MSL Motor Group Revs Up Their Digital Engagement

Since 1959, MSL Motor Group’s mission has been to ‘…deliver complete customer satisfaction in all areas of our business, through our passion, continuous innovation and the development of our contemporary dealerships.’ As a family-owned business selling and servicing Mercedes-Benz, Mazda and ŠKODA cars, MSL operates a network of dealerships and service centres throughout Ireland including the MSL Service Centre in South Dublin – the newest and largest Mercedes-Benz car showroom and service centre in Ireland.  

As with many businesses around the world, 2020 has presented new challenges and opportunities for MSL Motor Group. With the pandemic still on the rise and their team working remotely in most cases, MSL Motor Group needed a way to connect with customers and provide the same level of service as in their physical showrooms.

Live Text Chat Keeps Customers Engaged and Sales Agents Productive

To meet their immediate needs as well as support the long-term changes in consumers’ car-buying behaviour, MSL Motor Group implemented Vee24’s live Text Chat and Co-browsing. Vee24 was able to get MSL Motors up and running with the text chat service within two weeks. MSL was concerned that their existing and potential customers might be unfamiliar with or adverse to using this new online technology. Much to the dealership’s delight, customers have embraced it fully. Within the first quarter, MSL Motor Group increased the volume of engagements through the live text chat service by 200%. The text chat has allowed their customer service and sales agents to deal with multiple queries at the same time whilst cutting down the average wait-time per customer. Additionally, their sales agents can now book appointments and answer detailed car configurator queries within the quick and easy text chat sessions while working remotely. This ultimately kept the agents engaged and enabled them to build closer relationships with returning and new customers. Even before the pandemic, MSL Motor Group recognized the shift in customer behaviour- consumers want to shop anytime, anywhere and demand that flexibility in the buying process.

Keeping the ‘Lights on’ using Text Chat and NudgeBOTs

Car dealerships are looking at new and exciting ways to allow car buyers to connect with sales and service, book appointments and view cars online. And, car buyers often do their research between 6pm-10pm so evening and after hours can be the busiest and most valuable period for dealerships to capture and engage car shoppers. Even if the showroom is closed and there is nobody around to take a call, digital engagement solutions can answer customer queries, book test drives or even make a sale. In 2020 many dealerships are now focused on these innovative ways to grab the customers’ attention and be present for support between un-staffed times.

So, what was driving MSL Group’s online engagement success in the first few months? Vee24’s text chat service and the implementation of specifically timed NudgeBOTs around the website interacted with a visitor in brand new ways creating a flawless immersion in the overall car buying experience. These pro-active AI-powered NudgeBOTs, specifically designed to ‘nudge’ a website visitor to take action, created a new level of engagement by giving customers the power to initiate a text chat or be prompted to talk to a live agent and further help their journey. Consumers found a more humanizing and customer friendly support and sales strategy. The result –  MSL Motor Group’s CSR score jumped to over 90% which is a huge increase from the industry standard 35%. A true competitive advantage.

“Especially within a national lockdown and restrictions due to Covid-19, we needed a quick yet effective approach for improving our customers’ online experience and making sure they could engage easily with one of our customer service agents. Vee24 has helped us deliver a seamless digital experience for all of our customers generating results that have exceed expectation.’

Graham Whelan, Customer Relations Manager