Carro Develops Southeast Asia’s First AI-Driven Customer Service Voicebot To Turbocharge Digitalisation Of Auto Industry

SINGAPORE, 25 February 2021 – Carro, Southeast Asia’s largest automotive marketplace, continues to enhance its digital infrastructure and capabilities to lead the transformation of Southeast Asia’s automotive industry for the benefit of car owners. The company has developed an automotive Talkbots module powered by WIZ A.I. to hyper-personalise Carro’s engagements with customers who are looking to sell their vehicles.  

TalkBots, or conversational voice artificial intelligence, are several orders of magnitude more complex compared to your everyday virtual assistants on your phone or laptop. Powered by WIZ A.I. proprietary artificial intelligence framework, it allows the caller to interact with the Talkbot using natural spoken language, offering a truly authentic human-like conversational experience. The Talkbot listens, understands and speaks several different ASEAN languages with localised accents, it even incorporates human-like actions such as pauses, clarification statements and chasing statements. They are so realistic that over 95% of callers can’t tell the difference between a TalkBot and a human agent.  

Launched in December 2020, the TalkBots were first deployed in Indonesia as part of a regional rollout.  Since its deployment, the Talkbots have engaged with over 20,000 potential leads that the local call centre operation would not otherwise have addressed. The Talkbots were able to handle almost four times the volume of calls as compared to a human agent, with a similar customer response rate. Additionally, TalkBots can handle the entire conversation for the vast majority of calls, and customers regularly thank the TalkBots once when the call concludes.

The ability to address a high volume of leads ultimately led to a significant increase in additional transactions, giving Carro an edge over its competitors in accessing a greater portion of the Indonesian market. “Southeast Asia’s automotive sector is in the thick of a digital revolution. While Carro has undertaken many industry firsts over the past few years, COVID-19 catalysed our drive to better engage with our customers through multiple avenues,” said Aaron Tan, CEO & Founder of Carro. “Carro will continue to invest in innovative technologies, and work with like-minded ecosystem players to benefit car owners.”

Carro has launched Talkbots in Indonesia and will extend it to Singapore and Malaysia to turbocharge growth within the region’s automotive industry. The service will be continuously updated and improved to enhance the customer experience and engagement.

“We believe that voice is the new great frontier of customer engagement since digital. By working closely with Carro, we both have grown tremendously, pushing the boundaries together, to provide a better customer experience,” said Jennifer Zhang, CEO and Founder of WIZ.AI. “It is the caller experience that sets our conversational voice AI Talkbots light years ahead of the competition. They are practically indistinguishable from a human agent, it understands natural spoken language and provides an authentic human experience by incorporating the unique nuances of language present in different communities.”

How Carro is leading the AI-driven digitalisation of Southeast Asia’s auto industry

This AI-powered voice bot signifies the latest step in the firm’s drive to transform the traditional auto retail experience across the region.

Carro currently offers Southeast Asia’s first contactless car purchasing service in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand which allows customers to browse cars on Carro’s website at their convenience. All subsequent interactions – including Carro’s proprietary 150-point vehicle inspection – are powered by the company’s platform and pricing algorithms. 

In Malaysia, Carro is pioneering more industry-firsts across the region. Its subsidiary myTukar recently deployed an autonomous Car Defect Detection and Car Plate Masking system. Leveraging on AI, computer vision and machine learning, this innovation can detect car defects within three seconds, thereby helping to automate and standardise the often-lengthy car inspection process. Carro will soon extend this technology to Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.

As a company that offers a full-stack service for all aspects of car ownership, Carro understands that transforming the industry must go beyond sales and purchases; it must also improve drivers’ experience with the typically burdensome ownership process. 

Their usage-based insurance offering uses AI and data science to assess driver behaviour and distance travelled. This enables Carro to provide customised insurance premiums that better reflect the way they drive, especially when considering current movement restrictions.

Source: Carro Press Release