Let the customer explore all the range of your offer
Vehicle customization has been a Must Have for years. Gone are the days of the Ford T where customers had many choices as this quote shows: “People can have the Model T in any color – so long as it’s black.”
In order to meet the needs of customization, the means of production have been adapted to produce the vehicle customized to the customer’s request. This has required industrial prowess and heavy investments in terms of supply, logistics, and the manufacturing chain. It is, therefore, necessary for Marketing and Sales to set up tools that highlight these technical capabilities.
Indeed, we all need to visualize the product we want to buy. But the range is so wide that it is impossible to present in a dealership all the vehicle models, colors, options, and accessories available in the catalog.
We all remember this interaction with the salesman who asks us to imagine our vehicle: “it is the color of this one with the rims of that one and I believe that I have on the park a vehicle with a similar interior to your choice!
This requires a lot of imagination to project ourselves with our future vehicle!
In addition, we must not forget that the presentation space available in dealerships is expensive, especially since manufacturers are trying to establish themselves in cities where space is very limited.
It is therefore increasingly difficult to display a collection of vehicles that is representative of the diversity of the manufacturer’s offer. The cost of the space is not the only cost to be considered, the immobilization of the presentation vehicles is also to be taken into account, especially as they must then be recycled in the purchasing circuit.
Each dealership chooses the vehicles it wishes to display, which inevitably has an impact on sales.
The implementation of an interactive configurator capable of calculating the product price but also of 3D visuals in accordance with the customer’s choices is essential. It presents all the colors, versions, and accessories while respecting the technical and marketing constraints of the catalog.
The customer can interactively personalize his vehicle in a few minutes and even compare several configurations side by side. Surveys show that the possibility for the customer to visualize his personalized product is a trigger for the act of purchase (see: survey). Your salespeople in the dealership will thus be assisted in the sales process.
In addition to the web configurator, the configurator in the form of a kiosk with a touch screen is an ideal solution to create a relationship with the customer at the point of sale. The continuity of the experience between the different configuration tools is also a very important component to master: I can prepare a vehicle pre-selection at home on the manufacturer’s website and then recall it effortlessly at the point of sale to initiate the discussion with the account manager.
The connection with the manufacturer’s information system facilitates the production of a quote directly from the vehicle configuration, even integrating visuals in line with the customer’s choices.
It is possible to offer a reduced delivery time or a preferential rate by configuring the configurator according to the available stock of vehicles in order to offer the customer only the subset of the existing options in the fleet.
Finally, the configurator eases the promotion of the specificities of each vehicle (USP).
Let’s take the example of light commercial vehicles: professional customers want to know what the vehicle offers in terms of space and possible layouts so that it is perfectly adapted to their jobs. An electrician will not have the same needs as a fresh produce deliveryman or a plumber… The visualization of all these possibilities is a real asset. Here again, the final customer is more inclined to buy when he can evaluate the product in all its dimensions. Find a dedicated article here.
