A customer buys a car, services it at the dealership's own workshop, and when the time comes to change vehicles, comes back again. The relationship lasts several years at the very least. So how do you keep the entire history of working with a customer, let them book a test drive online and gather full analytics on your advertising with a CRM system? We explain using the example of Azbuka Avto, the official Volvo dealer in southern Ukraine.
Azbuka Avto: twenty years alongside the buyer
Azbuka Avto is an official Volvo Group car dealer in southern Ukraine. For 20 years the dealership has been selling cars and servicing them afterwards. The company is among the TOP 10 on the Ukrainian market by sales volume and holds the largest Volvo market share in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions — over 25% in the premium segment.
About two years ago, Azbuka Avto started looking for a digital solution that would help them work with customers properly, simplify the sales department's job and raise the level of service. How well that worked out, what has changed and which processes the company still plans to automate — Anastasiia Kozlova, head of sales at Azbuka Avto, tells the story.
"Two years ago we realised we needed a CRM"
Our company has been selling Volvo cars for 20 years now. Over that time we have built up a fairly large customer base, and these are not people who simply buy a car: they buy their first vehicle, service it at our workshop for several years, and then come back again. And year after year there are more and more of them.
To make the customer experience of dealing with us comfortable, managers need to see every stage of the relationship with a buyer — to know when they came to us and what they asked for. We have, of course, been keeping a customer database for a long time. At first we ran it in our accounting system, but about two years ago we realised we needed something more convenient and tailored specifically to our long sales cycle, which can stretch over 5—7 years. On top of that, we often have repeat sales. So we needed to record the history of every customer: came in a year ago, booked a service and was taking a look at a new car.
The hardest part of the project was syncing the website with the accounting system
Getting everything right did not happen on the first attempt. We reviewed the solutions available on the market and, based on their features, chose a corporate CRM platform. Then we started looking for contractors who could implement and configure the system to match our requirements. From the list of certified partners on the developer's official website we picked a few companies and approached them for a consultation.
Setting everything up did not go smoothly straight away, though. The first integrator suggested we start with the cloud version. For us specifically, given the nature of our business, that was not a great idea: we needed far more individual configuration around our own processes.
The second company we approached was ANIART. Their specialists proposed installing the on-premise version of the system and adapting everything so that sales would be as customised as possible and customers would be satisfied.
Commentary from the ANIART specialists
Cloud version
The user gets access to the functionality included in their current pricing plan. Serious development work and fundamental changes to processes are not possible here.
On-premise version
The client receives the source code, which makes it possible to connect additional resources, build new components and implement complex business scenarios.
The second attempt turned out well for Azbuka Avto. We not only brought all the information about our work with customers together in the new CRM system, but also moved test drive bookings online, improved the way we analyse advertising traffic and optimised bookings for the service centre.
Interaction with customers has improved
Since then the CRM has been fully up and running in our company: all the data on existing and potential buyers lives there. What is more, alongside a functional database, we launched several important processes together with our partners that have significantly improved the quality of our communication with customers.
- Contact segmentation. The system builds separate lists according to particular parameters — by interests, for example — and then suggests the ones that are a better fit for marketing activities.
- Call recording. The previous system did not have this feature. It lets us check how polite a manager was, whether the customer got answers to their questions and whether they were given all the information they needed.
- The manager's SMS business card. We used to use SMS only for marketing purposes — mass mailouts. Now this channel has also become a way of staying within a potential buyer's field of view. After the first contact, the system offers to send the customer a message with all of the manager's contact details. If the offer is not relevant right now, the customer is unlikely to save the number. But some time later, when the need arises, they may remember that an SMS came through and will quickly find the contact details.
- Automatic vehicle price calculation and digitised forms. Employees at Azbuka Avto used to prepare the legal paperwork by hand. The ANIART specialists introduced automatic calculation: the system now works out the down payment, the monthly payment and VAT by itself, and also makes it possible to generate a contract automatically with all the details, including the delivery date, the vehicle specification and so on. This saves managers up to two hours a day.
We also set up a feedback system for customers. We now collect their impressions of the service they received at our workshop. After a visit, every customer receives a message with a web form asking them to rate the work. There is also a field for suggestions on improving customer service. This information helps us raise the level of service and take better care of our customers.
Paper forms have disappeared from test drive bookings, and mistakes from service centre bookings
One of our company's key services is test drives of Volvo cars. Previously, the only way to book one was to fill in a paper form. Now the whole thing happens far faster and online.
For test drive bookings we have a dedicated form where you can attach a photo of your driving licence. This saves time, because the data goes straight into the CRM and the manager does not have to re-enter it by hand. Once the form is submitted, everything appears automatically in the customer's record. And if the contact is new, a lead record is created (leads are potential customers who are at one of the stages of readiness to buy a product or order a service. — Ed.).
Our CRM system can also produce reports on which car's test drive brought in more sales.
Service centre bookings were optimised as well. We used to have no single system to record the workshop's schedule: staff entered all bookings into spreadsheets. Data could end up duplicated. It happened that several customers were booked for one and the same slot, and that had a negative effect on the quality of service. Now the system displays new bookings instantly and blocks the option of booking another customer into a slot that is already taken.
We track advertising performance with analytics
Rolling out the CRM system has helped us with advertising too. We ran marketing activities before it as well, but the data on them was not brought together in one place. Yes, we recorded some metrics and produced monthly and annual reports, but having it all organised and backed by detailed analytics — that we did not have.
After the website was connected to the CRM, the system began automatically recording and analysing the UTM tags (special markers that show where a user comes from and where they go. — Ed.) in submitted enquiries. This helps us identify which advertising channel is working effectively.
Now, for each activity, we produce reports on advertising payback, the number of enquiries, conversion into sales and so on. Thanks to this we can spend less on advertising and improve our figures at the same time.
What we are planning next
- Refine our advertising analytics: track the whole customer journey — from registration through to buying a car or booking a service — so that we know exactly what acquiring that customer cost the company.
- Build a separate sales funnel for the workshop.
- Develop a system for tracking service quality: if a customer ends up dissatisfied with the service, they are unlikely to buy a car from us or come back a few years later for the next one.
The implementation team's view
Azbuka Avto came to us for help with implementing a CRM already carrying an unsuccessful experience with an integrator. We studied the client's business processes in detail, analysed their needs and expectations, and drew up an implementation plan. After that we trained the company's staff, migrated everything to the on-premise version of the system and built a well-balanced solution.Valentyn Kertychak, director of ANIART
The successful CRM rollout was a logical step in Azbuka Avto's strategy of focusing on customer needs. The company now has a tool that provides instant access to the history of interaction with customers, which in turn allows managers to apply effective approaches to working with them.
