Ford bets on Figo Aspire’s success with new features, customer engagement

The new Ford Figo Aspire sedan will be Ford’s first compact sedan car in India. The company considers the compact sedan segment, sales of which are expected to increase upto 15 lakh units annually in 2018, very critical in terms of volume and reach. Hence, it is campaigning aggressively for its new model.

To offer its customers something different, the carmaker has come up with innovative features and customer engagement strategies.

Speaking at a pre-launch event of the Ford Aspire in Mumbai, P K Umashankar, vice-president - Customer Service Operations at Ford India, said, “This time, we have made sure that we want to energize the customers. We went about requesting customers to file in their stories of aspirations, motivation and values towards the modern India, what drives them. So we started a campaign called, ‘What drives you?’ through social media. And, we requested customers to post their stories on www.whatdrivesyou.in and we have a lot of postings coming in. We want figure out how all their aspirations embodies the Aspire sedan. We are emotionally connecting the vehicle to the customers’ aspirations.”

Over the past three weekends, Ford India has already covered cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Coimbatore and Pune which are a part of the 25-city campaign that the carmaker is conducting for its new model.

The company claims that the Aspire will have two segment-first special features. The Ford My Key helps the customer program the key to make sure that the car is driven responsibly. “For example, if you want to give the car to your younger brother or your son for a week, you have the ability to program the key in a way that the car cannot be driven beyond a particular speed or you cannot increase the audio volume beyond a particular level. That is the Ford My Key. Then there is the My Ford Dock, where you can dock your mobile phone or MP3 player so that you can connect your Sync to it. So you do not have to take your hands off the wheel, you can operate it with your eyes on the road,” added P K Umashankar.

The new Aspire will come with the Applink Sync which will allow consumers to directly connect their Smartphones to the infotainment system. The car is scheduled to be launched in the second half of the year, with two more models lined up in the next 12 months.