Transforming How Dealerships Connect with Customers

Transforming How Dealerships Connect with Customers

STELLA AI is redefining how dealerships communicate with their customers, offering a powerful solution that blends efficiency, intelligence, and personalization. As a featured vendor in The Shop by FordDirect, STELLA AI represents the type of trusted, future-focused technology that helps Ford dealers, Lincoln retailers, and other auto retailers improve performance, strengthen relationships, and unlock new growth opportunities.

At the heart of STELLA AI is a conversational artificial intelligence platform built specifically for automotive retail. Unlike generic call center technology or outdated phone trees, STELLA AI acts as a fully capable virtual assistant available 24/7, 365 days a year. The platform can answer unlimited inbound calls in both English and Spanish, ensuring that every customer is greeted immediately and no opportunity is lost. From booking service appointments and checking availability to routing calls and answering common dealership questions, STELLA AI provides a seamless experience that is fast, professional, and branded to each dealership.

For many retailers, this solves one of the industry’s most pressing challenges: missed calls. Studies show that some dealerships fail to answer as many as 40% of incoming calls during busy times, which means frustrated customers and lost revenue. By managing calls around the clock and handling unlimited concurrent conversations, STELLA AI eliminates this gap completely. The result is a consistent, reliable customer experience that builds loyalty and keeps guests coming back.

But what makes STELLA AI especially powerful is its deep integration with dealership systems. By connecting directly to CRM and DMS platforms, the virtual assistant has the ability to personalize every interaction. A returning customer can be greeted by name, their service history can be referenced instantly, and scheduling can be tailored to their preferences. This kind of intelligent, conversational interaction is difficult to achieve with traditional BDC models and is nearly impossible with automated phone trees.

For dealers, the benefits extend far beyond satisfied customers. By removing the repetitive burden of answering phones, STELLA AI allows employees to focus on higher-value work, such as providing face-to-face service in the showroom or the service lane. Service advisors no longer need to disrupt guest interactions to take phone calls, and dealership managers gain peace of mind knowing every inbound request is handled promptly and professionally. Dealers leveraging STELLA AI report not only improved customer satisfaction but also higher repair order counts and reduced operating costs compared to staffing a full in-house BDC.

Looking to the future, STELLA AI continues to innovate. Its new outbound engagement engine, STELLA Catalyst, will give dealerships the ability to proactively reach customers with service reminders, recall campaigns, promotional offers, and even sales outreach like test-drive scheduling. By combining inbound and outbound communication into one dealer-branded platform, STELLA AI enables retailers to manage every guest interaction through a single, unified system that is easy to configure and simple to use.

As part of The Shop by FordDirect, STELLA AI reflects the marketplace’s commitment to providing dealership-friendly access to premium, thoroughly vetted solutions. The Shop eliminates the guesswork for retailers by offering only trusted partners at exclusive, pre-negotiated pricing, ensuring dealers receive both value and quality. In this ecosystem, STELLA AI stands out as a transformative partner that not only solves today’s challenges but also equips dealers for the future of automotive retail.

For dealers seeking a reliable way to streamline communications, reduce missed opportunities, and create frictionless guest experiences, STELLA AI delivers a proven solution. With quick onboarding, seamless integrations, and a relentless focus on customer satisfaction, STELLA AI is helping dealerships across the country work smarter, serve better, and grow stronger every day.