Automotive Customer Engagement: How to Keep More Leads Moving and Sell More Cars

Customer engagement has become a lot more complex than it used to be at the dealership.

A customer might submit a lead after hours, reply to a text the next morning, and watch a personalized vehicle video over lunch. Before ever setting foot in the dealership, they may also speak with your BDC, a salesperson, or a manager.

That gives your team more opportunities to connect. But it also creates more chances for a conversation to stall.

When messages live in different places, ownership isn’t clear, or follow-up becomes just another CRM task, leads can still slip through the cracks.

A strong customer engagement strategy is about keeping those conversations moving. That means making it easy for your team to see what’s happening, respond while the customer’s interest is still high, and bring in the right person at the right time.

Increasingly, that also means deciding where AI and automation can help, and where a human interaction will make the biggest difference.

What is automotive customer engagement?

Automotive customer engagement is the ongoing interaction between your dealership and a prospective or existing customer throughout the buying and ownership journey.

That can happen over text, email, or phone. It can also happen through video, website chat, or AI-assisted conversations. And eventually, many of those interactions move into the showroom.

But adding more channels isn’t the strategy.

The real question is whether those conversations stay connected.

If a customer texts your BDC, the salesperson shouldn’t have to start from scratch. If a manager gets a TO (turnover), they should know what has already been discussed. And when a customer shows up for an appointment, the online conversation they’ve had shouldn’t suddenly disappear. DriveCentric helps BDC's work easily around real-time conversation visibility and follow-up across reps.

Dale Villar Acelar, General Sales Manager at Mercedes-Benz of Beaverton, describes what that looks like when the team can see the same customer conversation:

“It allows us to function as a team that one set can do a video, another person can do a text and we can actually see all of that within a customer card and then communicate with each other. What's the best outcome we can have for the customer.”

Source: Mercedes-Benz of Beaverton — Dale Villar Acelar, approx. 0:28.

That’s the heart of automotive customer engagement.

You’re not just logging activity. You’re helping the next person on your team pick up the conversation without missing a beat.

Where dealership customer engagement breaks down

Most dealerships don’t have a shortage of communication.

You have fresh leads coming in. You have calls, texts, and emails. You also have follow-up tasks and appointments competing for attention.

The challenge is keeping track of all of it.

A lead may be waiting on the BDC while the BDC thinks sales has it. A rep may complete an email task without really moving the conversation forward. A manager may not know a customer has been sitting without a response.

A checked box isn’t the same thing as a customer conversation.

Dawn Owens, BDC Director at Street Volkswagen, puts the issue plainly:

“I would say the most important thing is being able to have that communication screen up and really looking to see who's falling through the cracks, who's not being talked to, who's not being responded to.”

Source: Street Volkswagen — Dawn Owens, BDC Director.

That’s why visibility matters.

You need to know what’s happening while there’s still time to do something about it—not after you review the activity report at the end of the week.

Rethink the traditional BDC

Sometimes better automotive customer engagement requires more than changing a few follow-up tasks.

You may need to rethink who handles the conversation in the first place.

Tom Masano Auto Group gives us a good example.

After moving to DriveCentric, the group saw customer engagement take off. The interesting part? The number of leads hadn’t changed.

They could simply see more of what was happening.

Kevin Pitts, General Manager at BMW of Reading, explained that the dealership suddenly had visibility into customer conversations that had likely been happening all along. The DriveCentric case study likewise focuses on the group's increased visibility into its digital showroom.

That visibility exposed a new challenge: manpower.

DriveCentric tracks what it calls a fumble rate. Pitts describes it as an active lead or conversation going unanswered for an hour. His team reached a point where it had hundreds of conversations happening at once.

“Your fumble rate is if a lead or a conversation that's going on doesn't get answered within an hour. And we had hundreds of conversations going on at one time that we just could not get to because of manpower.”

Source: AI-Powered Growth: The Tom Masano Auto Group Success Story / Inside Automotive with Kevin Pitts, approx. 4:14.

Their answer wasn’t simply, “Tell the sales team to work harder.”

They changed the process.

The group created what it calls an Engagement Center – a BDC model designed around handling customer conversations and keeping the top of the funnel moving.

Put the right conversation with the right person

Not every lead needs a salesperson immediately.

Think about the questions your dealership gets every day.

Is the car still available? Can I come in for a test drive? Do you have the Carfax?

Those questions matter to the customer. But you don’t necessarily need an experienced salesperson tied up answering every one of them.

Tom Masano Auto Group moved much of that work into its Engagement Center.

Pitts explains:

“We decided to chop off the top of that funnel, hand it to the engagement center. Is a car available? When can I come in for a test drive? Do you have a Carfax on a used car? All those simple, simple questions.”

Source: AI-Powered Growth: The Tom Masano Auto Group Success Story / Inside Automotive with Kevin Pitts, approx. 5:08.

That gives you a simple operating principle:

Put each conversation with the person – or technology – best equipped to handle it.

Your Engagement Center can handle routine questions and keep the customer moving. Your salesperson can step in when their expertise adds value.

The customer still gets what they want: a fast, useful response.

Use AI to add capacity—not remove the human element

AI for car dealerships can help your team stay in more conversations.

That’s especially valuable after hours or when your team has more active leads than it can reasonably work at once. DriveCentric's current AI guidance describes using AI for 24/7 inquiries, appointments, and follow-up while dealership employees continue to handle the broader customer relationship.

But that doesn’t mean handing the entire customer relationship over to AI.

A better approach is to let AI handle the conversations it can handle well. Then bring your people in where they add more value.

That’s how Tom Masano Auto Group approached DriveCentric’s AI.

The team treats it like an offsite assistant. AI makes the initial contact and handles simpler interactions. The dealership team can then supplement that work with personalized video or take over the conversation.

Pitts explains:

“She will do the initial, we'll go grab videos, we'll do some things that she physically can't do while she's answering some of the easy questions. Just getting the person engaged and it happens within five minutes of the customer leaving a lead.”

Source: AI-Powered Growth: The Tom Masano Auto Group Success Story / Inside Automotive with Kevin Pitts, approx. 7:15.

The group also uses AI for longer-term follow-up when leads stop responding. Instead of leaving the cadence untouched, the team adjusted its process after looking at its metrics.

That’s the opportunity.

Fresh leads need fast attention. Aged leads still need consistent follow-up. DriveCentric's AI Agents are designed to support jobs such as instant lead response and after-hours follow-up without requiring the BDC to manually work every touch.

Then your people can focus on the conversations where they can actually move the deal forward.

Lead response time matters—but so does the response

Speed matters in automotive retail.

When someone submits a lead, asks about a unit, or wants to schedule an appointment, they’ve given you an opening. You don’t want that conversation sitting untouched.

Mercedes-Benz of Beaverton saw the impact of speeding up its process.

“Response times are a lot faster because we're engaging with the customers. The faster we can respond, the faster we can make a sale.”

Source: Mercedes-Benz of Beaverton — Dale Villar Acelar, approx. 1:08.

But speed by itself isn’t enough.

Sending an automatic “We received your inquiry” message in seconds isn’t the same as answering the customer’s question.

You want a fast response and a useful one.

That means watching lead response time. It also means looking for the places where conversations tend to stall.

How many conversations are waiting on a response? Where are leads getting stuck? How often does your BDC need someone from sales to step in?

You can then look further down the funnel. Are appointments getting set? Are customers showing? Are those conversations ultimately turning into sold units?

The point isn’t to create another dashboard nobody looks at.

It’s to find the spots where you’re losing momentum.

Give every lead clear ownership

Fast follow-up won’t solve much if nobody knows who owns the lead.

That’s where a lot of dealership processes get messy.

The BDC starts the conversation. Sales takes over. A manager gets involved.

That can work—as long as everyone can see what came before.

At Capitol Auto Group, Matthew Casebeer describes a setup where the team can see conversations as they’re happening. If the BDC gets stuck, a sales manager can jump in and answer the customer or take over the deal.

Street Volkswagen has seen a similar benefit.

Dawn Owens says greater visibility helps her team take more ownership of its leads. Reps can see what’s happening and what still needs to be done.

That’s how a TO should work.

The customer shouldn’t feel like they just got handed to a completely different dealership.

The conversation keeps going. The context stays with it.

Make your follow-up worth opening

One of the easiest ways to improve customer engagement is also one of the simplest:

Give the customer something worth responding to.

Jake Hales of Gee Automotive makes this point while talking about dealership email follow-up.

He describes the familiar “Are you still in the market?” message. Instead, he argues that reps should focus on sending value.

“And instead, I want you to send value to customers, send value to customers. And you know what? It's the car business, folks. It's not hard to send value to customers.”

He follows that with a straightforward recommendation:

“You know what you do, you send a car or a quote, that's what customers want. A car or a quote.”

Source: Enhancing Sales Through Video at Gee Automotive.

That’s a useful gut check for any follow-up.

Are you communicating because the CRM told you a task was due?

Or are you giving the customer a reason to stay in the conversation?

Use video when a human connection can help

Personalized video gives you another way to make follow-up useful.

And it doesn’t have to be a polished production.

At Street Volkswagen, Ron Garverick describes using video before a customer even arrives at the store.

“With the video, they see who you are, they hear your voice, so when they walk through the door and someone says, ‘Hey welcome to Street Volkswagen. Can I help you?’ ‘I'm here to see Ron. I see he's right over there.’”

Source: Street Volkswagen — Ron Garverick, Finance Director, approx. 1:09.

The dealership also describes a simple video workflow.

The BDC can send an introduction. Then the salesperson follows up with another video and walks out to the actual vehicle.

Now the customer isn’t just receiving another text from a name on a screen.

They can see the person they’re talking to. They can see the car. And they have a reason to keep engaging.

How to build a stronger customer engagement strategy

You don’t need to blow up your entire sales process overnight.

Start with the places where conversations are already getting stuck.

1. Bring customer conversations together. Give your BDC and sales team visibility into what has already happened. Managers should be able to see that history too.

2. Set expectations for lead response time. Know how quickly fresh leads should receive a meaningful response. Then make missed responses easy to spot.

3. Define who owns what. Be clear about what your BDC handles and what sales owns. Establish when a manager should get a TO.

4. Don’t make salespeople handle every interaction. Let your BDC handle routine questions when appropriate. Keep your salespeople focused on conversations where their expertise can move the deal.

5. Use AI to cover gaps. AI can help with immediate engagement and after-hours conversations. It can also support longer-term follow-up.

6. Make the interaction personal. Send something the customer can actually use. That might be a quote, a vehicle walkaround, or a personalized video.

7. Watch where leads stall. Look beyond activity counts. Monitor unanswered conversations and appointment performance. Close rate can help you see whether those conversations are producing sales.

8. Keep improving the process. Your first workflow doesn’t have to be your final workflow. Look at what customers are doing and what your team can realistically handle. Then adjust.

Turn your CRM into an engagement system

An automotive CRM should do more than tell you what your team did yesterday. It should help you see what needs attention right now.

Which fresh leads need a response? Which conversations are going cold? Where does the BDC need help?

It should also help you answer what comes next. When should sales step in? Which customers need longer-term follow-up?

That’s the idea behind DriveCentric's Engagement Hub. It brings texts, calls, emails, video, and follow-up into a unified platform so the team can see customer interactions in one place.

But the technology is only one piece.

The dealerships featured throughout this article made process changes too. They reconsidered how their BDC worked and changed who handled different conversations. They also used AI to add capacity.

Along the way, they gave managers better visibility and looked for ways to make customer communication more useful. You can see more examples in DriveCentric's automotive CRM case studies.

That’s what strong automotive customer engagement looks like.

Not more activity for the sake of activity.

Better conversations. Clearer ownership. Faster action. And fewer opportunities slipping through the cracks.