Managers at Huffines Subaru are turning to a new technology that employs an emerging form of artificial intelligence to help solve an age-old dealership problem: how to retain would-be sales leads who “X” out of online chats without surrendering their contact information – the modern version of hanging up the telephone.

“The results have been remarkable. We have seen a 55% customer-engagement rate, which far exceeds the performance of our previous chat provider,” Robert Goodwin, general manager, tells WardsAuto in a phone interview. Customer engagement is defined as the share of leads who provide name, number and contact information, he says.

The Corinth, TX, dealership was part of a pilot program for Chat Concierge, a new “virtual” online-chat concierge from McLean, VA. auto lender Capital One Financial Corp., Capital One is rolling out Chat Concierge to participating dealers as an added capability to its Auto Navigator e-commerce platform.

Fewer Leads Vanish

The Subaru store has about six months of experience with Chat Concierge, says sales manager Tim Spencer.. Without disclosing the price, Spencer tells WardsAuto that the added cost to the dealership for Chat Concierge is comparable to the dealership’s previous chat provider.

However, the results are much better, says Goodwin. “We had a typical chat vendor, which was very template-driven and very form-filled. They get the name and number and pass it off to us. There’s very little engagement, and it’s been like that for years. Probably 15 years,” he says.

In February 2025, Goodwin says the dealership increased customer engagement by more than 200% compared to a year ago.

Virtual ‘Agent’

What’s new is that Chat Concierge uses so-called “agentic” AI, Sanjiv Yajnik, president of Financial Services for Capital One, tells WardsAuto.

It acts like a virtual “agent,” more like an actual, highly skilled person on the chat, and less like earlier generations of automated chat systems. Those are aimed at getting the customer’s contact information but are not well-equipped to answer questions that vary from the script, Yajnik says.

“They can’t handle the complexity of questions that come from a customer: prices, inventory, comparison with similar cars, doing a trade-in, what happens if I put cash down. Older systems cannot take that. Even generative AI cannot handle all that,” he says.

In contrast, Yajnik says the Chat Concierge built around agentic AI can draw on what amounts to machine learning-trained electronic experts in all those fields to answer questions and to refer a customer to the correct destination, for instance, to a link to the appropriate tool if the customer wants to get pre-qualified for a loan.

Back on the Gas

Capital One is a primary auto lender, with 2024 auto loan originations of $34.5 billion, a hefty increase of 28% vs. 2023, according to the bank’s annual report filed with the SEC.

The significant increase is partly because Capital One tightened credit and cut back on auto originations in the second half of 2022 and throughout 2023. That’s likely partly because the bank has higher exposure to subprime auto loans than most big banks.

As of Dec. 31, 2024, loans with a credit score at origination of 620 or below, a commonly used definition of subprime, account for 27% of the bank’s outstanding portfolio. That’s even with a year ago, Capital One reports.

For context, captive finance company Ford Credit reports a share of what it considers higher-risk loans of just 3% for the fourth quarter of 2024, down from 4% a year ago.

Filling in the Cracks

The other context for agentic AI is that dealership margins are getting thinner, which makes it more important than ever that sales leads don’t fall through the cracks.

That’s what happens when customers quit a chat rather than surrender their contact information or who give up when their question doesn’t fit a neat category, Yajnik says.

“Dealerships have got to run a very efficient operation,” he says. “They’ve got to make sure they never miss a single customer.”