In the relentless pursuit of efficiency, it’s become more and more common to try to automate as much as possible and hand the keys off to AI. In some instances, this can be worthwhile and might actually improve the customer experience. But in many cases, a pick up in efficiency may lead to a drop in your ability to personalize the automotive shopping experience.
The fastest way to turn off a buyer is to put them through a maze of automation that isn’t helping them get what they want. We’ve all been stuck in the endless AI Chatbot loop, where you’re just trying to get in touch with an agent. Not only do you leave your customer feeling frustrated and with unanswered questions, but you’ve also left the experience feeling robotic and cold. Now, we’re not saying all AI chat experiences are like this; in fact, we’ve experienced many that help facilitate the inviting and ‘being understood’ feeling we’re all seeking.
Personalization is what shoppers crave. People want to be seen, heard, and understood. We asked AI how it would describe personalization: “Personalization significantly enhances the shopping journey by creating more relevant and engaging experiences for customers, leading to increased satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, higher revenue.” It’s not wrong.
So why is personalization so important?
- So why is personalization so important?
- Makes shoppers feel valued and understood
- Removes friction from the shopping experience
- Minimizes cart abandonment (or lead form abandonment)
- Delivers more relevant messaging, increasing the likelihood of engagement
- Can improve efficiencies and result in better ROI on marketing
There are many ways you can apply personalization in a shopper’s car-buying journey. We’ve outlined a few options and implementation suggestions to consider. For tools that you aren’t currently using, there are numerous providers to choose from. You will need to find the one that fits with your dealership and the experience you’re looking to provide the best.
- Have an easily accessible chat option – don’t force chat bubbles on shoppers automatically and repeatedly. Make it available, but not intrusive.
- Leverage AI with your chat for efficiency, but have team members trained and ready to connect to take over the chat to deliver that 1:1 experience.
- Display recently viewed vehicles on VDPs so shoppers can easily navigate all of the vehicles they’re exploring.
- Allow shoppers to save or favorite specific vehicles to come back later, then utilize this data with your sales team for personalized outreach.
- E-commerce or digital retailing tools are a great option to allow a shopper to dive deeper into their journey and even save multiple vehicles of interest, along with payments or add other customizations. That simple “Welcome Back” message can have a major impact when it comes to a shopper feeling valued.
- Leverage retargeting campaigns. While a Google dynamic search ad or a Meta video ad can’t be personalized with a shopper’s name displayed, it can be personalized in the sense of serving them ads based on what they’ve previously searched or how engaged they were on your website.
- Have customized offers and messaging based on what you know about the shopper: what they’re looking at and how they got to your website.
Let’s focus for a moment on the lower funnel, leads. Whether it’s a chat, a phone call, or a lead form – these are the moments where you need to make all that work pay off. You got the shopper this far through branding campaigns, dynamic inventory & search campaigns, a well-built website, & SEO – and you probably spent a good amount doing it. Now you have to close the deal and move them from a remote shopper to an in-person buyer. Some shoppers will just show up at the dealership without touching your lead delivery systems, and that’s great! Your sales team won’t complain. But for the people who do engage with you online, you need to work to earn their in-person visit.
That means personalization.
Chat:
If you use a chatbot, put it through the ringer. Test it! Ask it a number of common customer questions, misspell things, and even ask in abbreviated sentences. Be a difficult and lazy customer. Make the bot work and see how well it handles the responses. Does it get it wrong often, ask the same question back to the customer over and over, or send the shopper to the wrong place? That’s a problem.
If it can help answer questions quicker than a live agent could, or help speed up booking service appointments, that’s great! People want to talk and deal with people; AI absolutely has its place, but you need to ensure it’s providing the right experience for your shoppers.
Phone:
Going through a series of prompts and selecting 1 through 8 multiple times just to get someone on the phone is NOT personal. It tells the shopper you aren’t important enough to them to bother picking up the phone. If you do use any kind of automated system, test it. Make sure it gets you where you need to go as quickly as possible. Listing all your fall specials before giving options to connect to service isn’t going to win you any friends (or customers), just a healthy dose of annoyance.
The simplest answer to “how do I personalize the phone experience?” is… pick up the dang phone. Have a real, knowledgeable person answer that phone as quickly as possible; your customer will appreciate it! Dealers are seeing an increase in phone traffic; ever consider why? It’s because shoppers want a person that can help them, not a machine. Don’t take it for granted, this isn’t a passive lead; they called you, serve them well, and you’ll win more deals.
Lead Forms:
Presenting lead forms and offers can occur through many methods and locations on a website. But if the placement and timing are off, it’s not personalized, it’s frustrating. So how can we improve the lead form experience? Make it relevant.
Blasting an offer or form the moment a shopper arrives on your site or lands on a VDP creates a jarring and disruptive experience – no matter how compelling the offer may be. Do you know why the shopper is there? How do you know what they need? You want them to give you something valuable, their personal information, but you need to earn it. First understand their needs, then offer them something relevant – that’s offer-personalization. Here are some things to consider if you want to increase your lead form submissions.
- Ensure content is relevant to where they are on the site (service-related on service pages, new car incentives only on new car VDPs, etc.)
- Trigger only when specific actions are taken (the shopper has clicked a CTA, they have shown engagement on a specific vehicle, they inquired about service hours, etc.)
- Don’t spam the customer (don’t keep repeating forms that interrupt the shopping experience)
- Trigger offers or forms based on incoming traffic from a specific campaign
- Time offers appropriately
When it comes to lead forms and offers, sMedia has a specialized product that can help you personalize the shopping experience on your website: Smart Offer.
Smart Offer:
What is it? Although it’s in the name, it’s so much more than just a Smart Offer. Smart Offer goes beyond static forms by delivering personalized offers and messages when (and where) your customers are ready to act.
Triggering that personalized feeling to a shopper is all about serving the right offer, at the right time. Smart Offer helps you do that by giving you direct access to a tool that lets you build & deploy fully customized offers on various parts of your website in minutes. Here’s what you can do with the tool:
- Create messaging & fully customizable forms
- Add or remove offers in minutes
- Customize lead routing
- Deploy on any specific URL or grouped URLs (like all VDPs)
- Trigger based on time delays, button clicks, or the ultimate personalization – the UTM parameters of a specific campaign
- Use graphics or video in your offer/form
- Customize CTA’s with or without forms
- Include the profiler option to help shoppers define their needs, and have your team use that information to personalize their response
- Deploy as many offers/forms as required for one low monthly price – seriously!
Smart Offer is the versatile tool every dealership website needs to have.
Ready to Finish 2025 Strong?
Don’t let another lead slip through the cracks. If you’re serious about boosting conversions and creating smarter customer experiences, Smart Offer is your next move.
👉 Let’s talk about how Smart Offer can work for your dealership and help you tap into personalized engagement that drives real results.
🔗 Explore Smart Offer now and let’s make the rest of 2025 your strongest yet: https://smedia.io/smart-offer/
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