24/7 contact for Mercedes-Benz customers on the website
Online channels give customers new and innovative ways to interact with Mercedes-Benz. This is the motto of the “Online Consultancy” project. In the past you had to visit a dealership to check out new models and get information on vehicles, today this can be done from the comfort of your home thanks to modern technology – 24/7. Our goal is to provide compelling and high-end consulting and communication via the channels that the customers can use every day without having to wait for an answer or a callback.
This is the premise upon which we have initiated the collaboration with Mercedes-Benz. The Mercedes-Benz Consulting team is involved in the development and expansion of the “Online Consulting” features, starting with strategic questions on which functions contribute to high-end and intelligent online consulting, through to dealing with technical implementation issues.
We are working closely with our contact at Mercedes-Benz, involve various partners in the further development, and we ensure that the technology can be used in a meaningful way by the customers and employees.
For example, by developing the so-called “Contact module,” we were able to contribute to other projects in a way that will allow us to personally contact customers at certain points and address their questions. This already enabled us to get to the bottom of many concerns, questions, or reservations and optimally guide the customers through the online process, whether they’re at home or on the go.
Three questions for
Janine, Mercedes-Benz
Consulting,
Digital Transformation
What was challenging for you during the project?
A car purchase is not an everyday item that you buy online without extensive research and thorough consideration. Customers link different information sources and points of contact with each other to form a solid picture for a decision. Our hypothesis was that the more easily accessible and available an expert is on the website for advice, the more high-end the online experience is for the customers. The integration of different technologies and new processes into the complex world of an automaker were the biggest challenges that we had to overcome.
What is the take-away for you personally?
The most exciting part of the project for me was how in-person interactions can now be reproduced in the digital realm. As a team, we always try to look as comprehensively as possible at the encounters in the online channels. This comprehensive perspective is very interesting because we can derive and take away many new learnings from it. Our team is very much driven by personal interactions and exchanging experiences with our customers.
What does the future have in store?
The trend towards more digital points of contact and the use of technologies will not stop short of Sales & Marketing. We have to remain innovative in how we interact with our customers. With the “Online Consultancy” services, we are creating a part of the digital future for our customers and markets together with Mercedes-Benz. Actively accompanying this path and shaping it with our colleagues is our goal for even greater networking at Mercedes-Benz.