With its “Best Customer Experience” marketing and sales strategy, Mercedes‑Benz is further aligning its global sales and service for the future. With the new brand presence, the premium brand is redefining the role between the real and digital world in sales and service, and is bringing together the benefits of both worlds. In so doing, the focus is on optimal customer care and a holistic brand experience of modern luxury from Mercedes-Benz.
It’s not only customers who benefit from the new brand presence – it is also a clear sign for the approximately 6500 Mercedes-Benz locations around the world. Bricks-and-mortar retail will serve as a personal point of contact for all customers and interested parties in the digital age, too, and will be a mainstay of Mercedes-Benz sales. In addition to virtual contact, there will always be a personal customer contact in future.
In line with the philosophy of customer centricity, Mercedes-Benz focusses on customers and interested parties, offering them a premium brand experience across all points of contact.
All retail elements were considered and modernised with the new appearance at the point of sale, from the reception, sales and service to delivery. In future, the showrooms will become a stage for products and services. Supported by media, a brand space will be created where customers and interested parties experience the brand virtually and in reality.
The point of sale becomes a point of experience, a place to encounter the Mercedes-Benz Cars brand family. Designed in cooperation with the Mercedes-Benz Design Team, the new brand presence reflects the design idiom of modern luxury and also makes this more intensely experienceable in retail.
New job profiles for sales personnel are an essential part of the new brand presence. They ensure that the increasing product complexity and digitisation are taken into account, as well as the individual needs of customers.
For example, the Star Assistant helps shape the entry into the Mercedes‑Benz brand world for the customer, and the Star Assistant is the first contact for the customer at the reception in the showroom. The customer’s concerns are clarified in a personal conversation. As part of the new reception situation, the customer is then immediately forwarded to the appropriate contact person for advice or a service or sales conversation.
Setting up a drive-in service reception also illustrates the consistent alignment towards customer requirements and enables optimal customer care in combination with the integrated customer contact surfaces for sales and after sales. This has been demonstrated after just a short period of time in a clear increase in customer frequency.
The Hung Hom location in Hong Kong shows what the new brand presence looks like in an international context. Hung Hom is a typical example of an urban showroom in an optimal inner-city location with restaurants and places to shop. Customers here are experiencing the new level of quality in advice, sales and service after a renovation period of just seven months.
All the core elements of the new brand presence including mobile advice and new processes in sales and aftersales have been consistently implemented in Hong Kong in the context of the realignment of the sales network.
Hung Hom also serves as an example of the modularity of the new brand presence, which allows for classic locations in suburban areas as well as other format types, for example in the inner city. The basis for this is standardised global basic principles, which allow numerous applications when implementing the brand presence. This means that in the near future, new formats will be possible in Mercedes-Benz brick-and-mortar retail. Customers in Germany can experience the new brand presence in Flensburg.
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