Is AutoPlay taking a swipe at Ai?

AutoPlay has shaken up their packages. For many, it is an unwelcome hike in price. But dig a little deeper, and all the things you should be doing are now priced into the tiers. Which then raises the question, why are you not yet doing them? 

The lure of a shiny new AI agent to coax along leads, even out of hours, sounds tempting. But if you have attempted to wrangle an AI to do something for you casually, you know that when you ask for detail, they can go off script quite quickly; "hallucinating" is the term. 

As someone who has spent a significant amount of time creating agents, reports, analysis and PPT documents with AI so far this year, the power of a well-executed agent is impressive. However, like many of us, getting a task or project to execute something again the second or third time (despite SOPs and .md files) isn’t always as easy as we were led to believe. 

Which brings me to AutoPlay’s automations. Included, along with SMS in the revised packages, automations are an AI agent’s straight-laced ‘less intelligent’ cousin. They don’t think, but boy, do they do a simple repeating task excellently every time. Autoplay has a lot of potential automations, and recently I was working with a dealer group where we have planned and executed a number of templates of automations.  

Templates are one step further away from AI than automations are. They are, however, still excellent for high-speed lead follow-up. Templates (or more accurately standard text and templates—together called Standard Responses) are a virtually free tool within AutoPlay that every dealer should use. The great competitive advantage is that many dealers don’t know what they do, how powerful they are, or how to set them up, or they don’t trust them.  

The power of any dealership is enhanced by dull but important things like SOPs—standard operating procedures. Don’t think of them as a ring binder hidden in a credenza somewhere, but as an agile tool to help you and your team raise their game. A documented way of doing things at the dealership; a mixture of ‘how-to's' and ‘this is the way we do things here’ that becomes an often-referred-to manual. 

The reason dealers are leaning towards AI is clear. In lead management it offers an opportunity to respond to enquiries quickly, with a high-quality response across multiple channels. This comes with some risk and some cost.  

What if there was a way of doing this within AutoPlay? Well, there is—and

the good news is that you are already paying for it. A template or a standard response is a component that helps a dealer reply to enquiries consistently well.  

A mystery shop of your sales team’s responses will both delight and disappoint. The best responses will be very good, the worst responses poor. The best responses will be timely, the worst, slow. Consistency is king. A well-executed response, delivered in a timely manner (where the channel is matched) is highly valuable.  

Imagine knowing your team would do this day in day out; they could respond to more leads, more quickly more consistently. This is where AutoPlay’s standard text feature comes in. If you create a library of excellent responses (product rich, with a ‘why buy from us’ paragraph and a clear call to action, and using AutoPlay’s merge fields) a sales consultant can choose to either deploy this response in seconds within Autoplay without modification, or they can tailor it to ensure any questions are answered. However you use them, set up right they facilitate fast paced quality responses every time. The best bit they are free. 

Couple that with auto-lead allocation and you have just promoted your Autoplay system up a couple of divisions.  

Like many things that make a big difference in your dealership, looking at where effort or resource is wasted will unlock productivity gains. Often steps that are overly manual are bottlenecks to greater productivity for both sales and service, and you don’t need to reach out to an ai solution to fix these issues. You just need to know where to start.  

Right now, AutoPlay’s new bundled features are a great starting point without having to reach out to a third party.  

©2026 Boost Auto. 

www.boostauto.co.nz/read-blog 

Boost Auto is an automotive consultancy working in seven main areas.  

• Sales Training 

• Autoplay audits, dashboard creation and training 

• Sales and Marketing effectiveness for brands and dealers 

• Get Ready Automations 

• Market Insights & Trends 

• Business planning and facilitation 

• Go To Market strategies for emerging brands. 

You can contact us at anthony@boostauto.co.nz