Case Study｜Miyazono Import Car Sales Co.

We want to provide the "best experience" to our customers with Mercedes-Benz

As an authorized Mercedes-Benz dealer, we at Miyazono Import Car Sales Co., Ltd. provide comprehensive services ranging from new car sales to maintenance and other after-sales services in order to deliver a rich and comfortable car life.
There are more than 200 Mercedes-Benz dealerships in Japan, and we have seven dealerships for both new and used vehicles, centered on our headquarters in Nakano Ward, Tokyo, along the Ome Kaido Road in the west and in Nishi-Shinjuku in the east, as well as a base for maintenance work and a specialized store for sheet metal repair and painting of vehicles. We also have a specialized after-sales service center and a shop that handles sheet metal repair and painting.

Due to the nature of imported vehicles, we set sales plan targets with our importer, Mercedes-Benz Japan Co. Although the number of vehicles that can be imported and the number of vehicles that can be imported each time vary depending on the social situation and the type of vehicle, we flexibly set targets for service and sales activities from the perspective of increasing profits at our sales bases, and communicate with our customers on a daily basis.
We are not able to provide full-order services as we do with domestic cars, but rather, we provide all-in-one cars manufactured for each grade in Japan, so it is very important to elicit the needs of our customers through communication with them in our sales activities. Since we have about 200 dealers competing for about 60,000 to 70,000 Mercedes-Benz vehicles sold in Japan, we place great importance on "how we can provide the best service to our customers.
When we looked for a service that would allow us to refine our sales techniques and simplify our promotional activities, UPWARD caught our eye.

お客様情報の蓄積と継続的なコミュニケーションによって最適なサービスの実現へ 

One of the challenges in our sales activities to date has been that we have not been able to adequately manage customer information. We had been conducting sales activities based on questionnaires filled out by customers when they visited our stores, but we had not yet reached the level of digitizing this questionnaire data and consolidating it into a single system, and from there we had not been able to conduct sales promotion activities to "connect" with customers. In addition, each individual sales representative was responsible for a specific customer.
In addition, each sales representative was managing customer information on their own PCs using Excel or on paper, making it difficult to refer to the information and making them "memory-dependent. Of course, we never forget the faces of our customers, but we do not have a detailed and accurate understanding of when each of our hundreds of customers purchased their vehicles, what their needs were, and the current condition of their vehicles. This was a problem, and we felt that we were missing opportunities to offer the most appropriate services.

We were concerned that we were not doing enough to approach prospective customers when sales volume was sluggish, or to establish regular contact with customers who were less enthusiastic, and that they were drifting away to other companies even though they had made a connection with our company.
Therefore, we introduced UPWARD to back up our daily sales activities throughout the company. Our initial goal was to make it possible for each department head and base manager to see all the information that had been left to the individual in charge by easily uploading customer information to the system at log.
Since the introduction of UPWARD It has been two years since we introduced UPWARD, and although we are still in the early stages of development, I have the impression that we are now in a position to make use of UPWARD in our sales activities, for example, to uncover potential customers who had little desire to purchase, which we had not been able to do until now.
By contacting customers who have visited our stores in the past, we have sometimes been able to get them to say, "Let's go to the store next time," and we are in the process of reaffirming the importance of this kind of sales promotion activity.

 カスタマーサクセスチームと共に啓蒙活動と扱いやすい画面構築を行ない、利用者のITスキルに合わせたアドバイスを実現

When introducing UPWARD, the most important consideration was "how to make it easy for users to use. Due to the nature of the import car sales business, we are constantly dealing with a variety of systems at the site in response to requests from importers. In order to add even more tools to the system, we made every effort to build and operate the system from the "front-line" perspective.
Even within a single site, IT skills vary from site to site and from member to member. Some sites had already digitized visitor questionnaires, while others managed them entirely on paper. We started the pilot operation with the head office and two nearby stores, and since the stores were relatively close to each other, the promotion team was able to rush to the site as soon as something went wrong.
However, when the pilot was completed and the system was rolled out to all locations, many issues began to emerge. As the number of users increased, we tried to spread the system uniformly online to improve efficiency, but if we could not see what the employees on site were seeing, we would not know how much was being communicated and how well it was being utilized. In addition, it was difficult to ask questions when a large number of people were in attendance, making it impossible to fully grasp the level of understanding. Individual inquiries also varied in terms of the issues they faced. Some said they could not log in to the system in the first place, while others said they wanted to create a more advanced sales strategy map, and we found it difficult to educate people uniformly only online.
Therefore, we challenged ourselves to visit each location many times and teach each person in a hands-on, detailed manner. There were periods when I was unable to go due to the Corona disaster, so I feel that we are gradually making progress in utilizing the system, although it is a step-by-step process. In the past, we have had several instances where we failed to implement other systems and reverted back to Excel management, so I was determined not to have the staff think, "I have to do this, too! I was determined not to let the field staff think, "I don't have to do this, too!

The premium support provided by UPWARD's Customer Success Team was very encouraging in these workshops and training sessions for the stores. They continue to support us in many ways, including educating our staff on the use of the system.
However, it cannot be said that the system has completely taken root in the field, and even a small increase in the amount of time and effort required is still a problem, so I believe it is my role to steadily resolve such resistance, alleviate concerns and frustrations, and encourage the use of the system. If the customer's information is not input from the field, there will be no original data to utilize in sales activities.... In the future, when we conduct sales promotion activities such as online mailings, we need to include not only existing customers but also those who "did not purchase" or "were not very enthusiastic," because without such information, it will not be very effective, so I would like to continue to work steadily on this.

We want to realize "optimal service" for each customer and make the value of the experience through Mercedes-Benz the best it can be

Import car sales is a business that requires high quality sales and regular contact with customers. Each sales representative is responsible for a large number of customers in each region, and if you rely solely on the "memory and intuition of the sales representative," you will lose out to competition from other companies.
Mercedes-Benz is the world's oldest automobile company and the first to develop a car. German craftsmanship is one of the attractions of its cars, and most recently, Mercedes-Benz has been leading the development of cars that can be driven with peace of mind, such as "accident-free" and "environmentally friendly" cars. We want our customers to enjoy a comfortable car life with Mercedes-Benz. Our desire is to do our best to achieve this.
Although UPWARD is still in the middle of its utilization, the replacement cycle of cars varies from one year to three years, while some of our customers have been driving for a long time. While accumulating customer information over the long term, we would like to continue to visualize sales information and utilize data with the aim of improving the value of the customer experience so that several years from now we can say, "We were able to provide optimal service because we had UPWARD.