Make’s AI saves Stellantis &You UK 151 hours of non-value-added work in the first 12 months

• Industry: Manufacturing – Automotive

• Use case: Customer support automation

• Country: UK

• Company size: 1,001-5,000

• Apps used: Knack, OpenAI, ClickSend

Stellantis&You UK, a retail division of Stellantis, is one of the largest UK manufacturer-owned car dealership groups, overseeing 30+ locations in the United Kingdom. With an overflow of customer messages and phone calls, they quickly encountered a critical issue. Their Net Promoter Score (NPS) had declined rapidly.

Using the power of Make’s automation, the Stellantis &You UK team built a two-way messaging process using ClickSend (SMS service) and Knack (no-code/low-code app builder) Make modules, enhancing it with OpenAI-powered sentiment analysis.

This workflow not only automates essential customer interactions, such as booking confirmations and reminders, but also analyses clients’ intent and sentiment for more accurate support. Thanks to AI, Stellantis &You UK significantly reduced non-value adding work, allowing the Aftersales department to respond more quickly to incoming messages and focus on issues that affect overall customer satisfaction.

Conor Power (Digital Process Improvement Manager) and Daniel Cheng (Digital Systems & Database Engineer) explain how Make helped them cut over five working days of manual message reviewing for their Aftersales Team and massively improve the decreasing NPS.

As someone who was selling cars just four years ago, I never imagined I’d be crafting AI-supported communication solutions! That’s the power of Make. Making complex technology accessible to everyone, helping them grow their business.

Daniel Cheng, Digital System and Database Engineer

The challenges

As Stellantis &You UK grew, their team soon realized their customer support resources weren’t robust enough.

Communication challenges: Before the two-way messaging solutions, clients had two means of communication with the Aftersales Departments. By a phone call or in person. The overwhelming volume of calls left the team struggling to balance support with their other responsibilities, leading to significant delays and frustrated customers. As a result, Stellantis &You UK’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) dropped noticeably, with a lack of communication as the top complaint.

Resistance to automation: Stellantis &You UK employees were unfamiliar with automation, leading to initial resistance and skepticism. Many trusted traditional IT systems more or feared that the automation software would be too complex. The Stellantis &You UK team needed a simple, user-friendly solution that was accessible even to those without technical expertise.

Neither Conor nor I have a technical background,  yet we’ve implemented powerful AI solutions thanks to the available tools. For example, I was able to quickly test, engineer, and version control different AI prompts for our messaging analysis. Currently, we are on version 13 of the prompt, which has remained unchanged since its deployment a year ago and continues to accurately instruct AI on how to analyse messages correctly.

Daniel Cheng, Digital Systems and Database Engineer

The solutions

Make helps analyze incoming messages and determine whether the Aftersales Department should be notified. This is done by using AI to recognize customers’ sentiment.

AI-powered context analysis

Using Knack (a “no-code” app-building tool), ClickSend, and OpenAI, Stellantis &You UK analyzes the context of inbound messages from customers and improves the communication process for service and maintenance bookings. 

Thanks to advanced AI intent classification within their two-way SMS solution, the automation determines whether the Aftersales Department requires notification of the customer message. If not, the AI concludes the conversation by marking it as “No response required”.

Conor further explained:

AI’s ability to grasp subtle meaning differences is why we use it in our workflows. With Make, our AI distinguishes similar messages based on context. For example, if an automated status update says, 'Your booking has been confirmed' and the user replies 'Okay', no response is needed. But if a message about vehicle work goes out and the customer replies 'Okay', the AI correctly interprets it as approval. This nuance ensures customer decisions are clearly conveyed to Aftersales Department.

Context-aware sentiment recognition

The AI within Stellantis &You UK’s messaging solution recognizes dissatisfaction, even if it’s not expressed explicitly. By recognizing subtle language nuances and underlying sentiment, the AI knows when the customer is upset and notifies the Aftersales Team. This ensures that the team can proactively address concerns before they escalate.

Conor adds: 

Most automations can catch clearly negative messages like 'your service is terrible.' But Make’s AI goes further. It doesn’t just look for negative words. It reads between the lines. Even if a message doesn’t sound bad on the surface, like 'thanks, took you long enough,' the AI can still pick up on the tone and context and flag it to our team.

The results

Thanks to Make’s AI capabilities, the Stellantis &You UK team managed to: 

• Make “Communication” one of the main satisfaction reasons for the company’s top Net Promoters (score 9 or 10)

• Analyze over 47,000 messages and automatically close over 18,000 of them using AI over 12 months. 

• Based on a 30-second review time, save 151 hours of non-value-added work by auto-marking messages as “No action required”.

Why are Make and Stellantis &You UK a perfect match?

Stellantis &You UK runs over 700 active Make scenarios, automating many of its key processes. Despite initial reservations, Make’s adaptation rate and usage among employees are high. As Daniel and Conor said, the platform gives even non-technical team members a unique opportunity to build powerful, robust workflows quickly.

According to the Stellantis &You UK team, one of the biggest Make’s advantages is the number of API integrations available, providing a bigger palette of tools to choose from. And they all agree on one more thing. 

It makes daily operations easier.

Make simplifies the complex through its visual power. We are really excited about what comes next. The platform is transforming our journey day by day, and we still aren’t done building our future with it!

Conor Power, Digital Process Improvement Manager Ready to trigger an AI revolution like Stellantis &You UK? Get started with Make today.