Automotive OEMs and dealers/service providers are catching on to the fact that digitalisation can improve the customer experience in the areas of retail and servicing. A number of forces are at work behind the trend, but part of it stems from a rise in the number of transactions that dealers are handling.
Recent research from information management specialist EDM Group found that 64% of the car dealers it surveyed expect their industry to invest heavily in technology to help deal with the continued growth in car sales. This digitalisation is taking numerous forms, but Spencer Wyer, EDM Group’s Chief Technology Officer, believes one area that could dramatically change is the paperwork involved in a sale transaction.
“The problem is simply the paper,” he told Megatrends. EDM’s document digitisation services promise improvements in time and efficiency. “We are not reinventing the sales process because it’s a well-trodden process in automotive which involves many different systems and documents. We are simply making the experience better for the customer and more efficient and faster for the retailer by removing paper and using advanced technology called Intelligent Capture to check multiple factors in a set of documents and either automatically pass for payment within minutes or refer to someone if there are any problems. This enables people to focus on the exception rather than having to look at every document, most of which are fine.”
Up-to-date repair status
Hyundai recently launched a ‘Workshop Automation’ service system to enhance customer satisfaction across its global workshops. Workshop Automation harnesses state-of-the-art digital technology to keep customers up to date with information on their vehicle’s repair status with tablet PC devices. Owners can also receive real-time information through kiosks in customer lounges, along with information on Hyundai products, brand and marketing activities.
“Improving customer service is at the heart of Workshop Automation,” Nick Tunnell, Aftersales Director at Hyundai’s UK operations, told Megatrends. He observed that “digital technology is a growing and increasingly important part of customer’s interactions with all brands… Customers are increasingly time poor, their expectations of automotive retailers continues to increase. Technology is becoming ever more integrated and part of our daily lives with everyone increasingly better connected through ever more powerful devices. Subsequent generations will inevitably continue and accelerate that change.”
Service technician robots
At Audi, service robots are being introduced to help improve the speed and accuracy with which dealership technicians diagnose problems with Audi vehicles. The robots, known as Audi Robotic Telepresence (ART), provide a one-on-one virtual link that connects dealers with expert technicians, allowing the latter to inspect and help service vehicles as if they were right by the car themselves.
In developing the robots for its technicians, Audi sought the expertise of robotic telepresence solutions specialist VGo. “In their efforts to improve customer satisfaction while also lowering costs for their dealers, Audi wanted to improve the speed and accuracy of providing assistance to dealer repair technicians,” Ned Semonite, Vice President, Products and Marketing at VGo, told Megatrends. “With a specially modified VGo available at all their dealer’s service centres, Audi can get a factory expert in the service bay to work alongside the local technician at a moment’s notice.”
The remote expert controls the robot and can see and control their view, enabling the local mechanic to physically make the repair on the car. The benefits are many. “Time spent on the phone and with email exchanges is reduced. Diagnoses can be quicker since the remote expert sees what the local technician sees. Correct repair processes can be visually verified. And most importantly for the dealership, service bays are not tied up waiting for factory help,” Semonite explained.
As Brian Stockton, General Manager, Technical Support, Audi of America, added, development of the technology sprang from growing demand at dealerships: “This is a strategy to address how we could get ahead of this wave of increased sales volume and increased dealer traffic. It also establishes a much more solid partnership with the dealership technicians.”
Again, providing a positive customer experience is at the heart of the concept. “Once the car is in the customer’s hands and something goes wrong, we’re going to disappoint the market. Our job is to get the vehicle right the first time as quickly as we possibly can,” Stockton said.
Beyond automotive
Alison Vincent, Chief Technology Officer at Cisco UK & Ireland, observed that tapping digitalisation to improve customer service is not limited to the automotive industry. “Providing better ways to access remote and valuable expertise is a common trend for all industries that want to digitise their business. Customer experience is a great initial focus point and the initiatives from Hyundai and Audi are examples that show the automotive industry has acknowledged technology as an enabler for business growth and diversification; that’s the first step of the journey,” she observed.
In the healthcare and finance sectors, for example, telepresence technology is frequently used to provide remote access to important skills, such as those offered by a medical consultant or a mortgage advisor. “It makes sense that the automotive sector investigates similar ways to enhance their customer experience. ‘Digital disruption’ – the movement of business transformation by way of digital technologies – is an inevitability and we believe significant investment will be applied to the automotive sector over the coming years as businesses seek to change their models and remain attractive to customers,” she added.
For now, OEMs face the risk of being outperformed by more digitally proactive rivals. Recent research from Cisco forecasts that ‘digital disruption’ will displace about 40% of incumbent companies in almost every major industry within the next five years. “The companies that survive will be the ones who can re-invent their businesses, and most likely will have a ‘digital centre’, in which business models, offerings, and value chains are digitised to the maximum extent possible,” said Vincent. “This doesn’t mean that every automotive business will discard what has made it a success or copy the current ‘in-vogue’ digital tactics. Rather, they must challenge the assumptions that have made them a success previously, and stress-test the ways in which they deliver value to customers. In more and more industries we’re seeing smaller challengers disrupting markets, and larger firms having their market share reduced because they didn’t spot a transition or new business model quickly enough.”
When it comes to brands using digital technology to stand out from the competition, Vincent sees the move as “beyond important – it is more about survival.” She expects that successful companies will need to “embrace digitisation in all its aspects. They will digitise their assets and services, then they will maximise analysis on the reams of data that digitising provides, which will ultimately lead to them showing true differentiation from all competition.”
