Can Your Dealer Network Keep Up With AI Agents?

Kaisa’s takeaways from the “AI Agents Are Driving Automotive Retail. Can Everyone Keep Up?” webinar with AIM Group

In short

• Buyers now use AI to ask more detailed questions of more dealers. AI agents will soon make those calls for them.
• Dealers are already stretched, and many callers never reach a person. Triage, follow-up, and connected data help them keep up.
• Marketplaces can help by making listings agent-ready, speeding up dealer responses, and showing dealers what happens after the lead.

Your marketplace sends dealers the leads. What happens next decides whether a buyer comes back.

That next step is changing fast. Buyers now use AI to research cars before they make contact. Soon, AI agents will make some of those contacts for them. Kaisa CEO Daniel Petrell discussed what that means at AIM Group’s recent webinar on AI in car dealerships, alongside AutoTrader Canada and Vend Marketplaces.

His message for marketplaces was clear. Your dealers are about to get far more questions than they can handle. Helping your dealer network cope is one of the most valuable things you can do.

Buyers ask more, and they ask more dealers

AI tells buyers exactly what to ask. So a used-car enquiry that once had two or three questions can now have around 20, covering service records, warranty, and much more. Buyers still work through dealers largely one at a time, though they’re reaching out to more of them than before. An AI agent won’t wait its turn.

What happens when a buyer uses an AI agent to make the call

Imagine a buyer with a shortlist of five cars at five different dealers. Instead of calling each one, they give the job to an AI agent. The agent contacts every dealer at once, with the full list of questions: specs, mileage, history, price, trade-in value, and finance. Some of that contact will happen by phone. Some will happen in the data itself, as agents search listings and query platforms directly.

Agents are relentless. They keep going until they’ve completed their buyer’s task. They also sound real. In Europe, AI agents now have to say they’re AI. But the conversation that follows can feel – should feel – just like talking to a person.

That changes the first conversation completely. An agent can’t be charmed or rushed. It needs accurate answers in real time, and the price it hears on the phone has to match the one in the listing. A dealer who can’t answer quickly, or gets it wrong, drops off the shortlist before a human buyer ever hears their name.

Agents will mostly compare, not close. Daniel expects them to gather offers across several cars and hand the buyer a side-by-side choice. Once the buyer is serious, the final negotiation is still human to human.

Agents aren’t calling dealers in Europe yet. “But I think it’s just a matter of time,” Daniel said.

For your dealers, that means more leads, more questions, and more noise. For your marketplace, it means the value of every lead you send depends on how well dealers handle it.

Your dealers are already stretched

This isn’t a future problem. Kaisa’s latest call data shows that 50% of people who phone a dealership never reach a human [thats’s up from 42%, the figure quoted in the webinar].Dealers want to pick up. They just don’t have enough people to answer everything.

Add AI-driven volume on top, and good buyers get lost in the queue. Some dealers will be tempted to block AI agents altogether. Daniel thinks that’s a mistake. “If you think that you can block this, protect your business, and continue to grow successfully, I think you’re in deep waters.”

What do your dealer networks need?

Triage, not more headcount. The answer is to sort more efficiently, not to hire. Let AI answer the questions it can, and get genuine buyers to a salesperson fast.

Every promise kept. Calls create commitments: a trade-in offer, a callback, a test drive. Too many never happen. Kaisa turns those moments into scheduled follow-ups, so dealers deliver what they promised and keep the buyer warm.

Tools that fit how they work. The panel agreed that dealers rarely get value from tools that change everything at once. AI works when it sits inside the workflow they already use. Daniel’s phrase was “become their extended arm.”

Connected data. Those fast, accurate answers depend on real-time context: the car, the price, the buyer’s history. That data lives in many systems. AI agents can now pull it from where it sits, so dealers don’t need to rebuild everything first.

Trust, built step by step. Dealers won’t hand everything to AI on day one, and they shouldn’t. Start with first questions. Then hand over more of the customer conversation, like booking appointments, once the AI shows it won’t hurt the business. As Daniel put it, “Trust comes with proof.”

What marketplaces can do now

Dealers put their budget where leads turn into sales. So a marketplace whose dealers handle AI-driven demand well becomes harder to replace. Start here.

• Make every listing agent-ready. Give each car enough accurate detail for an AI agent to assess it. If the agent can’t find the answer, it moves on.
• Help dealers respond faster. Lead management is the first place AI pays off. When buyers contact several dealers at once, the fastest good answer wins.
• Give dealers levers, not just data. “Data doesn’t bring value just because of the data itself,” Daniel said. Show dealers the few things that change their results, in language they use.
• Show dealers what happens after the lead. Conversation insights reveal missed calls, unanswered questions, and broken promises. That’s where deals are won and lost.
• Bring dealers along step by step. Start with small changes that fit their day. Build trust before you ask them to hand over more.

The buyers have already changed. The marketplaces that help their dealers keep up will keep the leads, and the budget, flowing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Watch the full webinar

Watch “AI Agents Are Driving Automotive Retail. Can Everyone Keep Up?” in full to hear Daniel, German Karabinov of AutoTrader Canada, and Matthias Eriksson of Vend Marketplaces discuss it in depth.

Watch the recording →