proaxia VSS offers a fluid and efficient online and offline experience with the objective to maximise prospect satisfaction in the research and information finding phase. The efficiency increase gained through proaxia VSS by the brand representation to focus on prospect needs and to build an authentic relationship to become the prospect’s first choice.

The vehicle industry spends large amounts on lead generation. Turning a lead into an opportunity is not only a matter of the likeability that the lead will purchase a vehicle, but also of the ability of the brand representation to ensure genuine added value and prospect satisfaction in the process.

There are no silver medals in sales – you sell, or you don’t.

proaxia VSS is intuitive, it adapts to the flow of the customer and is simultaneously ensuring a defined sales process is applied. Of course, the sales process can be adapted to the requirements of a brand or the brand representation.

proaxia VSS creates transparency in the sales process and helps sales consultants and sales managers to understand the individual and the team activity performance and KPIs in the sales process. The best sales consultants want to work with professional systems that support them in achieving their objectives.

proaxia VSS also challenges the brand representation to define how the sales target for the sales team shall be split between conquest and loyalty sales. Too often we see that sales targets are general and don’t capture the often higher conversion potential in the existing customer base.

An optimised balance between loyalty and conquest sales also helps balancing the total cost of sales which in general is lower with existing customers than with new customers.

Structured processes allow the sales consultants to focus on the customer rather than on the system. Attention to detail can be given and sales consultants shouldn’t miss natural and value-adding opportunities to up- and cross-sell.

If a sales consultant has challenges with adding value in the sales process, the customer is, most likely, less willing to pay for something the customer hasn’t received. Sales managers can actively coach their sales consultants based on their individual KPIs in the sales process.

Adding value in the customer purchase process pays off and proaxia VSS supports the sales consultant in the process.

Lean and efficient service processes which ensure that standard customer repair orders can be invoiced and explained to the customer on the day of vehicle pick-up.

Less gets forgotten and the customers understand the invoice.

proaxia VSS enables the right approach with the right customer, some prefer mainly online, and others prefer offline interaction with the service partner, and some want both. In some cases, a dialogue reception at the vehicle is the preference, in some cases a direct reception in the workshop is required. In all cases proaxia VSS and the proaxia Mobile Service Advisor offer the possibility to take the customer through a professional process, where upselling and cross-selling is not seen to be push-sell.

proaxia VSS generates real-time focused workshop reporting and analyses automatically which include the key workshop KPIs by workshop employee, workshop teams etc., e.g., productivity, efficiency, actual vs. standard times and effectiveness. We wanted to automate this as we often get the feedback that generating these reports manually or with Excel is normally very time consuming. That is true, it takes more than ensuring the time clocking by category is robust and that the used definitions are correct …

The parts’ sales analysis ensures an eye can be kept on sales by customer and categories as well as on the ratio parts sales : labour sales.

The proaxia VSS workshop analyses give the workshop manager all required information to understand where areas of improvement occur and hence can take timely action and not wait until the results drop.

Utilising the proaxia VSS reporting to the advantage of aftersales is a key feature for the service-, workshop- and parts manager in their joint daily planning of the job orders short- and mid-term.

proaxia VSS not only offers the prospect and customer fluid online and offline experience and allows the retail staff to focus on adding value in the process. It also helps removing the perceived or real silos between sales and aftersales, e.g., an automatic invitation is issued to customer service to introduce themselves at vehicle delivery.

The bigger the positive contact surface is between the customer and the retailer, the stronger the relationship can be. A customer who has purchased a product should under no circumstances feel like a stranger when making a service appointment.

With proaxia VSS the natural touch points with the customer can be used, e.g., when a customer makes a service appointment, an automatic message can be sent to the allocated sales consultant that the customer comes to the brand representation and a quick joint cup of coffee or catch-up can be arranged. Done the right way, it is far more effective than sending a boring standard birthday card which most businesses do.

Satisfied customers indirectly often sell more products and service than retailers realise – alert retailers and sales consultants understand that sales is a result of a successful process and not just a transaction. There is a saying in the industry that many cars are «sold» when two neighbours meet outside their garages and discuss the new car and if they were happy with the retailer.

In service and repairs, research and customer satisfaction surveys often show that if an invoice is presented and explained to the customer when the vehicle is picked up, there is less risk for customer dissatisfaction, compared with an invoice that is mailed at a later point in time. If an unhappy customer receives an OEM/Importer customer satisfaction survey, they are likely to either not reply, or give less positive feedback. Both are not good for customer loyalty.

We have understood what some of the drivers for customer satisfaction are and continuously work on adding innovative value for the brand representation.

Successful retailers and we at proaxia understand that the product itself is not a differentiator in intra-brand competition, but the staff of the brand representation and the customer moments-of-truth are. Loyalty is an emotion and is not always a result of a process.

We see our role in providing the tools we can for the brand representation to maximise the probability that the prospect and customer is happy. Increasing background efficiency through intelligent sales and service systems to make sure sufficient time is available for building authentic and value adding customer relationships is becoming more important than ever.