At Al Masaood Automobiles, customer-centricity is not a catchphrase. It is a philosophy deeply ingrained in the culture.
One that has allowed the company to achieve notable successes in service excellence and enabled it to ‘be one with the customer’, understand their needs and wants, and what they value – making their experience memorable, meaningful, and measurable.
Central to the company’s goal of providing the best possible quality of service to customers is a commitment to the people, process, systems and technology, and culture that bring this vision to life.
Placing customer-centricity as a main pillar in its strategy, Al Masaood Automobiles has invested substantial efforts in creating a strong, shared, sustainable, and centric culture that delivers service excellence.
The company adopts and promotes a customer-first mindset, prioritising transparency and fairness in all interactions – all driven by actively listening to customers, and thereby personalising service.
But how has Al Masaood Automobiles transformed its centricity mindset to customer-centricity?
We start with our most important resource – people:
All members of Al Masaood Automobiles – from service advisors to sales representatives and operational staff – undergo comprehensive training programmes aimed at enhancing customer interactions and service quality.
These programmes are purposely designed to ensure every customer journey is guided by expertise and a genuine desire to exceed expectations. Our training even includes neuroscience-based sessions on emotional intelligence and service excellence, cultivating a unified service language throughout the company.
By equipping the team with the skills to understand and value each customer’s uniqueness, we ensure effective communication and collaboration across all departments. Through consistent messaging and empowerment, we have created clearly defined levels of service, and understand what is valuable to our customers, so we can take actions that create value for them.
Voice of the Customer (VoC):
Al Masaood Automobiles adopts a proactive approach by taking ownership of customer experiences and leveraging feedback from our AI-enabled Voice of the Customer (VoC) programmes and best-in-class tools. These allow us to identify friction points in the customer journey and use captured insights to strengthen emotional connections and drive innovation.
Providing access to real-time customer feedback to all employees has also been key to empowering them with ownership and responsibility for customer interactions. Ultimately, this has developed them into experts who genuinely care and prioritise the best interests of our customers. We also found that partnering with businesses that adapt their technologies to align with our strategy and goals is crucial to our success.
Digital enhancement:
In this day and age, digital presence is as crucial as the physical. To help us address challenges and seize opportunities in the automotive market, we have implemented the Customer Data Experience Platform (CDXP).
This platform is designed to streamline customer data management, thus allowing us to leverage that data to transform our marketing initiatives to customer-centric and data-driven ones that improve customer engagement and drive growth.
The CDXP connects in realtime to all our customer digital touchpoints. These include our mobile app, website, digital engagement platform, CRM system, social channels, and VoC, thereby creating a unified 360-degree view of each customer.
Year-on-year, we’ve seen a significant increase in digital interactions, with an average of 22 per cent growth in our inbound interactions coming through digital or social channels. One of the key benefits of the CDXP is that it allows us to segment these interactions based on customer behaviour, preferences, and needs.
Using advanced analytics, we now identify patterns and trends in the customer data and create tailored offers and campaigns for each segment. By sending relevant and timely messages to these customers, we better serve them through a more personalised approach, and in turn increase conversions, retention, and customer lifetime value.
How has all this panned out?
Over the past four years, our Net Promoter Score (NPS) has shown impressive growth: a 71 per cent increase in service, nearly 16 per cent in sales, and over 22 per cent in our parts business.
In our service department, we now engage with almost 50 per cent of our customers post-transaction, enriching our insights to eliminate friction points in the customer journey, and allowing us to elevate customer satisfaction. In sales, an impressive 70 per cent of our customers share their feedback, insights, and actionable information with us.
These efforts have not gone unnoticed. Al Masaood Automobiles has received global recognition from our principal brands, including winning the Global Nissan Aftersales Awards three years in a row, the inaugural INFINITI Global Award, the Nissan Excellence Award, and many others.
This is a journey. Our culture of continuous improvement is a fundamental pillar in our quest for
service excellence.
By Stephan Davies, General Manager, Customer Experience and Network Development, Al Masaood Automobiles
