Automotive Business Magazine – Q3 2026 – Digital edition - Flipbook - Page 20
Interview
Autoflows
Jessica Bird speaks with Nicholas Malcolm, CEO, and
Per Laredius, senior strategic sales partner and GTM
adviser at Autoflows, about aftersales and AI
I
n the heart of Copenhagen in
May 2026, the Autoflows Summit
brought together stakeholders from
across automotive retail to discuss
retention, the aftersales profitability
crisis, and how AI is paving the way
for those dealer groups willing to
take the opportunity.
As the day of insights and
workshops came to a close, Automotive
Business Magazine caught up with
Nicholas Malcolm and Per Laredius, to
understand why profitability may not
come from the showroom.
Experience expectations
Across all walks of life, automation,
speed and instant answers are the
expected norm.
Malcolm says: “10 years ago, I was
saying ‘we all have to be like Amazon’.
That's the experience customers want.
Now, [Claude is] what will affect the
experience and set expectations even
higher in terms of the end customer.
“It's always good to frame the future
around the end customer.”
With this expectation of seamless
service as a backdrop, automotive retail
faces a problem.
“If you work in automotive, and
you were to ask most of your
friends and colleagues about
the industry, they normally
start with a frustration about
the experience,” Malcolm
explains.
“No one wants to go
to the workshop if they
can help it. So, the
experience in
itself is a
pain.
Then,
NICHOLAS MALCOLM
imagine in most cases that you have to
go to the workshop, and then go back
again.
“This is only the basics, of course,
and the bar is only getting higher in
the future. This is somewhere AI can
hopefully help.”
This might mean, for example, making
sure to speak to the right customer at
the right time, and avoiding offering
irrelevant services.
Malcolm continues: “If I imagine I only
had one customer, what's my dream
service then? My dream is personal, it’s
proactive, it's relevant.”
Looking outside the automotive market,
Malcolm points to other businesses
that get customer service right. The
difference with these – including retailers
such as Amazon and IKEA – is that they
are data driven.
In a world of comprehensive data,
those that don’t use this information
effectively – in order to present
customers with an experience tailored to
at least the most obvious identifiers – will
appear behind the times.
Customer resistance
What most think about when
asked to conjure up an 'AI
agent' is the standard chatbot
that is the first point of entry
for interactions with many
businesses. Stock responses,
simple answers, large room
for error, all normally resulting
in a request to ‘speak to a
human’.
For Autoflows, however, the
future is far more immersive:
an AI agent that customers
can call, have in-depth,
complex conversations
with about their needs,
speaking as if to
a human
