Salvador Caetano Group is one of the world’s leading automotive dealer groups, employing more than 7,000 employees in 41 countries across three continents. From its base in Portugal, the group operates in areas as diverse as automotive distribution, retail and services, and represents more than 26 car brands including BMW, Audi, Renault, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot and Toyota.
One of Salvador Caetano’s flagship divisions is Caetano Baviera, which has 12 facilities serving BMW, MINI and BMW Motorrad, across Portugal. Its Lisbon site, with more than 50 aftersales bookings per day started the digitalisation of the customer aftersales journey with Tjekvik during 2022.
Tackling the challenges associated with high footfall
Many of Caetano Baviera Lisbon’s customers opt to drop off their vehicles for servicing or repairs before heading into the city centre for work. As with many dealers that serve a wide catchment area, queues can form quickly, particularly during peak morning periods. While queues can be frustrating for customers, service advisers also come under additional pressure to serve people in a timely manner, while still ensuring work is completed to a high standard befitting of the BMW and MINI brands.
In order to overcome these challenges, Salvador Caetano looked to Tjekvik, the leading producer of intelligent self-service technologies for dealer aftersales departments. Barcelona Premium, a Caetano Retail Spain BMW dealer, was already a user of the technology and had seen very positive results. This gave the Group confidence about a wider deployment.
Tjekvik technologies enable customers to check their vehicles in at a time and place convenient for them, either at home using Tjekvik’s mobile-optimised site, or at the dealer via easy-to-use touchscreen kiosks. Instead of waiting for service advisers to become available, customers can use Tjekvik’s solutions to provide pre-service instructions, select added-value items, sign their authorisation and securely drop-off their keys within dedicated lockers built securely into the kiosks.
Caetano Baviera began using Tjekvik’s self-service solutions in a pilot that commenced in April 2022. Two kiosks were installed initially, with Tjekvik providing Caetano with ongoing training and support to ensure there was a seamless transition for both staff and those customers who opted to check-in digitally. With the intuitive technology integrated with Caetano’s existing Spiga+ dealer management system (DMS), service advisers and customers soon began to realise the efficiency of digital self-service.
Enhanced customer satisfaction
Caetano Baviera surveyed 1,800 customers by phone over a three-month period from July to September 2022 to determine overall satisfaction levels. The results highlighted that those customers who avoided longer waiting times were more satisfied than those who had to wait to be seen. During week 25, when just 5% of customers had to wait, overall customer satisfaction scores reached a high of 9.0, with a peak of 9.7 in week 35 when a significant 30% of users used the Tjekvik express check-in facilities. Overall customer satisfaction was higher with those that used digital check-in compared to those that opted for the traditional method, with ratings of 8.8 and 8.6 respectively.
Such was the success during the pilot, Caetano Baviera adopted Tjekvik digital self-service permanently at its Baviera Lisbon site, and soon expanded the rollout to include its BMW and MINI dealer in the picturesque town of Cascais, a site that sees an average of 20 aftersales appointments a day.
A growing number of customers are now using digital check-in at both locations. Up to and including April 2023, 27% of Baviera Lisbon customers chose to check-in at home, with 34% of these using the kiosk to drop off their keys on arrival. At the BMW and Mini dealer in Cascais, the figures stand at 24% and 22%, respectively.
Only 5% of customers waited
Customer satisfaction
score:
9.0 with a peak of 9.7
Rui Conceição, Aftersales Director at Caetano Baviera, said: “As more of our customers try out our new digital check-in solutions, the more satisfied they are. The digitised customer journey process works perfectly; it is speedy, secure and intuitive – for us and for the customer. It enables our aftersales teams to respond in an agile way to changing customer demands and increasing workloads. As well as cutting waiting times, it frees up time for us to provide a personalised, high-quality response to those customers who call requesting details about current or potential service work.
“Just as more people today use digital self-service when ordering a fast-food meal, I see a similar trend taking hold in automotive aftersales, when more customers actively choose to check-in their vehicles digitally.”
![Cascais_fachada[96]](https://resources.tjekvik.com/hubfs/Session%20Child%20Theme%20-%20Feb_2024/Images/Cascais_fachada%5B96%5D.jpg "Cascais_fachada[96]")
Increased revenue
As well as improving customer service and helping service advisors focus on those customers that need attention, Tjekvik’s solutions have enabled Caetano Baviera to increase revenues by cross-selling products and services during the digital check-in process.
To the end of April 2023, Caetano Baviera has sold more than €100,000-worth of value-added products and services across both sites via the new digital technologies.
€100,000+
in value-added sales
Salvador Caetano Group’s overall strategy involves reinventing business models and developing new services in line with its customers’ needs. With customer satisfaction and sustainable revenue growth at the forefront of its success, the group is expanding Tjekvik’s digital self-service solutions across other parts of its network.
Following the successful Tjekvik implementations in Portugal, other Salvador Caetano Group dealers are now benefiting, including Caetano Cuzco BMW and Mercedes-Benz Caetano Benet, as well as Group locations in Sweden.
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