Outsell Adds Sales Defector Detection and Dealer Assignment Rule to Its Virtual Customer Engagement Platform

Outsell has updated its Virtual Customer Engagement platform with new Sales Defector Detection and Dealer Assignment Rules features.

The artificial intelligence-driven Sales Defector Detection helps auto dealerships recapture revenue, targeting prior customers who've likely defected and bought elsewhere.

"Dealers should not give up on trying to engage defectors. They bought from the dealer once and can easily buy there again when the time is right if the connection to the dealer is strengthened," said Valerie Vallancourt, vice president of marketing at Outsell, in a statement. "Outsell's AI brain gives dealerships a way to keep connected to the customer long term and regain their business in the future."

Outsell regularly augments the VINs of a dealership's sales and service customers with change of ownership. When a change of ownership is detected and there wasn't a purchase from the dealership around that same time, it's likely the customer purchased a vehicle elsewhere. Outsell AI does not delete these customers; rather, it changes the message to become more relevant and maintain the dealer's connection. When Outsell AI determines that these likely defectors are back in market, automated content from Outsell tries to win them back.

Dealer Assignment Rules enable groups to coordinate and streamline messages among multiple stores. The feature creates a Global Customer ID for customers in multiple databases to provide a single view across all stores. It also matches and merges customer behavior and activity records that are part of the same household.

"Most store communications don't coordinate messages when a consumer exists in multiple store databases," said Gary Marcotte, senior vice president of customer engagement innovation at Outsell, in a statement. "This new feature allows dealer groups to use their data to its full potential."

An optional Group Market Hierarchy structure can also be created with the new Dealer Assignment Rules feature. This allows dealer groups to showcase other brands within their group or alternative locations where customers can receive service for their vehicles, particularly pre-owned vehicles that were off-brand at the original group dealership.