Fish Brothers Group, one of the UK’s leading automotive retailers, has reported strong Q1 2026 performance following the expansion of ELLA’s optimAIze® AI platform across its Sales and Aftersales operations.

After a successful pilot in 2025, Fish Brothers signed a longer-term agreement and rolled out optimAIze® engage (Written AI Agents) across its group — delivering measurable gains in customer engagement, productivity and return on investment.

During Q1 2026, 83% of customers who went on to purchase had been in communication with one of ELLA’s AI Agents, across more than 36,000 personalised messages. The platform supported inbound lead follow-up, lost lead reactivation, inventory acquisition and sales event outreach — returning 252 business days back to Sales teams and contributing over 500 qualified hot sales leads, delivering a 492% ROI based on purchases directly influenced by AI-supported journeys.

In Aftersales, optimAIze® automated personalised 1‑to‑1 service outreach, lapsed service recovery and service plan upsell activity. Over 8,500 AI-led service messages generated nearly 300 qualified service leads, returning over 60 business days to Fish Brothers’ service teams.

Jon Fish, Managing Director, Fish Brothers Group, commented:

“ELLA’s AI Agents have become an integral part of how we engage with customers across both Sales and Service. The ability to scale meaningful, personalised communication while freeing our teams to focus on high‑value interactions has delivered real commercial impact.”

Andy Freeman, Chief Product Officer at ELLA, added:

“Fish Brothers demonstrates what’s possible when AI is deployed with purpose. These results reflect not just efficiency gains, but smarter, more consistent customer engagement that supports teams and drives measurable outcomes.”

Looking ahead, Fish Brothers is expanding its use of optimAIze® to include additional Sales use cases such as Service‑to‑Sales conversion, onboarding a new franchise brand XPeng, and automating Vehicle Health Check follow‑ups. The group will also deploy optimAIze® chat, enabling real‑time AI-powered webchat conversations using the same shared knowledge base and persistent customer context, and is exploring AI Voice as part of a fully integrated multi-channel strategy.