Mitsubishi Motors Canada has revamped its online customer journey with the introduction of an AI-powered Intelligent Companion (IC). The virtual assistant provides prospective buyers of the 2025 Outlander a personalised, interactive, 3D guide to the vehicle’s features.
“For us it is about differentiating ourselves and providing a great customer experience that makes the purchase of an Outlander, much easier,” Steve Carter, marketing director, Mitsubishi Motors, Canada, told Customer Experience Magazine.
The assistant, which launched in March, has been designed to help customers understand the features and options on the compact SUV.
“Intelligent Companion addresses the consumers’ needs and wants. [Customers] can ask any question they have about the vehicle. It makes the shopping journey much easier for them,” explained Carter.
Initially around 10% of visitors engaged with IC, but now half of visitors to the Outlander page use the tool.
In particular, Mitsubishi’s French-speaking clients have shown “really good engagement” with it.
Constantly reviewing performance
“Consumers are finding it useful. We are constantly reviewing and adding more content to help more consumers engage with it going forward,” said Carter.
Since its launch, the AI assistant has also expanded Mitsubishi’s understanding of customers. The companion provides the car brand with greater transparency about the type of questions customers are asking.
“It is a great tool for the consumer, but it’s also a great tool for us to understand the consumers’ mindset and what is important for them,” commented Carter.
As a ‘challenger brand’ in the Canadian market, Mitsubishi Motors is taking a targeted approach with artificial intelligence, deploying it where it will deliver real value. But once the team green lit the project, it moved rapidly. “We pride ourselves at trying to do things differently, to be one of the first,” said Carter.
“We reached out to our partners with this hare-brained idea and asked if it was even possible,” he added.
Working on a hare-brained idea
WongDoody working in collaboration with IBM built the Intelligent Companion using watsonx Orchestrate — a generative AI and automation application for building, deploying and managing AI assistants. Watsonx.ai, an integrated AI development tool was also used.
The tools enable the handling of large volumes of data and created an AI assistant that provided conversational responses.
Bilingual language support
Given the market, the tool also needs to be bilingual. “It is always a concern when building a large language model, that you are communicating appropriately in multiple languages. But for us, so far, so good,” commented Carter.
One of the biggest challenges with the project was building an LLM AI assistant that not only reflected the tone of voice of Mitsubishi, but could deliver all the information correctly to the consumer.
Mitsubishi’s local team pulled information from different sources, not just its corporate website but even going through owner manuals in an attempt “to bring all that information together”, added Carter.
Intelligent Companion was then tested rigorously with the Canadian target audience to ensure it could answer even niche questions with the right information.
Mitsubishi is considering expanding the Intelligent Companion across its entire product range.