The challenge
An independent poll suggested Mercedes Finance was the worst automotive finance service in the survey. The business needed to:
- Improve customer service
- Reduce the time taken to integrate with SAP
- Fix fundamental problems with business processes to improve communication with dealers
- Drive CRM adoption beyond the credit control team
- Give customer services accurate vehicle finance information quickly
- Get effective CRM support
What we did
Mercedes Finance bought 130 CRM licences for its customer services and contracts departments.
Customisation. Contact records are vehicle-centric, using key fields to identify finance contracts and Mercedes dealer relationships. CRM-UK modified the system so Mercedes Finance can email the dealer that supplied a vehicle and record the history against the vehicle rather than the customer.
Integration. Custom fields store SAP information, including contract status and settlement details. A global calendar holds customer service issues in a shared "pool". Agents take ownership of an issue until it is resolved.
Mercedes Finance also implemented Inaport, a data import utility from InaPlex, with SAP ODBC connectors, scheduled task profiles and complex indexing for field matching.
The results
- 39 systems integrated
- A single desktop overview of customer information
- SAP integration reduced from an 8-hour nightly run to every half hour
“CRM-UK were incredibly pleasant to deal with, and installed everything with the minimum of fuss and disturbance. Developing our CRM system has transformed the way we deal with our customers. Most importantly our customers are happy with our improved service.”
IT Specialist – Business Change, Mercedes Finance IT
