A closer look: Automotive

A quick search of automotive trends shows that the industry is growing. With the rapid technological advancements and disruptions, are you ready and equipped to keep up with the market’s demands? As with other sectors, excellent customer experience (CX) is vital. But what is the relevance of CX in the automotive industry?

Below are examples of how a great customer experience strategy in the automotive industry can lead to great results.

1. Paving the way for improved customer experience at the dealer level
2. Putting the client—and their customers—in the driver’s seat
3. Boosting CSAT scores for an EV charging solutions provider
4. Driving smoother and smarter
5. Streamlining purchase and delivery management for a car parts supplier

Paving the way for improved customer experience at the dealer level

Customer service can make or break a company, especially in the much-changed competitive luxury automotive market. Today, there are so many high-end vehicle options that lagging in just one area encourages consumers to shop elsewhere.

This client was struggling with a reputation for poor customer service in its dealerships. Customers were made to feel as if they should be grateful for the mere privilege of buying a luxury car, not only at the time of sale but, more importantly, in the service after the vehicle was purchased.

To remedy this situation, the client sought to determine current customer satisfaction levels and specific areas for improvement at the dealer level.

With the right outsourcing partner, the client was able to develop and initiate a customer loyalty campaign for both new buyers and existing car owners, integrating a customer satisfaction survey:

• Inspiro provided end-to-end management, from survey design to online platform development to reporting, with the overall goal of determining solid and weak points at the dealership level. 
• Over 1,000 surveys were conducted per quarter, through email and phone, with follow-up calls undertaken to track down surveys not returned within two weeks.

Over eight weeks, the target 50% of survey respondents was not only met but substantially surpassed, ending the period with 70% customer response. This enabled the client to analyze and address not just the desired half, but a significant majority of customer concerns, providing an excellent head start on the road to renewed customer satisfaction.

Putting the client—and their customers—in the driver’s seat

A renowned German multinational manufacturer of luxury vehicles was struggling with each of its dealers taking their individualized approach to lead generation. This made it difficult to perform a company-wide analysis of customer reaction, along with cause analysis and increased working hours for each dealer since additional training and labor management were required for temporary staff during the generation period.

For the holiday launch of its new car model, this automotive client was looking to transition from a dealer-led to an enterprise-led lead generation campaign to maximize results and learn about their customers:

• Whereas the dealer-led system naturally made calls during each dealer’s working hours, Inspiro arranged agent shifts to initiate calls when many customers were more likely to be home, significantly improving the chances of reaching the client’s 4,000 existing customers.
• Inspiro’s domain expertise and resources came into play through the outbound call system, which was efficiently used to seamlessly manage KPI progress, conduct agent motivation management, and gather additional information via a voice-of-the-customer survey.

A full 6.0% of customers agreed to visit their dealer, and another 17.7% of customers responded that they would consider visiting. A significant 23.7% database-to-leads conversion and a unified view of customer sentiment were achieved compared to the dealer-led campaigns.

Boosting CSAT scores for an EV charging solutions provider

A US-based electric vehicle charging solutions company wanted an outsourcing partner with proven customer experience expertise to address their high abandonment rates and low CSAT scores.

To ensure better call coverage, Inspiro:

• Introduced new staff schedule patterns that factored in coverage and call volume
• Implemented coaching and mentorship program focused on product knowledge, including random call listening sessions
• Handled incidents and complaints efficiently, with an average of 10-15 tickets resolved daily

In less than a year, Inspiro improved the key metrics leading to a CSAT score of 90.04%.

• Improved abandonment rate by 3.35%
• Achieved 98.96% reliability score vs 95% target
• Achieved 92.50% quality score vs 90% target
• Lowered average speed of email response by 90% – down to 6 minutes from 1 hour
• Reduced average speed of answer to 12 seconds from 20 seconds

Driving smoother and smarter

With automobile technology getting more sophisticated every year, drivers and passengers can really use concierge and technical support to ensure the safe, comfortable usage of their advanced vehicles.

A leading automobile manufacturer, therefore, sought a partner to provide specialized operators, supplying detailed information 365 days a year for its connected cars and premium line, via the client’s Telematics Support Center.

Since the Center needed to be able to handle 12,000 to 15,000 inbound calls per month, Inspiro implemented the following:

• Hired 80 agents to man operations. This number—and corresponding expense—might well have been substantially larger, but a streamlined approach was developed to strategically deploy support during the crucial period from 9 am to 6 pm.
• A modified training curriculum and call flow with a strong technical focus were overseen by a Quality Manager, who helped improve each agent’s learning speed and service quality, focusing on types and trends of inbound inquiries and developing a FAQ to help answer calls more efficiently.

By focusing support during critical and peak driving hours, we improved first call resolution (FCR) by 14% while reducing average handling time (AHT) by 26% in the first year of operations.

Streamlining purchase and delivery management for a car parts supplier

A leading global independent supplier to the automotive sector was looking for a partner to support purchase and delivery management from the backend. Their main challenge was handling many different automobile products across multiple manufacturing locations. 

With not only their own but also clients’ and sub-contractors’ PO management systems in play, management was hardly unified. This created many complications, including the need to adjust delivery dates multiple times, increased human error, and additional costs to the client. 

To streamline client processes:

• Specific agents were assigned to manage different units, so they could collaborate and streamline the communication process. Dealer Parts Inventory Assistance was established to ensure timely delivery of sub-parts to various departments, while Inquiry Management was tasked to analyze prior human errors and delivery delays.
• With one location selected as the dedicated, cost-efficient delivery center, Inspiro established delivery date and PO management, functioning as the liaison between factory-warehouse-sales and the client to get delivery date responses and communicate client requirements.

Through the dedicated delivery center, various processes and multi-operations were streamlined, which helped reduce the overall cost for the client by a substantial 40% compared to the previous vendor. Assigning specific agents to definite tasks and units reduced human error to zero.