Blog – Are you visible to your customer?

Are you in the picture with your customer?

What is the on-demand economy

The on-demand economy is basically nothing new. The term can be derived from on-demand television viewing. This means that viewers can decide what they want to watch at what time. If we translate this to the economy, it means that customers’ wishes are central and immediately fulfilled by apps and smart websites, for example.

Of course, the services that you as a car company can give to your customers are not new. Therefore, the on-demand economy is not an entirely new economy or a gap in the market. It is simply meeting your customer’s needs, at the time they want, through their preferred channel. You just provide an easier user experience for your customer. That’s it.

The on-demand need continues in your customer’s daily life. This is where you need to meet them. If not, you will lose your customer. You have to make sure that you are in the picture as soon as a need arises and offer an appropriate solution.

How can I respond to these on-demand needs?

Some needs you can easily figure out or predict. The MOT is an easy example. By sending your customers the right message (an MOT reminder) at the right time (the period of 2 months to the MOT expiration date) prompting your customer to take action. By being able to schedule an appointment directly from this reminder, the customer does not have to look any further and is more likely to schedule the appointment with you.

But needs, of course, vary from client to client. Every customer is different and every customer has his/her own preferences. By visualizing this, you can provide the perfect (personal) customer journey. But manually visualizing an individual need per customer, with its own personal preferences, is a lot of work and very labor intensive.

In an on-demand economy, an algorithm is in charge

By using big-data that customers themselves have provided to you via digital means to link to the customer profiles already known to you from your Garage Management System (GMS) or Dealer Management System (DMS), 360° customer profiles are created. A 360° customer profile contains all the information about a customer or prospect. Everyone wants it and only 10 percent have it. Only with comprehensive individual customer profiles can you have scalable one-to-one communication with your target group.

A personalized customer journey

When you know how to properly connect data sources and deliver personalized content to your customers on every platform, it can pay off in a significant conversion boost.

You discover which type of message generates the best response, which services fit the customer’s interests and which contact moments yield the highest conversion. And you know which channels customers prefer to use to communicate. With this information you can improve your customer engagement and relationship.