The Ultimate Guide To Salesforce Automotive Cloud

Introduction

The automotive industry is undergoing a radical transformation. With electric vehicles, direct-to-consumer sales models, and connected car technologies reshaping the market, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), dealerships, and mobility service providers need a smarter, more agile way to manage customer relationships and operations. Enter Salesforce Automotive Cloud—a specialised solution designed to revolutionise how automotive businesses engage with their customers and partners.

Salesforce Automotive Cloud offers a comprehensive solution tailored to meet the unique needs of automotive businesses. This article delves into the transformative power of Salesforce Automotive Cloud, exploring its features, benefits, and impact on the automotive sector.

See your driver’s information in one place. Dive into purchase and service histories, check open leases and warranties, and even manage in-vehicle features and subscriptions. Now you can surprise and delight at every touchpoint with an AI CRM for automotive.

What is Salesforce Automotive Cloud?

Automotive Cloud lets automotive companies effectively maximise the lifetime value of vehicles and transform their customer experience. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and dealers can collaborate better because they get a comprehensive, aggregated, and connected view of vehicles, customers, and financial relationships.

Automotive Cloud is built on Sales Cloud and Service Cloud and enables manufacturers and dealers to effectively manage the key touch points in the life cycle of customers and vehicles. The data model and workflows are based on industry-wide best practices that reduce the time you spend on routine, repeated tasks. You can focus on engaging with customers and drive brand loyalty by designing actionable experiences around the important mobility moments. Automotive Cloud transforms the dealer and stakeholder experience and equips you to deliver the personalised, proactive service that your clients expect.

Automotive Cloud meets unique industry needs, with data models and workflows based on industry-wide best practices. Neo Motors won’t need to invest time in complex migration or implementation projects because data can flow easily from their existing systems to Automotive Cloud. 

Why Use Salesforce Automotive Cloud?

Gap 1: Fragmented Vehicle & Customer Data

Traditional CRMs can’t handle the complexity of managing vehicles, owners, drivers, and their interrelationships. Automotive Cloud’s vehicle data model unifies this data in one place, creating accurate, real-time profiles for every touchpoint.

Case Example:
A luxury brand needed to coordinate leasing data, service records, and driver profiles across 200+ dealerships. Automotive Cloud enabled centralised views and drove 35% faster lead-to-test-drive conversions.

Gap 2: Lack of Real-Time Engagement

Legacy systems rely on manual alerts and reports. Automotive Cloud automates real-time triggers using Platform Events, enabling proactive communications for service, recalls, and upselling.

Scenario:
A connected car reports a low battery. Within seconds, the driver gets an alert, and a nearby dealership is notified. This real-time loop avoids breakdowns and builds customer trust.

Key Features Of Salesforce Automotive Cloud

Salesforce Automotive Cloud provides a wide range of features and functionalities designed specifically for automotive businesses. Here are some key features:

Take Action Fast With Automotive Cloud Intelligence:

• Get out-of-the-box insights:  Get valuable insights with out-of-the-box intelligent analytics experiences, built directly into Automotive Cloud.

• Discover Analytics Built for Automotive:  Tailor analytics and AI experiences to specific industry use cases with prebuilt visualisations and ready-to-go AI.

• Easily Access Key Insights: Embed visual and predictive insights directly into the flow of work in Salesforce, including directly on record pages

Drive partner engagement with Experience Cloud for Automotive:

• Securely Extend Your Source Of Truth: Help your partners make better business decisions based on the same set of data, including driver, vehicle, fleet, warranty, and financial information.

• Improve Knowledge-Sharing: From fleet operations to warranties and claim processing, give your partners what they need to collaborate more effectively.

• Allow Partners To Self-Service Information: Help partners find information related to loans, leases, vehicle titles, financial transactions, and balances, and track statuses as needed.

Connect Everything and Automate Anything:

• Connect All Of Your Automotive Data, Wherever It Is:  With an extensive library of prebuilt connectors for critical enterprise applications, databases, protocols, and industry standards, connectivity has never been easier.

• Build an Integrated Data Foundation: Orchestrate all your systems, spanning legacy and modern applications, on-premises databases, cloud-based SaaS, and more on Salesforce’s automotive industry software.

• Automate Any System Or Process:  Use natural language prompts and no-code to pro-code tools to automate any process quickly, and get value faster by reusing components like bots, connectors, workflows, and APIs.

Extend the power of Automotive Cloud

Dive into automotive industry-specific innovation with these related products built on the Automotive Cloud. Get value fast, no matter the use case, and power every experience with intelligent insights and analytics.

Set Up and Configure Automotive Cloud

Set up features and review permission set licenses for Automotive Cloud. Create user profiles and assign the required permission sets to user groups. Customize page layouts to give your users a streamlined view of all vehicles, customers, and stakeholders. Configure vehicle inventory search, appointment scheduling, and the service console. Collaborate with partners and customers with extensible Experience Cloud portals. Set up additional tools, components, and Analytics to scale up and enhance your business.

What can you do with Automotive Cloud?

Empower your customer-facing teams with Automotive Cloud, the world’s #1 AI CRM, built for automotive.

Unite Driver and Vehicle Information In One Platform

• Unify sales and service interactions: See every driver touchpoint in one platform, and proactively engage to resolve issues fast with alerts, recommendations, and key service milestones.

• Manage leases, warranties, and claims: Automate warranty programs, manage claims and payouts, and see available services or subscriptions to drive upsells or improve the customer experience.
• Surprise and delight at every touchpoint: Empower every automotive partner with secure access to the same data so that every customer touchpoint feels seamless and on-brand.

Deliver Captivating Experiences Beyond The First Purchase:

• Build lasting customer relationships: Create innovative customer experiences that differentiate your business, drive brand loyalty, and expand your reach.
• Use contextually relevant data: Dynamically update driver profiles as they interact with related businesses and their vehicles online, so your teams are always using the most up-to-date information.
• Power immersive experiences: Dynamically update driver profiles as they interact with related businesses and their vehicles online, so your teams are always using the most up-to-date information.

Turn Data Into Action With The Help Of AI and Automation

• Empower your teams: Get out-of-the-box alerts, recommendations, and insights built directly into Automotive Cloud, so customer-facing teams can take action fast.
• Improve business productivity: Use purpose-built workflows, prebuilt visualizations, and ready-to-go AI, embedded directly into the flow of work.
• Innovate faster: Reduce time to market with a single, customizable platform, so you’re free to focus on building value-add offerings.

Conclusion:

Salesforce Automotive Cloud is more than a CRM—it’s an intelligent engagement hub for the next era of mobility. From unifying vehicle and customer data to enabling real-time telematics triggers and empowering dealership partners, it offers the agility, visibility, and automation that modern automotive players demand.

Ready to get started? Spin up a sandbox, deploy the Vehicle Console App, and simulate telematics integration using Platform Events. Start small, measure impact, and scale across dealerships or OEM networks.

As the automotive landscape evolves, those who adopt industry-specific platforms like Automotive Cloud will gain a competitive edge—not just in technology, but in experience delivery, operational efficiency, and loyalty building.

Strategic Tip: Layer AI insights (Einstein for Automotive) on top of the vehicle lifecycle data model to unlock predictive service alerts, smart routing, and next-best actions.