At AutoChat, we are constantly improving your automotive Virtual Assistants. Read below what we improved in March 2025.
Step into a new dimension of customer interaction with Nova’s Orb – our most advanced and refined chat experience yet! This is not just an ordinary chat bubble… it’s a visual and functional revolution.
When Nova is not used (left side), it is showing a calm, breathing motion. When used, it lights up, as seen on the right side.
Nova’s Orb is inspired by the vastness of the universe. Its subtle, pulsating glow feels alive, like a calming heartbeat rhythm that invites visitors to engage. Hover over it and admire a breathtaking galaxy animation, complete with a shooting star that adds a playful and futuristic touch.
A supernova is a massive explosion of a star that temporarily shines brighter than an entire galaxy before fading into cosmic darkness. In the same way, Nova’s Orb comes to life at the right moment, captures attention where needed, and subtly fades into the background when no longer required. This ensures a seamless user experience—always available when needed, without unnecessary distractions.
🔹 A sleeker and more refined design – The new chat bubble is now 50% smaller than the previous version, allowing it to integrate stylishly and minimally into your website. Customers get full functionality without a distracting interface. This is a direct improvement based on your valuable feedback – we listened and optimised!
🔹 Intelligent personalisation – Nova’s Orb adapts seamlessly to your website. Light mode? Dark mode? No problem – the design blends perfectly with your theme and always feels natural.
🔹 More engagement, less friction – The new design feels more intuitive and inviting, encouraging customers to get in touch more quickly. More interaction means more leads, better service, and higher customer satisfaction!
🚀 Starting from 7th April, all organisations will be automatically upgraded to Nova’s Orb. Prefer to wait a little longer? Let us know before this date!
Common customer questions such as:
🔹 When was my workshop appointment again?
🔹 What will happen during my service?
🔹 Is a replacement vehicle arranged for me?
🔹 Can I wait during my appointment?
🔹 Is my car ready yet?
are now answered instantly and automatically, reducing the workload on service teams and ensuring a smoother customer experience. These questions are one of the top call reasons for customers. Imagine if you can provide the right information at any time of the day, without having to constantly update your customer via the phone!
Additionally, built-in authentication ensures that sensitive information is only accessible to the right person. For example, we verify whether the provided email address or phone number matches the workshop booking, ensuring that data is never shared publicly.
Are you using Claire Automotive and want to activate this functionality? Let us know, and we’ll install it for you right away! Thanks to this seamless work order integration, all relevant service data is automatically available within the chat, allowing customers to receive real-time updates about their service without requiring staff intervention.
Our intelligent AI now recognises ZAR (South African Rand) as a currency! Whether you need prices in euros, pounds, or rands, AutoChat has got you covered.
Good news! AutoChat now supports Jaecoo, the emerging automotive brand that blends luxury with off-road capability. From now on, customers can easily and quickly request information about Jaecoo models via AutoChat!
We continue to refine our technology to offer the best digital experience for automotive businesses and their customers.
Do you have any questions regarding these release notes? Let us know!
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AutoChat Release Notes – January 2025
We've improved the car filtering system, making it more precise and user-friendly. Dealers and users can now refine search results with additional filtering options, allowing for a more tailored and efficient browsing experience. From now on it is also possible to search by version for the brand Porsche. From now on a customer can look specifically for a Porsche GT3 RS and AutoChat will only show a GT3 RS. This offers the client the possibility to search even more specific for a car.
AutoChat now correctly identifies RAM as a standalone automotive brand, improving data accuracy and brand-specific interactions. This update ensures better classification across various AutoChat features, including AI Car search and Assistant responses.
AutoChat Pro now supports workorder management, enabling service teams to track, update, and manage work orders directly within the platform. This feature improves workflow efficiency and ensures seamless communication between departments.
We've enhanced AutoChat Pro with context-aware templating, enabling more dynamic and personalized responses tailored to each user's role within the company. The system now intelligently adapts response templates based on the internal user's context, reducing manual effort while ensuring more relevant and efficient communication.
Additionally, businesses can configure their own role-specific contexts, making the assistant even more intuitive. Whether an agent is in sales, customer support, or management, AutoChat Pro will adjust its responses to provide the most useful and actionable information for their tasks.
These updates enhance security, usability, and workflow efficiency across AutoChat and AutoChat Pro. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to our support team!
🚀 Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months!
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AutoChat October Release Notes
We are excited to share the latest updates and enhancements made to AutoChat in October! These new features and improvements are designed to further enhance your customer experience, streamline your operations, and provide even more value to your dealership. Here’s what’s new:
Upgrade to GPT-4O
All AutoChat organizations are now using OpenAI's latest model, GPT-4O, delivering faster and more refined responses in customer communications.
Stock Sharing Between Different Organizations
With a single stock integration, it’s now possible to share and sync stock across different organizations, making it easier to view and manage the same inventory. This significantly enhances collaboration and sales opportunities across organizations.
Chat Transcript in JSONlead
The chat transcript is now automatically added to JSONlead, improving the tracking of customer interactions and optimizing follow-ups.
Improved Copying Function in AutoChat Pro
When copying information from AutoChat Pro, formatting is now retained, ensuring a more consistent and efficient workflow.
German and Spanish Language Support
AutoChat is now available in both German and Spanish, expanding our support for international clients.
Expanded Make and Model Support via Hexon
Through collaboration with Hexon, all makes, models, and trims are now accepted in our inventory, offering a substantial increase in vehicle support.
UI/UX Enhancements in Pro Dashboard
Various upgrades in the Pro dashboard provide a more user-friendly and intuitive interface, contributing to a faster and more efficient workflow.
Service Pricing Available via Hyundai UK API
Hyundai UK dealers can now automatically retrieve service pricing through the new API, improving speed and accuracy in price transparency.
Minimized Chat Bubble on Mobile
On mobile devices, the chat bubble can now remain minimized, enhancing usability on smaller screens.
Integration with Updated Plan-IT API
The updated Plan-IT API integration offers enhanced support for workshop planning and management, contributing to more efficient processes and oversight.
With these improvements, we reinforce our commitment to delivering valuable, cutting-edge tools to optimize customer communication and operational efficiency. Thank you for your trust in AutoChat, and we look forward to continued innovation!
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We are excited to share the latest updates and enhancements that have been made to AutoChat over the summer! These new features and improvements are designed to further enhance your customer experience, streamline your operations, and provide even more value to your dealership. Here’s what’s new:
We’re excited to introduce AutoChat PRO v1.0, a powerful internal AI tool designed exclusively for car dealerships! AutoChat Pro mainly functions via a chat interface. You can now upload any PDF documents—whether they are brochures, price lists, or manuals—and categorize them into specific buckets for easy access.
AutoChat Pro will intelligently answer your questions using the information from these uploaded PDFs, providing quick, accurate, and relevant responses to support your team. Streamline your workflow, improve efficiency, and ensure your staff has instant access to the most up-to-date information.
These updates reflect our ongoing commitment to improving AutoChat to better serve your needs and those of your customers.
Stay tuned for more exciting developments as we continue to enhance our platform. If you have any questions or need assistance with these new features, our support team is here to help.
Thank you for choosing AutoChat!
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We are excited to announce the latest updates and features for AutoChat, enhancing the experience for both dealers and customers. This release includes new features, improvements, and bug fixes aimed at improving usability, efficiency, and overall satisfaction.
New Stock Provider for Irish Dealers: AutoChat is now connected to Easierad, a new stock provider specifically for Irish dealers. This partnership aims to streamline inventory management and offer more comprehensive options to our users. For more information on Easierad, visit https://www.easierad.info. The first dealer group, a franchised dealer for BMW, VW, and Audi in the Dublin area, will soon be live with AutoChat.
Directing to Brand Workshop Planners: Since a few months AutoChat includes a feature to redirect website visitors to a brand-specific workshop planner page. While AutoChat typically facilitates booking directly, this new feature supports dealers in taking advantage of brand bonuses for appointments made through official apps. Additionally with this release, we're tracking these redirects to analyse visitor flow to workshop planners by sending an additional event to Google Analytics. The event name is: autochat_workshop_forward
Pilot New Features with Specific Organizations: With our new feature flag functionality, we can now roll out features to specific dealerships for testing before a wider release. This is currently being used to trial a new chat bubble design with pilot dealerships, allowing for targeted feedback and refinement.
Phone Number Validation: We've updated our validation criteria for phone numbers, now requiring a minimum of 9 digits to ensure accuracy and usability.
Increased Timeouts for PlanIT and RDW: To improve system responsiveness and reliability, we've extended the timeout for PlanIT and RDW integrations from 3 seconds to 5 seconds, with even longer durations for asynchronous operations.
Preventing Double Item Selection: We've resolved an issue where visitors could select double items in the PlanIT workshop integration. This fix prevents duplication and ensures smoother operation.
FAQ Ordering Restored: In the dealership dashboard, the ability to order FAQs is now functioning correctly, allowing for better information management and accessibility.
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We're excited to share the latest updates and improvements to AutoChat, designed to enhance your experience and streamline interactions. Here's what's new, updated, and fixed in our latest release:
NetDirector Integration:
We've teamed up with Automotive Transformation Group to implement NetDirector as a new stock provider. This integration marks the beginning of a new chapter for AutoChat, starting with the first Hyundai and Isuzu dealers in the UK. All UK customers using NetDirector can now benefit from this seamless integration.
Improved Chat Interface:
Our chat interface now boasts improved formatting for links and lists coming from ChatGPT, making conversations more fluid and easier to follow.
Location Name Filtering:
Enhancements have been made allowing the addition of a location name or part of the name in a filter using JavaScript, allowing to display only specified set of dealerships.
Expanded Vehicle Database:
We've added more brands and models to our comprehensive database, ensuring you have the latest information at your fingertips.
Alias Addition:
Vauxhall is now recognized as an alias for Opel, streamlining vehicle identification and discussions for our users.
License Plate Validation:
To prevent AutoDialog issues when sending leads, we've enhanced our license plate validation process.
Same-Day Test Drive Appointments:
A bug that appeared when opting out of receiving same-day test drive appointments via the website in a car context has been fixed. A phone hint can now be enabled to suggest calling the dealership for same-day appointments without issues.
User List Display in Dealership Dashboard:
We addressed and resolved a bug affecting the user list display within the dealership dashboard.
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We're happy to announce the completion of our latest stock integration. This significant update introduces a seamless integration with NetDirector by ATG, enabling customers who utilize NetDirector to effortlessly synchronize their inventory with AutoChat. This advancement underscores our commitment to enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of our platform, ensuring that dealerships have the tools they need to stay ahead in today's competitive market. Starting today, users can take advantage of this integration, making it simpler than ever to manage inventory and provide real-time, accurate information to their customers.
The email you get about the lead/request that comes from "ask a question" conversations now contains more data about the lead at the top of the email message.
In our efforts to give you more insights into the type of conversations that we have on behalf of your organization we introduced a new filter type in our dashboard "Has first interaction":
When this filter is enabled we hide conversations where the consumer (or any other automated system) did not continue the conversation after the chat bubble or CTA button was clicked. In other words we only show chats in which the consumer at least typed an answer or made a selection from a list. For your convenience this filter is enabled by default.
Please note: this filter applies to new conversations only, all previous chats (before this release) are marked as having at least one interaction.
Lynk & Co is now part of our standard list of brands making it easier for a consumer to select if necessary.
We fixed an issue where when the "Show phone appointment hint" function would be enabled for a profit center we would not always show the extra line of text explaining to the consumer that if he wants to book an appointment today he needs to call a certain number.
We fixed an issue where the date of when the chat happened was always set to today instead of the actual date in the lead email template we send out for "ask a question" leads.
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We changed the text of the workshop flow slightly to better reflect that we are doing a license plate lookup instead of trying to recognize the consumer in some system.
We have removed the zoom feature to view the different photo's of a car. You can still scroll through them but directly from the chat interface.
(predefined flows only) We made a change that prevents the chatbot from saying "I don't understand" when the consumer would say something unrelated to a specific question.
(PlanIT workshop flow) We made 2 changes:
We made a change in how the assistant responds after a conversation ends. At the end of each predefined flow we say goodbye to the consumer. From now on there are 2 scenarios:
This makes sure that:
We have added an additional way of changing the text the chat bubble shows. You can find it in the dashboard under the "assistants" setting. This gives you the opportunity to set the text in an informal or formal way.
We improved some Dutch texts that we show during date and time selection.
We've enhanced the assistant's interaction capabilities with consumers. Let's illustrate this with a practical scenario: When a customer wants to book a workshop appointment, the initial step involves asking for their vehicle's license plate. Upon entry, our system now intelligently decodes the license plate to identify the car's make and model. For instance, the assistant might confirm with the customer, "You are driving a Peugeot 108, is that correct?"
Previously, the assistant provided 'Yes' and 'No' suggestions, anticipating customers to use these for confirmation. However, we noticed that many customers respond with more detailed affirmations like "Yes, I drive a Peugeot." In such cases, the conversation flow often encountered disruptions.
With the latest update, our assistant is now adept at interpreting varied customer responses, effectively mapping them to a 'Yes' or 'No' answer. This means it can understand and process responses beyond the basic affirmative or negative, thus maintaining the smooth flow of conversation. This enhancement significantly reduces the chances of conversation breakdowns, ensuring a more seamless and intuitive interaction for the customer.
(Workshop flow) We fixed a bug where sometimes after entering in the license plate we would show the brand of the car twice.
(Autodialog Workshop flow) We fixed an issue where if the consumer would indicate that he wants to wait during the appointment the delivery of the appointment to the dealership would fail.
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Happy New Year! As we rev into 2024, everyone at AutoChat wishes you a year filled with prosperity, innovation, and smooth journeys ahead.
This week we are releasing some nice new functionalities.
At AutoChat we think that our assistant shouldn't only be able to assist your customers 24/7, we also think we should try and convert any questions into possible sales leads. Therefore it's now possible to move from our "ask a question" flow into one of our predefined flows and by doing so connecting two powerful platforms.
Let's look at some examples to make clear what this functionality does. Let's say someone is interested in a specific car (and thus he is on a vehicle detail page) and wants to know where it is currently located.
As you can see as soon as we answered the question we gave the consumer two suggestions (Book testdrive and Book sales appointment). Now the consumer can either click on one of the suggestions or type for example "I want to testdrive the car". In both cases we will switch directly into that specific flow. By doing this we make sure:
In the next example we are not on a vehicle detail page. As soon as the consumer asks a question we again offer him some suggestions. He selects the book workshop appointment suggestion to immediately go into that specific flow:
In our last example we show that the consumer doesn't necessarily need to use the suggestion buttons at all:
In this case the consumer started the chat by clicking on the "Ask a question" button in the chat bubble. Then he just entered that he wants to book a test drive and our assistant immediately switched from answering questions (using OpenAI) to booking a test drive appointment (using the Google AI platform).
If you are wondering how many times this is happening then you can measure this by measuring an event called "autochat_from_question_to_appointment_flow" in Google Analytics. Not using the Google Analytics integration yet? Check out how to do this here.
In our previous release notes we explained that we were working on getting requests and questions we cannot answer yet into your mailbox in a fast and proper way. In this release we are implementing the next step in this process.
1. You can now see which chats need a follow up in our dashboard.
As you can see there is now a new label called "Action required". This means that the consumer has a request that needs a follow up. While we are still testing if this decision is always 100% correct it should mean that eventually you can safely ignore the other chats as they have been successfully resolved.
2. You can see which data we are extracting from the chat.
3. Send the chat as an email directly from the dashboard
In the same view as displayed above we have implemented the ability to send the chat as an email. Please note that this is only possible if the chat is marked as "action required".
Important note: the emails will now be sent directly to the correct email box. In the past we sent the same email to different recipients. As this is no longer the case, you will not see the other email addresses in cc anymore.
4. Change label after email is sent
As soon as we send the email from the dashboard to your organization the "Action required" disappears from this specific chat.
5. More data insights
Customers have asked us to get more insights into the kind of conversations that we are handling. By applying these data extractions from the chats we are taking the first steps to make this possible as well:
After we have monitored this approach for a while our next step will be to make it possible to configure which types of requests (for example aftersales, sales or marketing related) will be sent to which email box. When this step is completed we are ready to fully automatically deliver you the chat/lead after the consumer finished the conversation.
Before it was possible to make changes to the font type used by our assistant in the dashboard. We have chosen to remove this option from the dashboard and always use the Helvetica font (with a fall back to sans-serif). The reason why we did this was because we often ran into issues where the website would interfere with the readability of the text in the chat interface in case the option "use font from website" was used. Now we always use a well readable font type and size in all cases.
We added a question to the contact request flow: "Can you please share the reason why you want us to contact you? This helps making sure the correct department reaches out to you." By adding this question the right department within your organization can reach out to the consumer.
We fixed an issue where either the send or input field of the chat interface wasn't (fully) visible on certain mobile devices.
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