Sofico’s product philosophy is built around an API-first approach. This means that our Miles platform (the Miles Microservices Platform) is designed to be highly flexible and extensible, enabling you to easily integrate additional functionalities, including AI-driven use cases. By offering a comprehensive API framework, we enable you to innovate and build customized solutions to leverage the full power of the Miles platform. 

This API-first strategy is particularly important as we explore the possibilities of GenAI. It enables you to create modular AI components that can be easily incorporated into various aspects of the Miles platform, whether you would like to enhance customer interactions, streamline internal processes, or extract valuable insights from data. 

In our recent experiment with Bothrs, we set out to address a common challenge faced by your customers in an online showroom environment: effectively communicating their needs and preferences without being overwhelmed by technical filters and jargon. This use case highlights how GenAI can enhance the end-customer experience by interpreting natural language inputs and delivering tailored vehicle recommendations. 

When your customer interacts with the online showroom, they may describe their needs in a casual, conversational way. For instance, they might say, “I need a fuel-efficient car that’s suitable for a family of four, with a budget of around 500 EUR per month.” The GenAI system analyzes this input, identifying key details such as the type of car, fuel efficiency, passenger capacity, and budget. From this, it develops an initial customer profile that captures the user’s preferences. 

The GenAI then utilizes the API to retrieve relevant offers from the showroom’s database that match these preferences. This process not only simplifies the search experience for your customers but also ensures they are presented with options that closely align with their needs. 

As GenAI engages with the user, it asks contextual follow-up questions to refine the customer profile further. For example, it might inquire whether the user prefers European or Japanese brands, or if they have specific safety features in mind. These interactions increase user engagement by simulating a natural flow of conversation with a highly skilled salesperson. Besides, these interactions are designed to leverage and utilize data even beyond the Miles data scope. GenAI skillfully judges when to query Miles data, such as for lease prices, and when to utilize external data sources like user reviews, vehicle delivery times and vehicle classifications. 

This dynamic capability allows it to be both intelligent and empathetic, mimicking a human conversation while gathering the necessary information to provide the best possible recommendations. 

This use case demonstrates the potential of GenAI to transform the online showroom experience, making it more intuitive and customer-centric. Although this was an experimental project, it reaffirms our commitment to exploring how AI can enhance our product offerings and deliver greater value to our clients. 

As we continue to experiment with and refine our GenAI capabilities, we see vast potential for its application across the automotive finance industry. From enhancing customer interactions to driving operational efficiency and unlocking deeper insights from data, GenAI offers a broad range of opportunities for innovation. 

At Sofico, we remain dedicated to pioneering new solutions that anticipate the evolving needs of our customers. By integrating GenAI into our API-first platform, we are building the groundwork for the next generation of automotive finance and leasing solutions.