Mercedes-Benz

Making aftersales a reason to return for Mercedes-Benz customers

The challenge

Once a car drives off the forecourt, most automotive brands lose touch. Mercedes-Benz wanted to change that, transforming their aftersales service into a reason for customers to stay connected.

Creating a service experience that customers come back for

Once a car drives off the forecourt, most automotive brands lose touch. Mercedes-Benz wanted to change that, transforming their aftersales service into a reason for customers to stay connected.

With increased competition from smaller independent garages, they knew they had to reimagine what a premium aftersales experience should be. Engine partnered with Mercedes-Benz to reimagine their aftersales service and customer experience, setting out to develop a new standard for the automotive industry.

Reconnecting Mercedes-Benz with their customer

To design a differentiated service experience, Mercedes-Benz needed to reconnect with its customers. Working together, we helped them rediscover who their customers were and what they expected from the brand beyond the forecourt.

Breakthrough

Mercedes-Benz didn’t fully recognise the breadth of its customer base. From passionate female drivers to young and aspiring entrepreneurs, and knowledgeable brand enthusiasts, they had a limited view of the full diversity of their audience.
By uncovering customer insights, we were able to design practical and emotionally resonant opportunities that were uniquely Mercedes-Benz.

Designing for trust and focusing on the details that matter

Building from customer insights, Engine designed the aftersales experience around customer convenience, predictability and personalisation. Drawing inspiration from other industries like airlines and food delivery to reimagine what a premium aftersales journey should feel like for the modern Mercedes-Benz owner.

Breakthrough

The biggest source of customer anxiety was the sense they were being ripped off, a result of an overly opaque process. We defined how transparency could be built into every step of the journey, giving customers a greater sense of control.

Prototyping and testing in real-world dealerships

To unlock funding for piloting the service, we worked in partnership with internal teams to build a low-fidelity mock-up of the end-to-end experience, transforming a vacant dealership to showcase the experience at scale. This allowed senior decision-makers and delivery teams to step into the journey and feel it first-hand.

Breakthrough

The brilliance of the aftersales service and experience design lay in how it was orchestrated across the end-to-end experience. Even in low fidelity, stakeholders could see and feel what the transformation could deliver, which played a critical role in securing commitment to a significant transformation.

With funding secured, we worked with Mercedes-Benz Service Innovation team for over eight months to bring it to life. What started as a set of concepts, customer journeys, and mock-ups evolved into a fully operational pilot, running in three dealerships across different parts of the UK.

The goal was to test, learn and benchmark the new service against the existing offer. The results spoke for themselves:

50% increase in customer satisfaction during the pilot
“The pilot site has consistently outperformed the national average since the launch of My Service” - Implementation manager, Mercedes-Benz, UK

The redesigned aftersales experience delivered measurable results for customers, frontline staff and the business.