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How automakers can compete on customer experience

We all know that competition in the automotive industry is fierce. By our research, around two-thirds of car buying activities is happening online before anyone puts a foot inside a dealership showroom. And all of those activities, from research to financing, are being driven by the customer.

For global automakers and dealers to effectively compete in today’s digital world, the customer experience is where it’s at. I’ll go so far as to say that customer experience is the new battleground. To succeed, it all comes down to being able to help the potential car buyer whenever and wherever they need it, with the right information for that person at the right time, giving them an experience that is personal, relevant and timely.

Providing this kind of experience to individual shoppers throughout their buying journey is tough in a world of volume sales, where sales people are rewarded for closing deals, and not for nurturing the slow grower. Discussing this with automakers and with dealers, I can see a pattern emerging to make this easier.

Getting to personalization – these 5 things

To get started on delivering digital experiences that are unique and timely means understanding where a customer or prospect is on their individual buying journey. It also means being able to have a clear view of their activities across all channels. Today’s technologies are making this possible, and at a high level, I see the following five-layer process/technology stack underpinning the change.

It starts with a core process layer for consistent brand-relevant processes for marketing, sales and after-sales activities. Integrated with this is a global digital platform for content, collaboration, data management and analytics. We will need an engagement and listening layer to understand social sentiment and respond accordingly, and a device management layer that enables phones, tablets, kiosks, screens and any other device to deliver relevant digital experiences. And all of this needs to run on a secure infrastructure layer that scales for each market in which the automaker operates.

If we can get this stack in place, we can help the automakers and dealers unite their customer data (that’s another discussion!), gain and share the insight from this, consistently enable the best experiences, and increase the speed of engagement to meet consumer expectations.

Now while that may sound like a lot, it’s certainly becoming possible as technology companies transform their products to operate in the cloud first, mobile first world. Here’s how Microsoft is playing its part.

How one plus one can equal more than two

Just last month, Microsoft released a new sales productivity solution that will help achieve personalization more quickly and seamlessly. It combines Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with Office 365. That means that the business applications you need, that core process layer, is now already integrated with the powerful content management, collaboration, analytics and social tools needed to be able to deliver the best customer experience, how, when, and where the customer wants it. That pre-built integration is going to simplify this process for customers and ISVs alike. You can read the announcement here.

Of course, this solution is also designed to seamlessly integrate with Microsoft’s device portfolio and the industry’s most complete cloud (see our latest news), to help achieve that target process and technology stack. And that’s why I say that, in this case, one and one equal so much more than two!

As the market keeps innovating, and the technology capabilities keep developing, I look forward to contributing more to the discussion. And for questions, please contact us at msmfg@microsoft.com.