Knowledge Automation Eases the Customer Journey at BMW
See BMW’s digital transformation in action
The Customer Experience Opportunity
With its three brands, BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce, the BMW Group is the world’s leading premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles and also provides premium financial and mobility services. As part of its competitive strategy, BMW continuously challenges itself to offer the best customer experience. It focuses solely on premium products and services and prides itself on its ability to anticipate customer needs and make them a reality.
As a global company, the BMW Group operates 31 production and assembly facilities in 14 countries and has a global sales network operating across more than 140 countries.
Digital transformation is having a radical impact on consumer behaviour
The most obvious impact in the motor industry has been how customers research car and aftersales purchases and customer support. A significant proportion of customers prefer to do all of their research online; with car buyers frequently deciding upon their preferred model before they ever set foot in a showroom.
For BMW, this means that the online experience has to live up to the premium-brand expectations of its customers. While the main driver behind the automated knowledge management program was the online experience, BMW set out to identify a single source of knowledge for staff and customers alike, across all its touchpoints.
An online experience that lives up to premium-brand expectations
The solution needed to provide ease of access to consistent, accurate information; whether it was being used in self-service mode by the customer, as part of an advisor-assisted engagement in the Customer Interaction Centre (CIC), or by staff in retail stores. BMW sought an ‘Online Genius’ to complement its human counterparts in stores and at the CIC.
With more than four million customer interactions managed annually by the CIC, BMW also sought efficiencies from their knowledge automation solution. In particular, BMW was looking for improvements in advisor training and onboarding, plus an increase in call and email deflection to self-service where preferred by the customer.
Evidence showed many customers expect to be empowered to access information for themselves instantly and 24/7, and that where customers want to deal with advisors at the CIC or staff in retail stores, they expect to be dealing with expert consultants. With increasingly complex products and services, keeping staff up to date is becoming more and more challenging.
Knowledge Management Solution
BMW selected Verint’s automated platform for next-generation knowledge management. Powered by advanced computing technologies, this solution enables people and machines to interact more naturally to extend human expertise and cognition. Verint Knowledge Management provides the flexibility and enterprise-grade infrastructure businesses need to rapidly deploy smarter solutions.
The initial phase of the deployment has seen the creation of the BMW Online Genius for its CIC. Verint’s team worked with BMW, sharing knowledge strategies and best practices, to identify and collect the content required to support the customer journey, including product specifications, configurations, pricing, policies, procedures, etc.
Implementation was phased, starting in the CIC and then rolling out to web self-service and the retail network where Verint automated knowledge functions to help transform the way customers and staff find, consume and share knowledge.
The Rollout
The first of a series of phased implementations went live in May 2016 in the BMW UK & ROI Customer Interaction Centre. With around 250 agents handling four million customer contacts per year, the CIC is a major contact point for BMW Group customers and its retail partners across its vehicle brands and financial services. It includes being the communications hub for BMW ConnectedDrive, BMW’s state- of-the-art in-car connected services.
Since May, the solution has supported BMW Group’s transition to a new, future-oriented CIC solution, aiding new staff to find accurate and timely information within an easy-to- use system. The solution has provided staff with a single and consistent source of knowledge to support ‘right first time’ answers and levels of customer service.
December 2016 saw the launch of the BMW Online Genius for customer self care which will be followed by adaptations for its MINI and motorcycle brands.
Benefits
The self-service solution will be integrated with the CIC chat facility to ensure a seamless transition if the customer wishes to switch from self-service to agent-assisted service, as well as with other digital touchpoints to provide both reactive and proactive information to customers.
The self-service solution will include Verint Knowledge Management’s capabilities to store and recall information in the same way the human brain thinks.
By understanding intent and context, the solution can present the right results, even if the words in the article don’t match the words in the query.