Zero distance to buy a car ｜ How does a 4 S shop embrace the new retail of cars？
[car home Industry] Located in the Badley Automobile Park in the West Fourth Ring Road, Haidian District, Beijing, four luxury brands, namely Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volvo, stand next to each other. Volvo 4S store is a new member of this luxury matrix, which was officially opened in July 2019. It is also the first Volvo 4S store under the Bradley Group. How does the Bradley Group, which has always preferred German brands, become attached to Volvo? What’s the difference between this 4S store, which focuses on the new retail experience of automobiles, and the traditional 4S store? In this issue of "Car Zero Distance", we came to Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S Store.
Car Zero Distance is an experiential shop-exploring program created by car home. We combine experiential visits with in-depth dialogues to present new ideas, new services and new models of various dealer stores and service organizations to consumers and industry professionals, and strive to enhance the interaction and understanding between consumers and businesses, and promote the experience sharing and industry promotion of excellent management models.
30-second speed reading:
1. Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S Store is the first Volvo 4S store under the Baideli Group. Based on the consensus on the transformation and change of the future automobile market, Baideli, which has always favored German brands, will join hands with Volvo;
2. After three years of preparation, Badgley Group launched its own user management system "Moby", which has the functions of new car sales, test drive and after-sales reservation, and has been applied in Beijing Badgley Volvo 4S store;
3. The fundamental logic for dealers to embrace the new retail of automobiles is to improve customer service. Moby system is only the beginning of the new retail of cars tested by Bradley, and the follow-up work still has a long way to go.
◆ Classic Nordic Volvo VRE Global Standard
Even if you don’t see the brand Logo, you can recognize the Volvo 4S store at a glance, and the classic window glass exterior wall exudes a strong Nordic style. Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S Store opened at 9 o’clock in the morning. We arrived at the store 10 minutes early, just in time for the morning meeting in the store. The staff stood in two rows. After the morning meeting, everyone began to be busy.
The decoration style in the store is also a simple route. Different from the way that some 4S stores separate the vehicle display area from the rest area, Volvo 4S stores adopt the model around the rest area. This arrangement weakens the feeling of the shopping mall and adds a sense of life.
For luxury car brand car consumers, the car is not only a practical demand, but also an emotional demand. In particular, automobile products are becoming more and more mature, and the differences in product quality and performance of automobiles are weakening. Whether a car can impress consumers is a test of whether it can meet the emotional needs of consumers, including value recognition, aesthetic needs, sense of acquisition and so on. And the satisfaction of this emotional demand comes from the product itself, as well as from the service and all the extended presentation.
Automobile consumption is changing from destination consumption to experience consumption. Based on this judgment, Volvo has upgraded the global standard retail experience store (VRE) in China, and plans to complete the upgrade by 2020. Through the upgrading of the 4S store, the fourth space will be extended from the car to the 4S store, so that consumers can have a place to rest and communicate, so as to better experience Volvo’s brand culture.
Volvo’s concept of VRE standard retail experience store can be said to be a bosom friend for the Bradley Group seeking change. Founded in 1996, Badley Group specializes in luxury brands. It is the first dealer of imported Porsche in China and the earliest dealer of imported Audi cars in China. Zhou Xiaobo, the founder of Baideli, is a German Chinese, which makes him always have a soft spot for German brands. This cooperation with Volvo is a common exploration for new automobile retailing.
Yang Zhenyu, the general manager of Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S Store, is a veteran of the Baideli Group. Before the operation of this 4S store, he had been engaged in the brand operation strategy of the Baideli Group, which led to the cooperation between Baideli and Volvo, and he also participated in it.
『Yang Zhenyu, General Manager of Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S Store』
Yang Zhenyu introduced that the Badley Group began to explore the new retail model of automobiles three years ago. Before reaching a cooperation with Volvo, the two sides had many high-level exchanges, and everyone had a basic consensus that transformation and change were the inevitable development trend of the automobile market.
He said that the establishment of Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S store carries the gene of new retail of automobiles, which is not only reflected in the decoration layout of the store, but also has a series of deep logic behind it, including the design of user service products, the reform of service process and the digital management of the store, among which Moby, a new retail system of automobiles launched by Baideli Group, is the most representative.
In Moby system, users can realize all-round services from car inspection, test drive, car selection, ordering and later maintenance. This improves the transparency of user service and accumulates digital assets for dealers. Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S store is an important "experimental field" for Baideli Group to practice the new automobile retail model, and it will also be exported to other brand 4S stores after the model is mature.
◆ Embrace new retail and build Moby user management system
In order to experience the Moby system, we simulated the whole process of users looking at cars and buying cars. The store always introduced a sales consultant to us. After listening to my car demand: "A family of three, usually going to work instead of walking, and occasionally going to play around Beijing", the sales consultant recommended me five SUVs, Volvo XC40.
After explaining the function and configuration of the vehicle and the test drive of the vehicle, the sales consultant told me that the reservation can be made in the store or online. This model and process is actually almost the same as Tesla, Weilai and other new car-making forces. It can be seen that traditional brands are actively embracing the Internet.
The difference from the user management system created by the new force of car manufacturing is that considering that car purchase and maintenance are not high-frequency demands, the new retail system of cars launched by Bradley is based on WeChat applet, which has the advantage of not occupying consumers’ too high mobile phone memory and avoiding bringing burdens to users.
A sign with a QR code is parked next to every car in Beijing Badley Volvo 4S store. By scanning the QR code and registering as a user, the user can operate as required. At present, there are three main functions in Moby system, namely, new car sales, test drive and after-sales appointment.
Click on the new car for sale, and we find the experienced Volvo XC40 four-wheel drive Zia Deluxe Edition in the SUV option. After selecting the configuration, I can choose the financial scheme or pay in full. If I choose the financial scheme, I will enter a financial calculator page, where I can choose the financial scheme provided by different banks, and then determine the down payment ratio and loan term, which will directly generate the monthly payment estimation and loan service fee.
If you choose to pay in full, you will go directly to the next step. On this page, it shows whether to replace the old car, and whether it is necessary to apply for license registration and vehicle inspection. In terms of selecting the best products, Moby System recommended three products, including Tailed Leather trunk mat, Tailed Leather Foot Pad, and an original driving recorder front camera. After all the choices are made, you can submit the order, and then sign the contract, pay the final payment and hand over the car, which completes the whole process.
Buying a car is a process that needs careful consideration. The biggest feeling I get from experiencing the Moby system is that I have more freedom, so I don’t have to make a decision in a hurry. I can carefully read and choose one by one, and the whole consumption process seems to have changed from passive to active.
The Moby system is extremely streamlined, and you can find out what services you need at a glance. Yang Zhenyu explained the logic behind it to us. Moby pays attention to the interaction between people based on customer experience, and alleviates the pain points of users’ car purchase in a concise, transparent and efficient way, including opaque price and various services.
◆ There is a long way to go to optimize service.
Yang Zhenyu purposely let us taste the coffee in the shop. He said with a smile, "We not only sell cars but also coffee. Our colleagues at Bradley often leave customers here and pay for the coffee in the shop. The coffee in the shop is free to customers, and others can only pay for it by scanning the code. It is better than the taste of the coffee shop, or some people will buy it here. This actually shows a logic that users are willing to pay for good things."
Yang Zhenyu believes that even when the industry environment is no longer good, there will still be enterprises that do well, and even in good industries, there are still some enterprises that do badly. In the face of the changes in the automobile market, what dealers can do is to dig deep into it and serve customers well, so there must be room for survival.
Moby system is only the beginning of the new retail of the water test car of Bailey, and the follow-up work still has a long way to go. The optimization of user service is a continuous action, which cannot be done once and for all.
As a 4S shop from scratch, Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S shop has both challenges and great opportunities. The challenge is that the profit of new car sales is getting thinner, but its user base plate has not been formed, and the more profitable after-sales service market has not yet been opened, so it is necessary to move forward under certain pressure in the early stage; The opportunity is that the new store does not have the burden of the past business model, and every time it sells a car and serves a user, it is a solid accumulation.
In the early stage, Beijing Baideli Volvo 4S Store mainly relied on word-of-mouth marketing to get new customers, and invited many family members and friends of Badeli Group employees to enjoy the cars in the store. Every month, some small-scale communication salons were held regularly to keep sticky with intended users and old customers. At the same time, the customer base of other brands of Batteries also contributed a certain amount of traffic to this 4S shop.
In order to adhere to the service concept of "keeping customers constant", Beijing Badley Volvo 4S Store has launched the service strategy of "one customer, two butlers" based on Moby system. After the customer arrives at the store, the sales consultant, test drive specialist and delivery specialist will provide exclusive car purchase service for the customer. After the new car is delivered, the sales consultant and service consultant will set up a special group with the user to respond to the various needs of the user at any time.
Full text summary:
In the field of automobile consumption, what people can remember is often the automobile brand, and few people pay attention to the dealer brand. The biggest feeling we get from visiting the Volvo 4S store in Bradley is that this is an automobile dealer that can be remembered by consumers. To borrow a sentence from Luo Zhenyu, the founder of Get App, in his New Year’s Eve speech in 2020: The way to test a brand is to see if you are willing to take a selfie with it. Both Volvo and Badley are brands that people are willing to take selfies with. As a car brand for nearly a hundred years, Volvo’s brand strength is self-evident, while texture, transparency and exclusivity are the value-added benefits that Badley gives to Volvo brand. (Text/car home Xiao Ying)