make sure the enquiry lands somewhere a human will see it, with a name and a way to reply attached. An assistant that answers beautifully and records nothing has converted a lead into a pleasant conversation.