Mahindra’s digital drive gives new fillip to its PV sales

Mahindra & Mahindra is betting big on digital connect for driving its passenger vehicle (PV) sales in the domestic market. The company, which is currently recording an 8 percent conversion (digital to final showroom sale) rate, is optimistic about increasing it to 15 percent by FY2018-2019.

The company today launched the first-of-its-kind ‘Bring the Showroom Home’ concept for the new-age customer, which it says is part of its ‘Digital Transformation’ strategy.

This new initiative aims to bring a portable, mobile-based, interactive virtual reality (VR) experience, enabling a customer to get a 360-degree, all-encompassing and immersive virtual showroom and different environment experience.

The initiative part of a series of initiatives under its digital strategy, will use an immersive technology experience, facilitating the customer to co-create and identify his/her Mahindra vehicle with any specification, in the convenience and comfort of his/her home as well as involve their family in the decision-making process.  

The platform has three salient features – virtual showroom, self-explore and Make my SUV – which will enable customers to experience the vehicle of their choice, in its entirety.

Why digital?
Mahindra stated that it conducted a nationwide research to understand the consumer insight for which it got over 400 customer quotes, through more than 200,000 customer feedback, and 20 sales team discussions. This helped it identify 112 pain points and 10 opportunity areas.

One of the research findings pointed out the growing digital influence in the vehicle purchase decision (42%), which was followed by owners past experience (32%), family and friends (13%), dealership showroom (12%), and others (1%). 

The SUV major says that over the years, the average number of test drives by a customer has come down substantially, which means customers are making fewer showroom visits. 

Veejay Nakra, chief of sales and marketing – Automotive Division, Mahindra & Mahindra, said, “At Mahindra, we have always been at the forefront of disruption with the customer at the epicentre. Hence, we re-imagined the whole customer purchase experience by embarking on a digital transformation journey for an end-to-end solution from the pre-purchase stage to the post purchase ownership phase. These include industry first initiatives such as Mahindra ‘SYOUV’ and ‘With You Hamesha’, in addition to our multiple tie-ups with portals for online booking of our vehicles. The ‘Bring the Showroom Home’ is one such industry first immersive experience.”

Nakra further added, “In India, where the vehicle purchase decision is mostly influenced by the family, Bring the Showroom Home will get the showroom closer to our customers and their families. After all, we want to take customer experience to the next level through convenient, transparent and personalised services at every step.”

In an conversation with Autocar Professional, Nakra revealed the company has spent around Rs 15 crore for the three digital initiatives - SYOUV, WYH and bring the showroom home. And under its digital strategy it has focused on three-core areas of pre-purchase, purchase and after-sales.

Mahindra states that its SYOUV platform fortifies engagement in the pre-purchase phase by providing rich customer experience. It integrates the virtual world with the real world and is the core offering under the pre-purchase phase. It has also ensured a robust backend mechanism to ensure superlative customer experience. It’s key features includes the ability to check dealer stock availability, collaborative exploration and customisation, talk to its expert, compare vehicles, avail and compare finance and insurance, booking test drive as per one’s convenience and book one’s customised vehicle online.

In its next phase, the company plans to also incorporate additional features that include on-road price, online order tracking, deal maker and several other differentiating features, and says it promises three customer benefits – transparent, personalised and convenient.

For the purchase stage, the company is retailing its product offerings through multiple tie-ups with auto portals for sales of its automotive products, thereby providing customers with the convenience to book their vehicles anytime, anywhere. The company has tied up with Cardekho, Carwale, IBB, Car&Bike and M2ALL.

In its aftersales experience, the WYH platform which already has around 41 lakh customers on its platform (32% penetration), it says it provides a leading customer convenience in the ownership phase. It allows the existing customer to conveniently avail vehicle servicing, get notified about important updates regarding the vehicle, instant chat with customer support, SOS button (emergency assistance), video call the relationship manager and  make payments online. Mahindra says in its endeavour to further improve and offer rich services, the WYH in its next phase will include driver tracking, breakdown van tracking and vehicle tracking in workshop and many differentiating features.