Modernizing OEMs’ broken automotive customer experience with AI and data

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) must rethink their approach to the automotive customer experience. The old playbook, built for mass production and linear sales funnels, doesn’t fit digitally empowered consumers. 

To stay competitive, OEMs need a performance-led strategy that blends data & AI, marketing and commerce across every touchpoint. This means prioritizing customer lifetime value (CLTV), real-time decisioning and omnichannel orchestration.  

Success depends on delivering a seamless, personalized automotive customer experience — from first touch to final transaction and beyond. 

Jump to a key section:

• • • The performance imperative: Operating like a modern retailer

    • Real-time optimization across the automotive customer journey

    • What you can learn about your customer experience from real-time analytics

    • AI as the engine of modern commerce

    • Summary Q&A: Everything you need to know about the modern automotive customer experience

Automotive customer experience in the digital age

The car-buying journey doesn’t start at the dealership anymore. It starts online with search engines, configurators, social feeds and influencer content. Over 90% of consumers begin their path to purchase in digital spaces.

What they expect:

• Consistency across channels, from mobile to in-car interfaces to showroom kiosks

• Personalized content and offers based on behavior, preferences and intent

• Frictionless access to inventory, pricing, financing and service scheduling

Traditional automotive models, which rely on decentralized, independently operated dealerships, often struggle to deliver these expectations. Fragmented data systems, organizational silos and inconsistent customer handoffs can erode trust and loyalty.

OEMs that wish to thrive must address these pain points by adopting a unified commerce approach across digital and physical environments. 

The performance imperative: Operating like a modern retailer

To compete with leading global commerce brands, OEMs must undergo a fundamental shift in how they view marketing and sales — from brand-led awareness to performance-driven precision. This means aligning objectives, channels and operations to deliver measurable business results. 

As OEMs expand their direct-to-consumer (D2C) capabilities and shift toward agency models, they must adopt the operational rigor of digital-first retailers. This entails:

• Outcome-oriented strategies. Focus on measurable business outcomes — cost per lead, conversion rates, revenue per visitor, inventory turnover — rather than individual metrics like impressions, leads, click-throughs or generic brand awareness. 

• Commerce-driven digital channels. Treat websites, mobile apps and platforms not as brochures but as transaction engines that drive margin and loyalty. 

• Data-led decision-making. Continuously optimize offers, experiences and spend based on real-time data across marketing, sales and service, looking at the end-to-end effect. 

OEMs must think like Amazon, operate like Nike and scale like Shopify — blending brand storytelling with performance-driven execution.

Websites should have CRO goals. Ad spend should be dynamically allocated via AI against hard goals. Retail touchpoints should integrate predictive data and real-time feedback mechanisms to actively influence optimizations upstream. 

Data is fuel: From campaigns to conversions

Our recent field study on disruptive experience assessment underscores the critical role of data in guiding customer experience optimizations beyond surface-level metrics.

The proprietary study, conducted across eight OEMs (Toyota, VW, Skoda, Renault, Peugeot, Volvo, BYD and Tesla) in Belgium, France and Spain, analyzed how intrusive behaviors like pop-ups can impact total customer satisfaction.

The assessment found OEM websites deploying three or more pop-ups within five minutes — especially for test drives, chatbots and feedback forms — significantly underperformed on customer satisfaction scores in embedded Qualtrics surveys.

Valtech Intrusiveness Index 2025: An assessment of a brand's reliance on intrusive engagement tactics, such as pop-ups, in their digital experiences

For example, Toyota, which ranked “High” in disruptiveness in two of the three markets, saw customer satisfaction scores that were up to 20% lower than expected benchmarks.

This indicates overuse and misalignment of engagement tactics like pop-ups can erode brand perception and frustrate users — highlighting the need for a smarter, experience-driven data model that prioritizes satisfaction, not just individual lead- and data-capture goals.

Real-time optimization across the automotive customer journey

At the core of performance-based commerce lies data — real-time, integrated and actionable.

OEMs must treat data as a strategic asset and leverage it rigorously to unlock personalization, optimize spend and elevate every phase of the customer journey.

In performance marketing, data is the fuel that powers every decision. OEMs must evolve from static, quarterly reporting to live, AI-powered decision-making using unified customer datasets.

Key areas of opportunity include:

Marketing efficiency

• Attribute sales across all touchpoints, from paid social ads to configurator usage to showroom visits.

• Shift from keyword-based SEO to AI-enhanced content that maps to customer intent.

• Identify high-intent segments in website traffic and deliver personalized product offers, financing solutions and incentives.

Sales optimization

• Use web analytics and social signals to detect friction points in the digital buying process.

• Integrate CRM/DMS platforms to provide agents, retailers and customer service with a unified view.

• Track lead form submissions and online configurator paths to personalize follow-ups.

• Blend AI chatbots with human concierge agents to deliver seamless support from pre- to post-sales. Or, take the experience to another level with an AI concierge.

Retail performance (dealerships, agents, brand spaces)

• Connect digital behaviors (test drive booking, part configuration) to foot traffic in physical locations and track further through to sales.

• Provide retail partners with insights into individual customer journeys, allowing tailored offline experiences.

• Optimize scheduling and staffing based on real-time online appointment data.

What you can learn about your customer experience from real-time analytics

An analysis of real-world OEM digital performance illustrates the opportunity for data-informed transformation.

Across key European markets (UK, DE, FR, ES, IT), our 2024 benchmarking study comparing website traffic and conversion rates year-over-year showed varying outcomes for brands like Audi, BMW and Toyota.

For instance, Audi's German site saw a 9.4% increase in web visits but an 18% drop in conversions, indicating inefficiencies in converting digital traffic to sales. Conversely, BMW’s Spanish site achieved a 32% YoY sales boost despite only modest web traffic gains — highlighting effective on-site funnel optimization.

These disparities reveal how important real-time analytics are in connecting marketing spend with actual commerce outcomes at the retail level across the broader automotive customer journey.

Brands that continuously monitor and adjust their digital experience — not just based on campaign reach or individual efforts’ KPIs but on conversion and visit-to-sale efficiency end-to-end — are poised to outperform.

Valtech Digital Performance to Sales Assessment

Commerce-as-a-Service

As customer expectations accelerate, OEMs need agility and scalability in their digital infrastructure. A modular approach to commerce, driven by APIs and adaptable interfaces, empowers OEMs to respond quickly to changing needs and launch new services seamlessly.

OEMs should adopt a Commerce-as-a-Service (CaaS) architecture, enabling modular, API-driven functions that can be deployed across channels. This includes mobile, web, in-car screens, physical retail and partner networks.

CaaS architecture allows rapid innovation, A/B testing of commerce flows and integration with third-party tools while maintaining brand consistency and central data governance.

Extending performance to aftersales

Customer loyalty begins with a purchase. The performance mindset must therefore extend beyond the sale into ownership.

Service, parts, accessories and increasingly digital offerings represent substantial value pools and equally key loyalty drivers. However, integration and easy accessibility transfer from pre-purchase and buying journeys are essential.

As many of these experiences lie primarily with the retail body, OEMs should focus on developing mechanisms to support a positive and a true-to-the-brand automotive customer experience and extend the data flow between the entities.

Your North Star: Customer lifetime value

To build resilient businesses, OEMs must shift from one-time sales to lifetime relationships. CLTV is the strategic anchor that aligns marketing, service and product around long-term success.

Driving repeat sales, upsells and referrals requires a unified view of the customer. OEMs should:

• Consolidate data from all touchpoints to form dynamic CLTV scores.

• Use these scores to guide investment in retention marketing, personalized service packages and loyalty programs.

• Monitor key indicators like Net Promoter Score (NPS), frequency of brand engagement and vehicle repurchase intervals.

AI as the engine of modern commerce

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a true differentiator. By embedding AI on top of the data and across the customer lifecycle, OEMs can scale personalization, automate decisions, enhance ecosystem integration and anticipate market needs with unprecedented speed.

AI is central to operationalizing all of the strategies above:

• Personalization at scale. Machine learning enables tailored experiences based on context, history and predictive modeling.

• Automated campaigns. Real-time bidding, intelligent segmentation and lookalike modeling enhance media efficiency.

• Customer support. AI chatbots reduce friction and cost while enabling always-on assistance.

• Product and experience innovation. Analyze usage and feedback data to inform product and service design, pricing, and new feature and offering development as well as customer journey enhancements.

Unified commerce and the new role of physical spaces

Even in a digital world, physical spaces matter — provided they are reimagined as experiential extensions of the brand. Unified commerce transforms these spaces from transactional venues into orchestrated touchpoints.

Physical retail is not dead, but it is being redefined. In a unified commerce model, retail spaces become extensions of the digital journey:

• Agents and brand stores must use data captured online to tailor offline experiences.

• Physical locations should be equipped with digital tools that allow for test drive booking or completion, trade-in evaluation, and service check-ins initiated online.

• Staff must be trained to act on data signals, e.g., understanding that a customer recently configured a specific model with a unique color and trim, as well as participate in the data feedback loop.

Everything you need to know about the modern automotive customer experience

The road ahead: Reinventing retail models

The future of automotive retail is fluid. OEMs must choose models that reflect their brand, operational strengths and customer expectations while ensuring flexibility and integration.

OEMs are exploring various models like direct-to-consumer (D2C) and agency agreements for their respective benefits:

• D2C allows tighter control over pricing and customer data but demands robust ecommerce and logistics infrastructure.

• Agency agreements balance OEM control with local presence, allowing agents to act as brand stewards while OEMs retain pricing and customer relationships.

Regardless of the model or combination thereof, automotive customers expect a seamless experience and omnichannel excellence. OEMs must invest in both digital platforms and retail transformation to meet this expectation.

Valtech: Your partner in customer experience and performance commerce

Achieving performance transformation requires a trusted partner with a vision for what’s possible and a roadmap to get there. Navigating this transformation requires a strategic partner with deep expertise. Valtech helps OEMs:

• Design unified commerce strategies that connect marketing, sales and service.

• Build scalable, performance-optimized digital platforms.

• Unlock the power of AI and data across the customer lifecycle.

• Evolve their retail models to align with digital-first expectations.

The automotive industry is on the cusp of a new chapter, one defined by customer-centricity, intelligent data use and digital agility.

To lead in this new era, OEMs must build digital prowess. The winners will be those who integrate AI, unify data and create truly customer-centric ecosystems that span every touchpoint.

Valtech stands ready to help OEMs turn strategy into action and commerce into a competitive advantage.

Download Mobility Report