Glossary
The vocabulary of dealer AI.
From BDC to F1 score to DNC suppression, defined, accurately.
Dealership operations
DMS
Dealer Management System. The system of record a dealership uses to run sales, parts, service, accounting and reporting.
CRM
Customer Relationship Management system. Stores leads, contacts, deals and sales activity.
CDP
Customer Data Platform. Unifies first-party customer data across marketing, sales and service touchpoints.
BDC
Business Development Centre. The team responsible for inbound and outbound customer engagement.
F&I
Finance and Insurance. The department responsible for retail finance, warranty and insurance attachment.
CSI
Customer Satisfaction Index. OEM-reported measure of customer satisfaction across sales and service.
NPS
Net Promoter Score. Measures the likelihood a customer would recommend the dealership.
OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer. The vehicle brand the dealership represents.
Dealer Principal
The owner or principal executive accountable for the dealership's overall performance.
General Manager
The operational leader responsible for day-to-day dealership performance across sales, service and parts.
Sales Funnel
The end-to-end progression of a prospect from initial enquiry through to a delivered sale.
Lead-to-Sale
The conversion ratio from total leads received to delivered new and used vehicle sales.
Lead Response Time
The elapsed time between a customer enquiry and the first meaningful response from the dealership.
Closing Ratio
The proportion of opportunities converted into delivered sales.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of leads or visitors who complete a defined business outcome.
Appointment Rate
The proportion of qualified leads converted into booked appointments.
Show Rate
The proportion of booked appointments where the customer attends.
Customer Retention
The ongoing relationship between the dealership and customers across vehicle ownership lifecycles.
Vehicle Parc
The total population of vehicles currently in service across a region or franchise.
Workshop Utilisation
The proportion of available workshop capacity actively used to perform billable work.
Technician Productivity
Billable hours produced by technicians as a proportion of attended hours.
Trade-In
The customer's existing vehicle accepted as part of a new vehicle transaction.
Upsell
Increasing transaction value through additional products, services or higher-specification options.
Cross-Sell
Introducing related products or services beyond the customer's primary purchase.
Lost Opportunity
A qualified opportunity that did not result in a delivered sale.
Dead Lead
A lead that has gone cold and is no longer being actively worked by the sales team.
Rooftop
An individual dealership location within a group or franchise network.
Parts Revenue
Revenue generated through the sale of vehicle parts to retail, trade and workshop customers.
Gross Profit
Revenue minus direct cost of sale; a primary measure of dealership profitability.
Customer Lifetime Value
The total value a customer is expected to deliver across their relationship with the dealership.
Repeat Purchase Rate
The proportion of customers who return to purchase another vehicle from the dealership.
Marketing ROI
Return on investment delivered by marketing spend across channels and campaigns.
Lead Attribution
The methodology used to credit marketing channels and touchpoints for delivered outcomes.
Repair Order (RO)
The work order capturing the labour, parts and pricing for a service event.
Aftermarket
Products, services and accessories sold after the initial vehicle purchase.
AI and intelligence
LLM
Large Language Model. A neural network trained to understand and generate natural language.
Generative AI
AI systems that produce new content, text, voice, code or imagery, from underlying models.
Conversational AI
AI capable of multi-turn dialogue with customers across digital and voice channels.
Agentic AI
AI systems that can plan, reason and take multi-step actions to complete goals.
AI Copilot
An AI assistant working alongside an employee to accelerate decisions and tasks.
Voice AI
AI systems designed to converse with customers via spoken voice across telephony or in-app channels.
Speech-to-Text
Converts spoken language into structured written text.
Natural Language Processing
Techniques enabling machines to interpret and structure human language.
Machine Learning
A family of algorithms that learn statistical patterns from historical data.
Business Intelligence
Tools and processes that turn operational data into descriptive insights.
Operational Intelligence
Real-time visibility into business operations to support immediate action.
Decision Intelligence
A discipline combining data, AI and human judgement to improve business decisions.
Predictive Analytics
Statistical techniques used to forecast likely future outcomes from historical data.
Embeddings
Numerical representations of text, images or events used to compare semantic similarity.
RAG
Retrieval-Augmented Generation. A pattern that grounds AI responses in verified source documents.
Semantic Search
Search powered by meaning rather than keyword matching.
Prompt Engineering
The discipline of crafting structured instructions to guide AI behaviour.
Inference
The runtime process of an AI model producing an output for a given input.
Fine-Tuning
Continuing to train a pre-trained model on domain-specific data to improve performance.
Intent Detection
Classifying the underlying purpose of a customer's enquiry.
Sentiment Analysis
Identifying the emotional tone expressed in customer interactions.
Hallucination
When an AI model generates output that is plausible-sounding but factually incorrect.
Human-in-the-Loop
Workflow design pattern where humans review or approve AI-generated outputs.
Workflow Automation
The orchestration of business tasks across systems with minimal manual intervention.
Knowledge Base
A curated repository of structured information used to ground AI and inform employees.
Customer experience
Customer Journey
The sequence of touchpoints a customer experiences across their relationship with the dealership.
Customer Lifecycle
The stages a customer progresses through, from prospect to advocate.
Touchpoint
Any individual interaction between the customer and the dealership.
Retention
Strategies and outcomes focused on keeping customers engaged with the dealership over time.
Churn
The rate at which customers stop engaging with the dealership.
Customer Satisfaction
The customer's evaluation of the experience delivered relative to expectations.
Voice of Customer
The structured capture of customer feedback to inform business decisions.
Engagement
The depth and quality of interaction between the customer and the dealership.
Lead Nurturing
Sustained communication designed to progress prospects toward a purchase decision.
Omnichannel
Delivering a consistent customer experience across every channel a customer chooses.
Customer Sentiment
The emotional tone expressed by customers across feedback channels.
Customer Experience Management
The discipline of designing, measuring and improving end-to-end customer experiences.
Compliance and platform
APP
Australian Privacy Principles (Privacy Act 1988, Schedule 1).
NDB
Notifiable Data Breaches scheme administered by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
DNC
Do Not Call Register (Do Not Call Register Act 2006).
Spam Act
The Spam Act 2003, which governs commercial electronic messaging in Australia.
Data Residency
The jurisdiction in which customer data is stored and processed.
F1 Score
Harmonic mean of precision and recall, used to evaluate classification model quality.
VIN
Vehicle Identification Number. The 17-character identifier unique to each vehicle.
Supersession
When an OEM replaces a part number with a newer SKU in the parts catalogue.
The SpectraIQ glossary is continuously expanded as the Australian automotive AI category matures. Definitions are provided for educational reference and should not be interpreted as legal, regulatory or financial advice.
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