What steps are involved in setting up Chatref for a car dealership?

Your first step is to give the AI agent everything it needs to answer customer questions accurately. In Chatref, you can upload PDFs like your current inventory sheets, financing guides, service menus, and any existing FAQs. You can also point it to your dealership website or sitemap and it will learn from those pages automatically. Because Chatref uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) grounded in your own documents, the agent never guesses or makes up answers. It only provides information that comes directly from your content.

Once your content is loaded, you install the chat widget by copying a single snippet of code and pasting it just before the closing </body> tag on your dealership website. This takes less than five minutes and requires no developer skills. Every Chatref account includes the embeddable widget with no extra fees. Your new AI agent will appear as a chat button visitors can click to ask questions about vehicle availability, service appointments, financing, and more. There’s no setup fee and no long-term commitment - you just top up your account as needed.

After the widget is live, you configure how the agent behaves. In the Chatref dashboard you can set a custom brand voice that matches your dealership’s tone - friendly and expert, for example - and pick a primary color to align with your visual identity. The agent automatically answers from the documents you uploaded, so it will help customers find the right vehicle, explain warranty options, or walk them through trade-in steps. You can even set up multiple agents for different departments, all on the same account at no extra cost.

The real power for a dealership comes from custom actions. These let the AI agent connect directly to your existing tools. For instance, you can design an action that checks live inventory or books a test drive in your scheduling system. When a customer asks “Do you have a 2026 SUV in blue?” the agent can trigger a lookup against your DMS (dealer management system) and give a real-time answer. Custom actions are configured inside Chatref without code, and because you only pay per conversation response (1-5 coins depending on complexity), costs scale with actual use - never idle fees.

How easy is it to install Chatref on our dealership website?

Installation is extremely simple. You copy one embed snippet from your Chatref dashboard and paste it into your website’s code once. The widget appears instantly, and no ongoing technical maintenance is needed. Most dealerships go from sign-up to live chat in under an hour, including content upload and basic configuration.

What customization options are available for the chat widget?

You can customize the widget’s primary color to match your dealership’s branding, set a friendly name for the agent, and upload a company logo. Beyond appearance, you define the agent’s personality through the content you provide and the voice settings in the dashboard. All customization features are included on every account; there are no add-on fees for branding or styling.

Can Chatref be integrated with our existing dealership software?

Yes, through custom actions. You can build tool-calling flows that let the AI agent retrieve real-time data from your inventory management, CRM, or appointment scheduling systems. The agent only uses the documents you’ve trained it on plus whatever data your actions provide, so answers stay grounded and accurate. Set-up requires no coding; you define the inputs and outputs directly in the Chatref interface.