Google Cloud has officially announced the expansion of its partnership with Mercedes Benz to help the latter transform key customer experiences by leveraging AI and generative AI (gen AI) technologies on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform. Under the agreed terms, Mercedes Benz will pack into its online storefront a cutting-edge e-commerce framework, one gen AI-powered smart sales assistant, and new Google-quality search and recommendations capabilities. Apart from that, the automotive giant will also expand the use of Google Cloud AI to make its call center experience more seamless and helpful, and to go with that, it will also rope in the help of gen AI tools, including Vertex AI and Google’s Gemini models, to make its marketing campaigns more personalized and relevant. Talk about the whole value proposition on a slightly deeper level, though, we begin from Mercedes’ plan of deploying a new Google Gemini-backed smart sales assistant on its websites. This Mercedes-Benz Virtual Assistant (MVA) will come decked up with an ability to communicate in natural language, something which it will put to use for helping shoppers find a car model that fits their needs, schedule a test drive, and even initiate the formal proceedings for a purchase.

“Partnering with the very best in their respective fields is an important part of our software strategy – Google is the perfect example of that. With Google Cloud, Mercedes-Benz is building new ways to deliver the most intelligent vehicles to our customers and to create personalized, intuitive experiences,” said Ola Källenius, Chief Executive Officer at Mercedes-Benz.

Next up, we have the partnership’s promise to embed Google-quality search and recommendations capabilities directly into Mercedes websites. Made possible by Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, the functionality in question will go a long distance to simplify the process of searching and shopping for customers. Hence, with the new assistant and search capabilities placed next to each other, people looking to buy a Mercedes vehicle can easily find relevant car models and products through broad or nuanced queries like “Newest EV models that seat five people,” or “2024 red wagon.” Moving on, Mercedes has also been using Google Cloud’s conversational AI technology, Dialogflow, across its U.S. call centers, where the technology has already handled more than a million calls since introduction, and it has done so in 30 different languages. For the future, the idea is to expand Dialogflow’s presence and take it into other international markets so to make sure that Mercedes’ service agents spend more time assisting customers with complicated requests that need a human intervention. Another detail worth a mention is rooted in how Mercedes has been using Google Cloud technologies to build its next generation of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Owing to Google Cloud’s knowhow in terms of processing massive amounts of data and scaling AI workloads, Mercedes’ Next Generation Internal Development and Test Platform for autonomous driving can expect to achieve greater efficiency and flexibility.

Hold on, there is more, considering we still haven’t touched on the fact that Mercedes is also using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform for maximizing the value of its customer data,

“Mercedes-Benz has a long history of using technology to create exceptional experiences for their customers,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet. “We’re excited to help them apply Google’s advanced AI to engage with customers in new ways from improving customer service to optimizing their website experience, with much more to come from this collaboration in the future.”