Slashdot Mirror
Death of the Car Salesman? BMW Makes AI App To Sell Electric Cars
cartechboy writes "You thought Willy Loman had it bad. BMW is launching an artificial intelligence app allowing consumers to ask questions about its new BMW i3 electric car without the hassle of having to pick up the phone or go into a dealership. Potential customers can text a simple question about the i3 and the system builds an appropriate response in real-time using AI — interpreting words, sentiment, and context. The futuristic robo-car salesman was developed by 19-year-old entrepreneur Dmitry Aksenov and operates around the clock. No word on whether the app says, 'Wait here — I'll check with my sales manager,' like human car dealers often do."
No application can be as aggressively persuasive as your general car salesman!
can we get rid of realtors next? And the general class of human cancers known as middlemen?
I'm not living in the american cultural sphere. Around here carsalesmen never go to their managers, they are also not aggressively pushy. They are actually pretty much the best salesmen a normal consumer will ever meet. (Seen B2B salesmen too, the really good ones usually end up there). Aggressively pushy ones end up in hospitals or unemployed. Are american carsales man really as bad as the stereotype suggests? If so, why do you think they end up being like that?
For me, the content of the answer is part of what I want. I pay equal attention to the way the salesman is giving the answer too. If I have the feeling he is bullshitting his way into a sale I know I have to ask more complex questions.
At least with robots you know in advance you are being bullshitted as they literally have no sense of ethics. For humans this requires effort and sometimes they slip up.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
without the hassle of having to pick up the phone
How exactly am I supposed to use the app without picking up the phone?
FCKGW 09F9 42
new cars are great but i dont know anyone stupid enough to buy one.
Obviously some people do, or there wouldn't be any used cars. Let's raise a glass to those fearless folk who break in new cars for the good of the used-car-buying public.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
A 29er MTB is a mountain bike with 29 inch wheels. Actually, they have 28 inch wheel rims (as you find in racing bicycles), but because the tyres are so fat, the sales pitch calls them 29-inch wheels.
I see you are trying to buy an electric car.
Do you want some help?
(o) Take me to the Tesla web site
( ) Flounder around with this hunk of junk
[ Cancel ]
___
/ \\
| |
@ @
|| || <--
|| ||
|\\_/|
\____/
At least until dealerships find a way to make cutting them out illegal, oh wait....
But will never be able to answer questions like: does a 29-er mtb fit the trunk without folding the back seats.
Vajk
No, but that's way better than lying to you by saying "Yes, of course, I do it all the time!"
(which is what a human car salesman would do).
No sig today...
..the amount of money it will take to put the keys in my hand.
By the time I arrive at (or even call) the dealership, I have researched the car, know the invoice price for the model I want, and have picked out the color.
The only opinions I want about the car are from the mechanics who work on them.
It freaked out the last salesman I bought from when I said I didn't need to test drive the car.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
"About 50% of the human race is middle-men and they don't take kindly to being eliminated."
The majority of "sales people" these days are redundant middlemen who provide negative value to the customer. Anyone who wants to, can be armed with way more information than a salesperson these days and would make a much more informed decision on their own, versus the bias from sales people towards whatever incentives and inventory they are keeping in mind.
Tesla is an example that breaks the mold, their sales people are very informed and are not there to push you into a particular model/options/upsells. In my interactions with Tesla salespeople, they are there to help you determine whether the vehicle is the right fit for your needs. If only all salesperson experiences were like this (including Realtors who are more interested in self-promotion than actually selling your home) then these middlemen would be less redundant.
When was the last time you had to legitimately phone up a salesman to ask him a question anyways.
Last car I bought I knew the invoice price ahead of time. I picked two dealerships in different cities, emailed them my offer. When they both responded, I took the cheaper response and emailed the other dealership. Rinse and repeat. When one stopped negotiating, I then went to a third dealership with the lowest price so far.
In the end, I didn't even pick up the phone and talk to my salesman. I met him the day I picked up the car.