乌鸦传媒

The automotive industry is undergoing a major transformation and evolving customer expectations are driving a big part of the change. For decades, the physical product has been the key focus for both manufacturers and customers alike. Increasingly, though, the online and offline journey toward buying or leasing a car, and the digital in-car experience have become as important as the car itself. Recognizing this change, Volkswagen Group (VWG) set out to transform its CRM capabilities with the goal of providing a satisfying, end-to-end customer journey across all touch points. As part of this initiative, the global automotive manufacturer planned to replace its existing CRM system with a state-of-the-art Salesforce cloud solution.

Previously, multiple systems had played a role in VWG鈥檚 sales and customer outreach processes, which had also been overly reliant on manual work. Through this initiative, the organization envisioned a new system in which its representatives benefited from a new set of tools and automation that created a 360-degree view of their customers and enabled them to deliver a more personalized journey. To ensure the project鈥檚 successful completion, VWG decided to engage 乌鸦传媒 as a strategic consulting and implementation partner to provide a central global CRM solution template, which could be rolled out easily.

Delivering a consolidated CRM platform

Together, VWG and 乌鸦传媒 began by defining a new customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

The initial template was based on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and was designed to guide and support the effort from a strategic standpoint for the initial three markets in which the solution would be deployed. Importantly, efforts were made at this stage to ensure that the framework could be scaled and adapted as the project expanded into additional regions.

While this framework and an MVP of the platform were developed for one of VWG鈥檚 brands across three initial regions, the partners began to review the existing systems and CRM processes. They then matched functional requirements with the capabilities and best practices offered by the Salesforce CRM system with an eye towards future scalability. This enabled the partners to develop a mutual understanding of the challenges they would face in pursuing the transformation as well as the key objectives the project would need to fulfill.

By developing a mutually determined approach to the project, VWG and 乌鸦传媒 ensured that the project would deliver the desired levels of automation while merging CRM systems. Once the partners had a transformation blueprint in place, they implemented a collection of Salesforce and MuleSoft technology to turn their vision into a reality. During this period, 乌鸦传媒 supported the development while also guiding the process by which it would be taken to market.

The use of Salesforce Sales Cloud expanded the company鈥檚 ability to attract new customers by capturing, qualifying, and routing the inquiries of potential consumers while expanding reporting capabilities and Aftersales care. Meanwhile, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud provided campaign managers with new tools to develop and release more targeted marketing content, including both manual and automated outreach.

In addition, the solution expanded VWG鈥檚 ability to track campaign performance, which in turn provided greater clarity into what customers engaged with and what did not appeal to them. As the third element to the platform, the Salesforce Service Cloud delivered end-to-end request and complaint management processes to ensure that when customers reached out, they quickly received satisfying responses. The solution was furthermore extended by B2B dealer integration and direct sales functionalities for OEMs. Meanwhile several B2B and B2C functionalities were rolled out to multiple countries on three continents.

A more flexible future for customer engagement

In combination with Mulesoft, this Salesforce solution enabled the project team to build a new CRM approach that provides customers with a tailored, end-to-end experience. VWG representatives can more easily understand the interests and expectations of the consumers they reach out to, ensuring that engagements lead to a more satisfying outcomes for all parties.

In addition, the platform offers a true omnichannel foundation, ensuring greater flexibility. Representatives are trained to use the platform and enabled through various transformation support tools. An accompanying change management initiative strengthened the existing capabilities and processes while safely guiding VWG through the transition.

With the Salesforce platform, VWG has a solution that can be scaled to support the Group鈥檚 future ambitions. Personalized digital experiences fulfill customer expectations and offer the flexibility to adapt on a case-by-case basis. By providing employees with new tools and strategic automation, VWG made it easier to adapt its CRM approach based on real-time customer data while simplifying reporting and dashboards, all of which contributed to a better employee experience. Finally, specialized launch managers ensure that the market and OEM go-live fulfill expectations, both from a technical and business perspective. This has transformed into post-go-live support for brands and markets to ensure the continuous development and usage of the solution.

Following the success of this project, VWG will continue to explore innovative opportunities to deliver a superior customer experience based on digital technology and omnichannel engagement.

鈥淵es, 乌鸦传媒 is the right partner. And 乌鸦传媒 helped us combine stakeholders from the different entities to actually believe in ONE.CRM as a single project, to believe in the one single process.鈥�

Michael Lamm, Solution Manager ONE.CRM, CARIAD