Company Also Signs Multi-Year Extension with Major Auto OEM Customer

Marchex, the award-winning AI-powered conversation intelligence company that helps businesses turn strategic insights into the actions that drive their most valued sales outcomes, announced that it has added more than 300 automotive dealers to its Conversation Intelligence platform during the prior twelve months, driven by a combination of direct dealer sign-ups to its Marchex Engage for Automotive offering and its automotive channel partnerships. Marchex also announced today that it has entered into a long-term, multi-year extension on a partnership with a major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customer, opening the doors to expand this relationship through a deeper integration with the OEM and additional dealership engagements.

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“We are seeing momentum build in Marchex’s automotive vertical, driven by rapid adoption of dealers and expanding relationships with OEM partners”

The company has built its artificial intelligence-powered solutions to enable automotive sales teams to deliver better buying experiences and improve sales outcomes. As Marchex continues to expand its presence in the automotive industry, the company plans to leverage core capabilities delivered by Marchex Engage for Automotive, including:

• Automatically scoring and categorizing conversations between consumers and a dealer’s sales team, using conversation intelligence
• Generating action lists that enable sellers to efficiently focus follow-up conversations on the highest-value leads
• Generating deal-saving action alerts so sales team specialists can save lost leads when conversations end unsuccessfully
• Enabling users to share conversations with other team members and the ability to set status to coordinate actions or next steps
• Enabling users to quickly review audio conversations, unlocking opportunities to improve customer experiences

Marchex’s increasing momentum in the automotive vertical comes at a time when consumer sentiment and the car-buying process itself continues to undergo change as new car inventories recover from a supply-constrained environment. A recently released Marchex study found that with inventory shortages, consumers are making clear that it is more important than ever that phone calls focused on understanding actual vehicle availability precede traditional in-person dealership visits. That is, consumers want to call and have conversations with dealers ahead of in-person dealership visits to simply validate what is specifically available and at what price, or to understand how to purchase a vehicle. A previous Marchex study revealed that roughly 80% of consumers prefer to call and speak with a dealership sales representative ahead of visiting the dealership.

“We are seeing momentum build in Marchex’s automotive vertical, driven by rapid adoption of dealers and expanding relationships with OEM partners,” said Ryan Polley, Marchex Chief Operating Officer. “There is a significant opportunity in the automotive vertical for Marchex to positively impact these businesses as the industry is going through significant change. Dealerships, OEMs, and other key players in the sector are capitalizing on how understanding consumer-to-business conversations matter more now than ever. We have been deliberate in focusing on sales conversations and have built a flexible platform that empowers OEM’s and dealers to have actionable insights that measurably improve their customers’ experience and their own bottom lines.”

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