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Al Jomaih Automotive Drives its CRM to New Heights with Altitude Software

Riadh Boukhris, CEO at Altitude Software Mena

AlJomaih Automotive company (AAC), the largest GM dealer in the Middle East, has reported increased productivity and improved customer service as a result of deploying a best-in-class contact centre to handle the fast-paced growth of its customer service operations across Saudi Arabia.

Located in Dammam, AAC’s contact centre is powered by the Altitude uCI™ customer interaction management solution,  which provided the automotive dealer with a wealth of advanced IP contact centre features, such as voice portal, outbound dialer and a unified centralized monitoring, queuing, routing and reporting.

Largest GM dealer in the Middle East

Representing General Motors (GM) since 1967, Aljomaih Automotive is the largest GM dealer in the Middle East, and one of the largest in the world. The Company’s network covers all three regions of Saudi Arabia. The sole distributor of Cadillac, Hummer, Saab and Opel, the Company’s range of vehicles also includes Chevrolet and GMC. AAC‘s services include the sale of new and used vehicles, with a range of financing and leasing options.

Aljomaih Automotive is the only dealer in the Middle East to have won GM’s prestigious “Chairman’s Challenge Award” every year since its inception. AAC is also the only dealer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to have been awarded the Gold Level by GM for parts and service excellence. ‘’We are constantly looking to boost levels of customer care in terms of sales and aftersales service to ensure that Aljomaih provides the best customer ownership experience in the GCC region and beyond,’’ commented Sheikh Ibrahim Aljomaih, Vice Chairman & CEO of AAC. “We recognize the importance of superior automotive customer service as a key differentiator in establishing and maintaining competitive advantage and as such, our desire to cultivate the highest level of customer care is paramount.’’

Powering ahead with Altitude
AAC recognized the need for an advanced customer interaction management solution to improve the overall effectiveness of its contact centre operations. The specific requirements of the Dammam-based automotive dealer were the following:

  • Handle heavy volumes of calls right after a new corporate campaign (ad, TV spot)
  • Handle new channels such as SMS and Email to enhance customer satisfaction
  • Proactive appointment scheduling, specifically for car maintenance services
  • Better target customers and enhance promotions
  • Boost the productivity and efficiency of outbound telemarketing campaigns

Extensive real-time reporting capabilities to ensure the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the customer service operations.

With hundreds of thousands of customers in KSA, Al Jomaih also required consistent, up to date data quality to avoid any outdated, invalid or duplicated customer records. “We wanted to be proactive and ensure we have quality, consistent information on our customers and prospects to improve our communications as well as build our customer relationships on a customized way, be it by phone, SMS, email or face-to-face,‘‘ said Mohamed M. Khaled, National & CRM Manager at Aljomaih Automotive Company.

“As an example, the owner of a 2006 GM car should not get the same automotive service reminder as the owner of a 2010 GM car; their needs are different and we wanted to address such key requirement. Therefore, we were looking for a customer interaction management solution that was comprehensive, flexible, and easy to use in line with our organizational efforts to become truly customer centric,” added Khaled.

After extensive market research, the company decided to implement the Altitude IP Contact Centre Suite. Commenting on AAC‘s contact centre software selection, Khaled said: “the decision to select Altitude Software was based on the company’s ability to provide a scalable and complete solution as well as its record for responsive technical assistance in the GCC Region. In this respect, while we were researching different vendors and getting references in Saudi Arabia, the best remarks were given from Altitude users accross the Kingdom, from Jeddah to Riyadh and Dammam.”

AlJomaih Automotive has now implemented key Altitude uCI modules, such as Altitude Voice Portal (Interactive Voice Response), Altitude Management, Altitude Multimedia (SMS, Email), Altitude Unified Dialler, Altitude Voice recorder, Altitude Unified Router for intelligent, skills-based routing, Altitude Connector to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Altitude vBox, a free SIP server natively integrated with the Altitude uCI suite. The AAC contact centre project was successfully deployed by Blue Mena in about eight weeks.

Boosting first call resolution rates and outbound campaign efficiency
“The results have been very insightful,” said Khaled. “In the first 4 weeks of the contact centre set up we were able to increase the size of our database by 300%, and achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction with a 91% rate of telephone interactions answered within 18 seconds. Besides, our call monitoring constantly shows an average quality/satisfaction rating of 96%”.

Business operations within the AAC contact centre today include customer service, technical updates, new promotions and appointment scheduling. With the new contact centre system in place, AAC is able to schedule call backs, manage call lists for targeted marketing operations, simplify access to critical caller information such as car owner maintenance history, provide real-time monitoring as well as recording, storage, and retrieval of customer interaction sessions.

Another key requirement of AAC was to reach its customers through the SMS channel. In this project,
AAC is planning to integrate the Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the SMS gateway provided by Altitude in order deliver customized text messages to customers during the service appointment lifecycle. This includes text messages to automate car service reminders, service status updates and other important information for customers. Text messages shall be used to get quicker responses as well as to avoid wasted time waiting on approvals or chasing voicemails. “Altitude has clearly helped us integrate telephony, fax, SMS and email channels with desktop computers to empower our contact centre agents with critical customer information – all major factors in providing prompt, efficient and differentiating customer care,” added Khaled.

AAC wins GM Grand Masters status
AAC recently won the prestigious Grand Masters Status from General Motors for the year 2011.  The status was awarded to AAC after showing an excellent improvement and achievement of highest customer satisfaction level in terms of customer care, car delivery process and quality of vehicle service experience. AAC Chief Operating Officer, Sheikh Waleed Aljomaih, underlined Aljomaih’s commitment in providing the best in class “Total Solutions” to all customer needs regarding owning and maintaining a vehicle. General Motor’s Grand Masters Status is a comprehensive program that evaluates dealers on very stringent targets of customer value managament, pre-delivery and delivery experience, quality service and maintenance experiences in addition to volume and share targets.

“Customer satisfaction is essential to AlJomaih Automotive‘s service delivery and brand reputation in a very competitive automotive market. By deploying Altitude uCI, AAC has added a key dimension to its customer care offering,” commented Riadh Boukhris, Altitude Software MENA President. “AAC represents a strategic customer for us as it not only demonstrates Altitude’s growing global and regional reach but the fact that we have aligned ourselves with another key organisation in the GCC – one that is striving to have a leading role in automotive customer service excellence across Saudi Arabia and pushing itself on all fronts in order to achieve that ambition.”

The Altitude uCI (Unified Customer Interaction) suite has a ten year plus track record of outstanding results in contact centres worldwide, having won over 50 Industry Awards for Innovation and Performance in the last few years. The solution provides businesses with a wealth of advanced contact centre features in over 80 countries worldwide, with a fast-growing presence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as across the GCC region.

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