Now celebrating its 40th year, Pinkstones represents Toyota, Lexus and MG across three sites in Stoke-on-Trent, alongside a used car operation with more than 250 vehicles in stock.
Like many retailers, the group has thousands of customers in its database, each with a potential reason to re-engage: a service, MOT, overdue VHC work, finance renewal or possible vehicle change. The challenge was reaching them consistently, at scale and in a way that still felt like Pinkstones.
For Group Marketing Manager Curtis Hague, that distinction mattered.
“We’re very human-focused as a business,” says Curtis. “If we’ve got a customer in front of us, whether that’s at the service desk or in a sales environment, we’re really good at giving that customer a special experience.
“But we’ve also got a lot of customers in the database that we don’t see. The challenge for us was how to deliver that human touch at volume.”
Could AI support a human-led retail experience?
Pinkstones approached AI with an open mind and some natural caution.
Curtis had already been using AI tools in his marketing role so could see the potential but introducing AI-powered customer communication across the business was a bigger step.
Pinkstones didn’t want communication to become colder, more generic or less personal. The aim was to use AI where it could create consistency, reach more customers and give the team more opportunities to provide the right human response.
“The key question in the early stages was always around customer focus,” says Curtis. “How could a machine help us deliver the human-centric service we’ve become known for as a family-run business?”
AI Assistant helped answer that question by being deployed in the right part of the customer journey - reaching out to customers before opportunities disappeared, reminders were missed or service opportunities quietly drifted away.
From reminders to real conversations
Before introducing AI Assistant, Pinkstones was already sending service and MOT reminders. That activity was useful and necessary but it was largely one-way. A customer could be told their service was due but there was limited opportunity to understand what sat behind their response - or lack of one.
Had they forgotten? Had they sold the car? Had they moved away? Was there a previous experience that needed attention? Were they thinking about changing their vehicle but had not yet raised their hand?
AI Assistant changed the nature of that communication.
“The real differentiator is the two-way conversation,” explains Curtis.
“Previously, we were sending HTML emails from a no-reply email address with useful sales, service and MOT messages but they didn’t always evoke a response.
“With our AI Assistants, we can email a customer in a way that looks like it’s coming from someone within the business and then start off two-way conversations really easily.”
Customers reply naturally. The AI Assistants can understand the intent, continue the exchange where appropriate and refer the right conversations back to the Pinkstones team.
For a retailer built around personal service, that makes the role of AI clear: it helps identify the moments where a customer needs attention, reassurance or a follow-up from a person.
Turning sales conversations into real vehicle sales
The impact on vehicle sales has already been significant.
Across its Toyota and MG sites, Pinkstones has seen AI Assistant play a role in supporting 89 vehicle transactions - worth £2m of their sales - over a six-month period. With the Lexus site onboarding shortly, there is further opportunity to extend that impact across the wider group.
For Pinkstones, the value comes from its AI Assistants identifying the right moments to re-engage customers, then starting conversations that the team can pick up when human input matters most.
As a result, sales opportunities are not dependent on someone having time to manually work through historic data, lost leads or lapsed customer lists. An AI Assistant helps surface the opportunity, start the conversation and pass the right moments back to the team.
For busy sales teams this means more of the conversations they want: customers who have replied, shown intent or given the business a reason to follow up.
Turning conversations into profitable aftersales work
Alongside its impact on sales conversations, AI Assistant has also made a significant difference in aftersales.
In previous years, quieter workshop periods often meant short-term tactical campaigns around winter health checks, air-con regassing or other seasonal offers. Those campaigns had a place but they were reactive and didn’t always bring in the highest-value work.
AI Assistant has helped Pinkstones move to a more consistent rhythm of customer contact. Service, MOT and VHC follow-up conversations are no longer dependent on a manual push or a gap in the diary. Outreach happens continuously, using the data already available inside the business.
That consistency has changed the group’s aftersales position.
“This year, the workshop diary is consistently full 8 weeks ahead,” says Curtis. “The workshop’s alive with activity and profitable jobs. It’s been transformative.”
For a three-site retail group, that is a significant commercial outcome. It shows the value of contacting the right customers at the right time, with communication that encourages a response rather than simply sending another reminder.
It also shows why scale matters.
“We could employ someone to spend their time emailing customers,” says Curtis, “but with that kind of repetitive outreach, it is impossible to sustain high quality output and consistency over time. AI Assistant has given us a reliable way to keep all kinds of activity moving, while allowing our team to focus on the conversations where their expertise and judgement make the biggest difference.”
That consistency is one of the clearest benefits for Curtis.
“I think it’s the ability to spot the customer opportunities available to us and act on them every day,” he says. “No matter how many people you employ, you’re never going to have that same ability to speak to every customer at scale, in a helpful two-way conversation.”
Helping Pinkstones show up more often
Perhaps the most powerful part of the Pinkstones story is not that AI has made the business feel more automated. It is that AI has helped the business feel more attentive.
Customers are being contacted before the moment passes. Replies are being understood rather than lost in the noise. Conversations are being routed to the people best placed to help.
That matters because Pinkstones has not changed what it values. Relationships, service and personal connection still sit at the heart of the business. AI Assistant has simply helped those values reach more customers, more consistently.
For other retailers looking at AI with curiosity, caution or some internal resistance, the lesson is clear.
The right AI solution should not ask a good business to become less human. It should help it show up more often, more helpfully and with a clearer view of the customers who already want a reason to come back.
Looking to bring the human touch to more customer conversations?
AI Assistant helps automotive retailers reach more customers, start more two-way conversations and turn existing data into real sales and aftersales opportunities. To explore how AI-powered conversations could support your dealership, contact AI Assistant at [email protected] or call +44 (0) 1488 757447.
