Honda

Universal Honda is the distributor of New Honda vehicles and parts in Ireland supporting a network of 27 franchised dealerships across Ireland.

IT Manager Ger Dooley explains how a solution for a colleague who needs to work from home has turned into something which is adding a new dimension to Honda’s customer engagement strategy.

“A colleague has to work at weekends and needs remote access to our computer system. In the past, he had to come into the office to do this which meant that it took him half a day to do an hour’s work. We approached Vodafone and they suggested that installing a MiFi unit in my colleague’s home would solve the problem. It’s wireless and really simple to use. In fact, you don’t need any technical expertise to make it work.

“As I thought about other ways we could use MiFi, I immediately thought of the customer waiting areas.

We hadn’t offered WiFi before because we were concerned about security. Now we can offer it separate to our own internal for our customers. They now have free internet access while waiting to pick up their cars from the service department, allowing them to get on with their ‘day job’ instead of worrying about ‘lost time’ waiting around.

“What I didn’t realise was that this would also deliver other benefits. Some of our dealers can now offer to carry out work on a customer vehicle while they wait, as people can work while they wait.

This has resulted in more customers spending more time in the showroom looking at new models which is helping us to drive sales. The dealerships are delighted with this as it’s providing them with a competitive advantage and it’s well priced.

“We had our auditors in recently and were able to use MiFi to help them as they worked. We simply took the unit, plugged it into the area they were working in and they could access the internet and their own company files without coming near our network.

“Vodafone’s support has been invaluable in helping us see the potential. They went the extra mile and organised product demonstrations for dealerships and helped us promote free internet access to our customers. This has given us the confidence to look at other Vodafone products.

“We’ve just started using bulk texting. We always used direct mail which cost us around €2 per letter and was hard to measure. Now we’re able to know for sure that the recipient got the message, whether or not they read it and if they responded.

“Dealerships can use it for new model launches, service reminders, order updates, special offers etc and can phase the sending of messages to make sure they have the capacity to deal with responses. We’ve integrated it into the dealer management systems and staff can even use it through the web at home. Also, the cost is so small compared to traditional direct mail. Bulk texting costs just 3% of what we used to spend on direct mail which means we can do so much more with our budget.”