Corporate Overview
Plaza Toyota is a major authorized Toyota dealer in Indonesia, operating 7 dealerships across 3 major cities. Its mission is to be a benchmark Toyota dealer by providing excellent customer experience in sales and aftersales, enabled by world class processes and customer services. To achieve continuous and sustainable growth, Plaza Toyota strives to deliver customer excellence through a seamless vehicle purchase experience and convenient access to quality aftersales services.
Situation Car Dealership Mobile App
Plaza Toyota has been running Technosoft’s next-generation Dealer Management System “Yana” since 2012. When Technosoft launched its new car dealer mobile application (app) for customer engagement “otoleap”, Plaza Toyota recognized that this was an easy to deploy and user-friendly mobile app to enable enable service bookings, improve service workshop loading and support omni-channel marketing strategies.
Empowering Mobile Service Bookings and Improving Service Workshop Loading
Before implementing Technosoft Otoleap, Plaza Toyota managed its service bookings mainly via telephone calls. When a customer’s call is received, an operator checks for available service slots and logs the booking manually. Any changes and cancellations are managed similarly, resulting in a high volume of manual tasks. With customer service hours limited by office hours and staff availability, this places pressures on Plaza Toyota’s service managers in predicting the utilization of its service bays and technicians.
With Technosoft’s car dealer mobile app solution, customers can now make service bookings from their mobile devices 24/7, outside of operating hours. In turn, the dealer uses the dealer portal to manage incoming booking requests. This automates the management of service bookings. After the launch of the car dealer mobile app solution, Plaza Toyota experienced an increase in the number of bookings versus unscheduled walk-ins. Automated service reminders have reduced the number of cancellations and no-shows. With the new capability to send customers notifications of their next-service, loading rates on the service workshops have significantly improved.
By targeting promotions sent via the car owners’ mobile app, Plaza Toyota successfully increased the number of bookings during off-peak hours, off-peak days and other seasonal off-peak periods.
“Providing high-quality automotive service is a challenge in multiple ways, from making the appointment to the experience inside the service drive, to the pickup and delivery,” said Mr Santoso, IT manager of Plaza Toyota. He added, “Otoleap provides a lot of value for us in making the car owner experience – our guest experience – easier, faster and more efficient”.
New Channel for Customer Interaction and Outreach
Besides increasing its service workshop loading, Plaza Toyota extended its outreach to more customers through location-based search for dealerships and driving directions for its customers. To make the communication between car owners and dealership easier, the online chat function allows customers to chat directly with their service advisors. Other new capabilities gained included the ability to create a “direct-to-mobile” marketing channel and keep in regular contact with customers by sending promotions and product updates directly to their mobile devices.
To complete the customer experience, Plaza Toyota can now create after-service surveys and send them directly to its customers’ mobile devices. The paperless process reduces the data-entry of survey responses and provides unbiased results as survey responses are made by the car owners using their car owner mobile apps. Through the car owner mobile app’s survey dashboard, Plaza Toyota can review the service feedback and customer satisfaction index instantly.
Conveniences and Ease-of-use for Car Owners
Technosoft otoleap has enabled Plaza Toyota to deliver a connected car ownership experience through an easy-to-use app, while extending 24/7 convenience to their customers. By simply downloading the car owner mobile app onto their mobile devices, Toyota owners can now easily search for a workshop, check workshop locations, find driving directions and make their dealer selection based on ratings and reviews by other customers.
After making a service appointment using the mobile app, Plaza Toyota’s customers will receive a quotation and confirmation request. When the service booking is confirmed, Plaza Toyota’s customers can use the mobile app to review the quotation, clarify questions through the chat function, and reschedule or cancel appointments when necessary. Prior to the scheduled appointment, Plaza Toyota’s customers will receive a service notification to remind them of the appointment.
After the service is completed, Plaza Toyota will send a service completion notification to the customer’s mobile phone, enabling them to plan for vehicle collection. In addition, the car owner mobile app sends a survey request which customers can complete via their mobile. This makes survey feedback and workshop performance instant and paperless.
Apart from the service process, the car owner mobile app provides detailed vehicle information and loyalty status in one place. From a customer’s perspective, he can retrieve details of past servicing in the service history, view his loyalty status and points balance, and redeem loyalty points for products and services. The car owner also receives personalized promotion and product updates. The car owner mobile app ensures a continuous digital connection to the dealership – anytime, anywhere.
“We are excited to be extending our service offerings through the mobile channel. This will take the service experience of our customers to a new level. We are confident that once our customers are used to the ease of booking using their mobile devices, they will continue to service their vehicles with us even when their warranty expire. We are positive that the increase in customer retention will lead to an overall uplift in service revenues” said Mr Santoso.
Building the Foundation for Future Automotive Retail: Omni-Channel Customer Engagement
Today’s automotive dealerships are facing a fast-evolving, competitive landscape, rapid digital technological advances and increasingly empowered consumers. While these trends may threaten traditional dealer operations, more importantly, they open up new opportunities for innovation and customer engagement.
With the leap in mobile usage, an increasing number of Gen Y or Millennial car buyers are increasingly used to mobile self-service. This drives the increasing importance for omni-channel marketing strategies that incorporate car dealership mobile apps.
Technosoft’s car dealership mobile app is designed to increase conversions of enquiries, improve customer engagement, enhance retention and increase customer satisfaction. As a continuously evolving solution, the dealer mobile app solution introduces new features regularly and seamlessly, such as test-drive bookings and telematics data integration.
“Plaza Toyota is continuously looking for ways to enhance our customers’ service experience. We firmly believe that mobile technology is an important component to achieve this goal. Technosoft otoleap is easy to use and enables modern, efficient and professional experience for both our customers and our dealer personnel,” concluded Mr Santoso.