— It was a surreal experience to stand on stage in London among the most talented startup founders from all over Europe. The mere presence in the final is a great distinction and proof that Polish technologies are increasingly noticed internationally – Marcin Kowalski, co-founder of PilotGo, tells Business Insider Polska in an interview.
Onstage is one of the most interesting initiatives in the European startup world – an organization that has the ambition to become the European equivalent of the American Y Combinator, an American startup accelerator from San Francisco. It is from Y Combinator that companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit come from.
Onstage wants to play a similar role in Europe – finding, supporting and promoting the most promising young technology companies, connecting them with investors and venture capital funds.
Read also: Thousands for car repairs. That's how much we pay at the workshop now
This is how PilotGo was created
PilotGo is an example of how a product with global potential can be created from a local problem, in this case Poland.
The company's history dates back to an earlier project in which the team investigated the potential of data collected by cars manufactured after 2019. Although the initial idea did not work out, the founders noticed real problems in the car repair industry.
— Many workshops are still at a very early stage of digitalization. They do not use modern tools because they often do not have time or resources for it. They still use notebooks and notebooks as their main management tool, and a large part of their day consists of repetitive, administrative tasks that could be relatively easily automated. Customer service, ordering parts, communication between the mechanic and the reception – all this takes up a lot of their time that could be spent actually working on the cars – Kowalski explains to us.
In January, the team conducted intensive field research. He visited 60 workshops, conducted surveys among car owners and created the first version of a tool that answered one of the biggest problems: lack of time to answer calls.
Read also: Used cars will flood Poland in 2024. This is not the end
How does it work?
In short: PilotGo is a digital assistant for car repair shops. It uses artificial intelligence and works in the background, accompanying employees in their daily work and supporting them in four key areas: handling telephones and making appointments, vehicle inspection, ordering parts and communication with the customer after repair.
— PilotGo is plugged directly into the workshop phone. Our AI agent listens to the call and extracts all key information from it – who is calling, what car the call is about, what problem the customer is reporting. When an appointment is made, the system detects the date and saves it in the calendar. And if the workshop cannot answer the phone, a voice bot can collect similar information from the customer. This solution is interesting because it does not force the workshop to change its way of working. If someone continues to write everything down in the notebook, please feel free to do so. We work in the background and organize the data, so you can return to it in case of any misunderstandings with the client. Over time, workshops themselves come to the conclusion that they no longer need to use the notebook, explains the company's co-founder. If the workshop cannot answer the call, a voice bot will do it for them.
The mechanic can record a voice note, which is converted into text and turned into a list of faults. The system also supports parts ordering, automating repetitive activities, and prepares repair protocols and reminders for customers.
— From the beginning, we assumed that we wanted to use the benefits of artificial intelligence, but in a very precise way. We do not build a model that knows everything about everything and is often wrong. We build a product precisely tailored to the realities of workshop work, which makes it more effective and reliable than widely available language models. At the same time, we always emphasize that artificial intelligence does not replace humans. It is still the human who supervises everything – AI simply relieves him of monotonous and ineffective tasks, thanks to which the workshop team has more time to serve customers and build lasting and high-quality relationships with them – says Kowalski.
Poland is the number 1 market in Europe
The team also sees great potential in synergy with parts distributors such as Inter Cars and Autoland. — A strong used car market and Inter Cars distributors make Poland a natural leader in the automotive aftermarket. We are building an AI solution that will revolutionize the way workshops operate – first in Poland, then throughout Europe – notes Jan Wyrwiński, president of PilotGo, in an interview with Business Insider.
PilotGo currently operates mainly in Poland, which – according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association – has the highest rate of number of cars per 1,000 inhabitants in Europe – 703, with the European average of 574. In addition, our country has approximately 20,000. workshops, and around 250,000 throughout Europe. – Our ambition is to become a tool for at least 25,000 workshops across Europe – reveals Kowalski.
