Car repair shops embrace omnichannel to improve the customer experience
Digital technology is transforming the automotive aftermarket creating new opportunities for businesses that can embrace a customer-focussed mind set and adapt their skills to cope with the increasing complexity of vehicles, components and services.
The global market for automotive repair and maintenance services will grow from $685bn in 2021 to $950bn in 2028, according to a report by Global Market Insights. Key trends such as the electrification of vehicles and digitization of services will disrupt existing value chains and allow the entry of new digital-native players who can connect cars, customers and services in different ways.
Because electric vehicles have fewer moving parts to wear out and more of their value will lie in the software and connectivity services, car repair shops need to adapt as their core competencies – mechanical repairs and parts – will become less relevant in the future,
Customers will increasingly rely on automated systems and recommendations to obtain the services they need for their vehicles and so repair shops will have to put a much greater focus on digitizing the customer experience to remain relevant to tomorrow’s car users.
The larger franchise repair shops are well placed to benefit from the changing market as they have already established a good reputation by offering reliable and rapid service at low cost. Now they need to go further and refine and digitize the customer experience.
Norauto, a European leader in automotive repair and maintenance services, has turned to Openbravo to improve the customer experience in its car centers.
The company, part of the Mobivia Group, has more than 650 centers worldwide and it chose Openbravo POS, a key component of the Openbravo Commerce Cloud platform, for its 100% web-based point-of-sale solution.
A key reason for adopting Openbravo was its flexibility, which makes it easy to adapt to Norauto’s service-oriented business model. Xavier Marvaldi, Digital Leader at Mobivia, said:
We chose Openbravo for its flexible POS solution that includes comprehensive functionality to move us towards omnichannel commerce and can be easily adapted to our business requirements. In addition, Openbravo has the resources and expertise to support our ambitious deployment.”
France, Norauto’s largest market, is the first to standardize on Openbravo POS as its technology platform for omnichannel commerce across Europe. The second step of the project will be to progressively deploy Openbravo in all Norauto centers outside France.
