Mercedes-Benz

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.  

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. 

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.   

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.  

• +8.1% increase in retail visits (vs. -3.1% decline the previous year)
• +16.5% increase in retail hours booked
• +£18 increase in average customer spend