Where are we now?

Building a digital highway

With customer requirements changing, car brands are racing to explore how they can continue to engage with customers and ensure business continuity. Digital channels are the answer. The global situation has highlighted and accelerated the need for car brands to offer a fully integrated in-store and digital buyer experience throughout the entire customer lifetime. The opportunity to reach and engage with the online audience clearly exists, and it’s up to manufacturers and dealerships to maximize sales by taking advantage of this opportunity.²

Aside from the clear shift to digital, there are a number of additional key trends specifically in the Automotive sector. The electrification of cars, the rise in shared mobility, the shift towards autonomous vehicles, and a big surge in ride-hailing apps are all emerging as a result of changed behaviors. They also influence the customer’s perception of buying experiences and future expectations.

Do you want to know how to get the most out of your sales experience? Do you want to build better engagement with customers at the most critical touch points? Do you want to get ahead of the curve when it comes to future mobility solutions? Explore how to get a clear picture of the road ahead with key customer purchasing trends and cutting-edge industry insights to accelerate your customers’ experience.

Becoming customer-centric

Let data drive all the decisions

Data underpins the ability to support, inform, educate, and offer value-added services and other products — all in the right context. By gathering data across the entire value chain from OEM to dealer, you’ll be able to reduce the size of data puddles and paint a picture of the customer experience by replacing guess work with data-driven decision making.

Consolidating these data sources into a single data reservoir makes management, analysis, and action more efficient and timely, and it allows for improved analysis. By implementing easy-to-use dashboards accessible from a centralized platform, you’ll be able to use data more appropriately, better-understand customer trends, and recognize how this translates into customer needs.

On a microlevel, understanding individual customer preferences enables you to build a personalized marketing, pricing, and outreach strategy. Data allows you to reach your audience with tailored messaging, programmatic advertising, and automated lead management — all followed up with relevant personal engagement.

Personalizing ‘micro-moments’ is key to nurturing potential customers as they navigate the car-buying journey. Being in control of your data allows you to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and personalized data that prepares your customer for a deal that quite simply can’t be missed.³ AI and Machine Learning strategies can help to identify sentiments, scale personalization, deliver multi-media experiences, and offer appropriate content that takes the customer along to the next best action.

Make digital self-serve your new normal

Remote interactions don’t have to be less impactful than face-to-face engagements. Investing more time and money into strong content marketing and digital experiences over in-person meetings can be a great way to improve efficiency, but it’s important to focus engagement at the right time and on the correct channels. By aligning digital experiences with those in-dealership, you’ll be better equipped to deliver a consistent, real-time, and personalized journey, helping to build releationships that earn lifelong customers. This translates to being able to transition from a product business to a services business.

Although the customer-facing side of the Automotive sector has traditionally been an in-person industry, this engagement process needs to adapt to fit the new trends, which will likely continue beyond the pandemic. Customer engagement doesn’t just apply to the sales process, but also the entire relationship between the brand, the product, and the customer. Adjust your approach to a fully customized self-service experience, and train your Sales Development team to make an impact across email, phone, video, and in-person interactions.

Help your customers make better choices

Purchasing a vehicle is a high-cost, emotive purchase. While some customer personas may make a purchase based on their sentiment, others are more rational by meticulously researching their options and gradually working out a shortlist before proceeding to engage with select manufacturers or dealerships. It’s key that manufacturers and dealerships can differentiate between these two purchasing profiles.

By offering a guiding hand throughout this process and highlighting key USPs that further enable the customer’s buying persona, you will be better equipped to influence the customer as they make these decisions. For example, offering something as simple as home delivery provides convenience and highlights the premium service you can provide.

The digital transformation of the Automotive industry is also providing a range of new opportunities for manufacturers and dealerships looking to take their customer service to the next level. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have advanced significantly in recent years, creating the potential for virtual test drives. A truly realistic experience can be accessed via a web browser without the usual speed bumps. Digital contracting, meanwhile, is streamlining the paperwork side of purchasing and financing vehicles, greatly reducing the time it takes to fill out a contract and further improving satisfaction.

Keep in line with market trends

Marketing and incentivization alone aren’t enough to keep customers coming back. At the heart of every memorable brand is a solid range of products that has to meet the needs and preferences of the customer. Investing in vehicle design that is both attractive, efficient, connected, and scalable to support the evolution of the automobile is a must. Achieving this in a way that is cost-effective, thus providing a strong profit margin, is both a challenge and an opportunity for vehicle manufacturers.

While it’s no secret that there is no one-size-fits-all preference for all customer profiles, applying a customer-centric approach to research and development could help to ensure the right boxes are being ticked now and in the future. Continue to offer customers flexibility, and ensure you cater to all within your range.

Offer convenient purchasing models to reap future rewards

Offering your customers a variety of payment models can ensure you are catering to a wide array of needs. Whether it’s leasing, a hire purchase, or an upfront payment, having more finance options helps to build the longevity of your relationship with customers. For example, for customers that prefer to change their vehicle regularly, leasing is a great option. At the same time, for customers who may want to own their car but don’t have all the funds upfront, a hire purchase may be the better option. Ultimately, splitting payments across fixed intervals offers flexibility and convenience for the customer.

Offering additional value-adds such as vehicle delivery, maintenance, servicing, and companion mobile apps provide additional benefits after the original point of sale.

Approximately 72% of car buyers capitalizing on a complimentary maintenance plan repurchase the same vehicle make.⁴ Offering these added extras allow you to hold significance with your customer throughout the lifecycle of the purchase, while encouraging additional recurring revenue.

Make every interaction count

The foundation of every long-term relationship is good communication and the creation of real value for your customers before, during, and after the sale. It’s no different when you’re trying to cultivate better customer engagement with car buyers. Sixty-five percent of a company’s business tends to come from its existing customer base.⁵ Make sure your customers are aware when their maintenance plan is up for renewal, and offer continued benefits above and beyond that of a new customer. Segmentation is really important when it comes to how you speak to customers. Understand who your personas are and who is most likely to make another high-value purchase soon.

Are you providing the right content and services to your customers? Are you giving them access to a range of additional perks? And, have you built enough rapport from the previous purchase to bring them back for the next sale?

Automotive OEMs need to move from traditional segmentation approaches and employ data and personalization strategies to acquire, retain, and increase customer lifetime value. The manufacturer that makes and maintains a meaningful connection with customers after the sale, will be in a better position to earn brand loyalty more easily. Determine what will keep your customers coming back and keep in touch frequently with Next Best Action (NBA) and Next Best Offer (NBO) communications.

Design dealerships for digital

Customers don’t make a distinction between brands and dealerships. As a result, manufacturers must offer a valuable omnichannel experience to keep customers engaged. Combining the online and in-store experience to develop a flexible customer journey is the first step — and many dealerships have yet to catch on. Matching and marrying digital interactions with physical ones (showroom visits) will provide consistency and real-time personalized journeys.

OEMs need to connect customer service centers with dealerships and handle issues, passing them from one customer service unit to another. Dealerships must undergo a face-lift by adapting to suit customer needs and molding around the need for a more cohesive customer experience — in terms of systems, staff training, and better technology.

Whether it’s virtual test drives, upskilling employees to do multiple roles, new bonification set-up, changing your business structure, or improving documentation management by digitizing the process, there are a number of efficiencies that can be achieved.⁶ With digital more of a requirement than a choice, dealerships and manufacturers need to work together to create a seamless experience through the customer’s journey of research, consideration, intent, purchase, and ongoing loyalty.

Stay on top of shared mobility

Prior to the events of 2020, more and more people were travelling by taxi, ride-hailing, or car-sharing with each other. Across China, Europe, and the U.S., the shared mobility market now exceeds $60 billion.⁷ While the events of 2020 may have made travelers more wary of sharing a space, as shared mobility evolves and becomes more accessible, the future could pose ample new opportunity for many auto brands, including manufacturers, suppliers, and technology innovators. Shared mobility has the potential to be transformative, although the pace at which this industry evolves depends on how a number of factors, including customer preference, evolving technology, and government regulations progress over the next few years.

Ultimately, there are still many what-ifs surrounding shared mobility. Automotive companies may need to transform to enable the production and marketing of purpose-built models, such as autonomous or green vehicles, provide cost-efficient alternatives, or improve market penetration elsewhere by becoming a platform or services provider.⁸

Shape the future driving experience

With the rise in shared mobility and excitement building around autonomous vehicles, car brands have to carve out a market for themselves. In big cities, the growth of electric and autonomous vehicles seems likely, especially as congestion and pollution continues to be a problem. Robo-taxis and shuttles could be a helpful solution to many of the issues being faced. By 2040, its expected that these types of vehicles could account for up to 66% of the passenger-kilometers traveled.⁹

Connected cars are also set to evolve the way passengers interact with their vehicles. The enriched customer experience will create new ways for drivers to benefit from a personalised experience, almost resulting in cars becoming a ‘virtual chauffeur’.¹⁰

Whether it’s tracking, access to digital services, personalized controls, or proactive recommendations, the connectivity of cars has the potential to build a customer experience beyond imagination. Car companies can use this opportunity as a way to differentiate themselves and make a place for themselves in the future.

Summary

Though recent events may have put the brakes on car purchases short term, the future is looking brighter. Now more than ever, it’s important for car manufacturers to invest in genuinely customer-centric business models. Placing the customer at the heart of their decisions and business structure will open the door to a future with better longevity.

Car buyers purchase vehicles based on both rational and emotional decisions, and designing a customer experience that caters to different needs is vital. Smart data segmentation will be the basis for a successful marketing approach to different target groups. Sophisticated data management can aid effective targeting and result in a much better understanding of customer preferences. Utilizing cutting-edge marketing technology to support dealers is a great way to get ahead of the curve. And, integrating in-store and digital experience to boost engagement across the customer lifecycle will help to form deeper, direct connections.

Creating a truly remarkable customer experience will require an evolution of the way we work to embrace new digital innovation and changing customer expectations. Manufacturers must do their very best to engage customers at every stage of the product lifecycle, or they risk being outshined by competitors, new entrants, and disruptors in a rapidly evolving market.

Key takeaways