Blogs · Engenix.Ai

How should a multi-site dealer group set up an AI agent?

Set it to follow up, not just to reply. A car buyer takes an average of 87 days to decide, and in Auto Trader's mystery shop of its top 1,000 UK retailers, only 36% attempted a follow-up within 48 hours of a forecourt visit. The first reply is the easy half. For a group running four to twenty sites, the money is leaking in the weeks after it, one site at a time, and that is what the agent should be pointed at first.

Sources: Auto Trader plc, December 2024 and Auto Trader Insight, October 2025.

Pricing

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What makes a group different from a single site?

The buyer does not shop the way you are organised. Research from Motors found buyers now visit an average of 4.2 car search websites, up from 3.5 in 2021, which means the same person regularly lands on two of your own sites in the same week without either site knowing. If each site runs its own inbox, its own phone and its own follow-up habits, that buyer gets two different answers, two different levels of effort, and a fair impression that nobody is really in charge. A single site has one version of the truth by accident. A group has to build one on purpose.

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Should each site have its own agent?

No. One knowledge base across the group, with the per-site detail held inside it: each site's live stock, opening hours, people, and the rules that genuinely differ. That way a buyer asking about a car at one site gets the same quality of answer as a buyer asking at another, and if the car they want is sitting at your site forty miles away, the agent knows and can say so. Running an agent per site rebuilds the fragmentation you are trying to fix, and gives you four to twenty things to maintain instead of one.

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Why does the 87 day cycle change the setup?

Because it turns follow-up from good manners into the whole job. Auto Trader puts the average research period at 87 days, with 94% of buyers researching online before they ever set foot on a forecourt. Over nearly three months a buyer will go quiet, come back, change their mind about budget, and start again. A single reply on day one and then silence does not survive that. The agent's real work is the patient bit: staying in touch politely for weeks, picking the thread back up when they resurface, and getting them booked in when they are finally ready.

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What is happening to the leads you already paid for?

Some of them are not being answered at all. In Auto Trader's mystery shop of its top 1,000 UK retailers, 18% did not respond to an email enquiry at all, 12% failed to respond by either email or phone, and fewer than half of the replies that did arrive came within an hour. These are not cold prospects. They are the Auto Trader and manufacturer leads a group has already paid for, arriving into a busy showroom where every person who could answer is already with a customer. The invoice for that lead is the same whether anyone replied or not.

Source: Auto Trader Insight, lessons from the latest mystery shop, October 2025.

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How long have you actually got before they move on?

About three hours. MOTORS asked 2,000 UK car buyers and 55% said they expect a reply within three hours or they will look elsewhere, while 67% expect an answer to an email, text or WhatsApp enquiry within six hours. 35% said they will contact another showroom or search elsewhere online if a dealer fails to answer the phone or is slow coming back. The patient 87 day cycle and the three hour deadline are not a contradiction. The buyer is in no rush to buy, and in a great hurry to be answered.

Source: MOTORS Consumer Insight Panel, 2,000 UK car buyers, reported by Motor Trader, October 2025.

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Does it have to plug into the DMS and CRM?

Yes, or it is guessing. An agent that cannot see live stock will eventually offer a buyer a car you sold last Tuesday, and one that cannot write back leaves your team re-keying everything by hand. It sits alongside what you already run, whether that is Pinewood, Keyloop, Dealerweb or enquiryMAX, reading the stock so the answer is true and writing the enquiry and the appointment back so the record stays where your managers already look. Nothing is ripped out. Our team configures those connections, and that part typically takes two to six weeks.

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What about aftersales, which is really a second business?

Treat it as one, and it is often the faster win. Service and MOT is a different customer, a different diary and a much higher volume of routine calls: when can you take it, how much, can I have a courtesy car, is it ready yet. Those questions have real answers sitting in your systems, which makes them the easiest thing in the group to hand over. Letting the agent hold the service phone frees the people at the desk for the customers standing in front of them, and it fills the workshop diary without anyone chasing.

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Does it replace the sales executives?

No, and a group that tries it will regret it. 95% of buyers still want some in-person experience, and almost two in three turn up on forecourts unannounced. The showroom is where the deal happens. What the agent covers is the enquiries nobody could reach, the hours you are shut, and the weeks of polite follow-up that no busy executive has ever reliably done by hand. It will not invent a price, promise a date you have not agreed, or give finance advice. Anything needing a judgement goes to a person.

Source: Auto Trader plc, July 2025.

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Where should a group start?

One channel, one site, one job. Put it on the leads you are already paying for at your busiest site, set it to answer immediately and then follow up for weeks, and watch what it books. Once that site's numbers are real, the same knowledge base rolls out to the rest of the group without starting again. If you also run vehicle hire alongside the franchise, the job is genuinely a different one, and it is worth reading whether a dealership and a hire desk should use the same AI agent before you set either one up.

Sources

Where these numbers come from

Your move

See it work a lead for weeks, across every site, live at engenix.ai.