Better informed customers mean more business. mobile.de regularly contacts its affiliated dealers to inform them about innovations and to them advise how they can improve showcasing their offers. Activities are based on a virtual workspace solution by oneclick, which combines dialler and CRM.
“Our core business is to list vehicles“, explains Mathias Schmidt. A manager of external partners, he is also part of the sales operation. He coordinates the call centre that looks after C-customers and dealerships that list between five to up to 400 vehicles. His sales targets are to increase up and cross selling as well as optimisation of dealer support through outbound activities.
Ultimately, mobile.de has two customer groups: the dealers, who generate the company’s turnover by placing advertisements, and interested customers, who buy their next vehicle via the platform – the customers of the company‘s customers. “Our mission is to help the visitors of our platform to find a suitable vehicle“, says Mathias Schmidt. The more visitors use the platform, the more incentives there are for dealers to list their vehicles.
Informed customers use more offers and options
"The target group of dealers with up to 400 listed vehicles is important to us as they provide a range that vehicle buyers appreciate, in particular on our online exchange“, explains Mathias Schmidt. And Schmidt helps these dealers to design their advertisements in such a way, that visitors find offers even faster.
Besides the entry product - the simple listing - there are a number of additional products to highlight offers: coloured frames, the red pen price, the page 1 advertisement as well as other sales tools. There are also evaluations and services that flank the offer, for example vehicle financing. Additional features are also new products, such as new vehicles or cooperation with sister companies. An example would be Motortalk, a platform that enables to share experience between end customers and experts who also provide tips regarding the vehicles. Schmidt‘s team helps dealers to maintain an overview of the range of offers and advise which tools enable them to showcase their offers in the most effective way.
Call centre expertise is in demand
Mathias Schmidt was recruited by mobile.de thanks to his unbiased view of the sector. His background is not in the automotive sector – he is a call centre specialist: "I love call centres! The sector is the second largest employer in Germany“, explains the manager and his enthusiasm is real. Call centres create service quality and ensure professional processes: "Nowadays customers expect far more service, increased availability and faster responses to enquiries.”
While still at school, Schmidt already had a part-time job as a call centre agent and by the age of 19 was working as a coach. He subsequently completed his apprenticeship in telemarketing ("Kaufmann für Dialogmarketing“) and later managed sales teams and call centres in Germany and overseas, for example for the LottoTeam-Group, Vodafone and 1&1.
Mathias Schmidt worked hard in its first year with mobile.de to acquire automotive sector knowledge and "this is by far not over”. At mobile.de Mr Schmidt, who reports to the head of dealer sales, has the specific task to increase turnover in up and cross selling and to support the outbound activities relating the dealer target group with up to 400 vehicles. “Ideally, the dealers should know the products as well as our own employees. They will only book a product, if they are able to understand its impact and recognise it as a sales promotion. The competency of my team is very much in demand in these very specific areas”, says Mr. Schmidt. Each dealer is contacted regularly by Schmidt’s team and he has access to a pool of 65 call centre agents based at several external service providers, which he calls partners.
Success factor dealer satisfaction
The art is to organise the support efficiently and economically and subsequently achieve the highest possible dealer satisfaction. This in turn results in sustainable growth.
Each call agent has a clear overview of all the relevant call information regarding the next dealer on their computer screen. In the same window, all information about the current campaign is also available. During the call, the agent can discuss the needs, requirements and history of his or her call partner without needing to search for additional information from other system environments. Data entries are done in the same system, without having to change the window. The telephony – dialling of the next customer, selection of the next call partner – is fully automated by the system. It allows the call agent to focus fully on the current call, which considerably reduces preparation time.
Intelligent software supports call agents
A complex software solution is behind the computer screen. Mr. Schmidt works with the call centre software Elsbeth of the Canadian vendor Enghouse Interactive, which is virtually depicted on the call agents’ screen by oneclick. With Elsbeth, he can develop tailored screen masks for campaigns. They only show the customer information that is relevant for each respective campaign. In the background, the dialler takes care of the telephony. “It ensures that the company making the outbound calls complies with all regulations of the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur)“, says Burkhard Urban, head of sales at Enghouse Interactive.
Mr. Schmidt selects the customer data for his campaigns in Salesforce, the CRM software of mobile.de’s parent company Ebay. Data is imported into each call campaign via an in-house developed interface.
The dialler calls and suggests the next customer, saves all agent entries and, following the call, transfers them back via the interface into the CRM. Therefore, all call results are visible to all relevant departments in real time.
The call agent logs into oneclick via the browser. A centralised, 100% web-based application delivery and streaming platform, oneclick provides on the agent’s computer screen each campaign mask from the Enghouse data centre, completed with the dealer’s Salesforce data. It is irrelevant if this is hosted at mobile.de or a partner business. “This protects our greatest asset: the data of our customers, by retaining data ownership. Despite this, agents always have up to date information that they need for their work.“
Considerably less administrative effort
"The administrative effort has reduced considerably“, confirms Marco Schmidt, project manager at Avedo, a dialogue marketing company and mobile.de partner. There is no need for long clearances with mobile.de regarding campaign details or their implementation with the internal IT operation of Avedo: “Our agents start oneclick, open the campaign and can start immediately.“ Also the return of amended customer data and production of reports – tasks that require significant effort – are no longer necessary.
"We increase productivity by a factor of 1.5 with the solution. Efficiency of call agents increases as they can solely focus on the customer call and therefore keep in mind satisfaction of the contacted dealer,“ adds Matthias Schmidt of mobile.de. “As we run the solution via the oneclick platform, it is also very performant. Neither our team here at mobile.de nor our call centre partners have to install Salesforce or Elsbeth. Through this virtual solution, the systems only access individual data points, without saving them permanently. This guarantees high data security“.
What is his next objective? Mr. Schmidt laughs. "We have successfully integrated the current campaigns into the Enghouse and oneclick systems and are now well equipped for the tasks ahead in 2017! Now the next step is to utilise all other opportunities that this system environment provides. First and foremost, I think about quality measurement of outbound campaigns. I am sure that we can generate long-lasting success! With these type of systems, we can underpin this assessment in a data-driven way.“
Matthias Schmidt sees himself has a call centre sector pioneer. He adopted a completely new approach with this solution within the eBay Group. "I regularly exchange ideas about innovation and best practice approaches with our sister companies. What’s important in the end is the overall result in the group. I am, of course, proud that I can contribute considerably with this solution!“
“Our core business is to list vehicles“, explains Mathias Schmidt. A manager of external partners, he is also part of the sales operation. He coordinates the call centre that looks after C-customers and dealerships that list between five to up to 400 vehicles. His sales targets are to increase up and cross selling as well as optimisation of dealer support through outbound activities.
Ultimately, mobile.de has two customer groups: the dealers, who generate the company’s turnover by placing advertisements, and interested customers, who buy their next vehicle via the platform – the customers of the company‘s customers. “Our mission is to help the visitors of our platform to find a suitable vehicle“, says Mathias Schmidt. The more visitors use the platform, the more incentives there are for dealers to list their vehicles.
Informed customers use more offers and options
"The target group of dealers with up to 400 listed vehicles is important to us as they provide a range that vehicle buyers appreciate, in particular on our online exchange“, explains Mathias Schmidt. And Schmidt helps these dealers to design their advertisements in such a way, that visitors find offers even faster.
Besides the entry product - the simple listing - there are a number of additional products to highlight offers: coloured frames, the red pen price, the page 1 advertisement as well as other sales tools. There are also evaluations and services that flank the offer, for example vehicle financing. Additional features are also new products, such as new vehicles or cooperation with sister companies. An example would be Motortalk, a platform that enables to share experience between end customers and experts who also provide tips regarding the vehicles. Schmidt‘s team helps dealers to maintain an overview of the range of offers and advise which tools enable them to showcase their offers in the most effective way.
Call centre expertise is in demand
Mathias Schmidt was recruited by mobile.de thanks to his unbiased view of the sector. His background is not in the automotive sector – he is a call centre specialist: "I love call centres! The sector is the second largest employer in Germany“, explains the manager and his enthusiasm is real. Call centres create service quality and ensure professional processes: "Nowadays customers expect far more service, increased availability and faster responses to enquiries.”
While still at school, Schmidt already had a part-time job as a call centre agent and by the age of 19 was working as a coach. He subsequently completed his apprenticeship in telemarketing ("Kaufmann für Dialogmarketing“) and later managed sales teams and call centres in Germany and overseas, for example for the LottoTeam-Group, Vodafone and 1&1.
Mathias Schmidt worked hard in its first year with mobile.de to acquire automotive sector knowledge and "this is by far not over”. At mobile.de Mr Schmidt, who reports to the head of dealer sales, has the specific task to increase turnover in up and cross selling and to support the outbound activities relating the dealer target group with up to 400 vehicles. “Ideally, the dealers should know the products as well as our own employees. They will only book a product, if they are able to understand its impact and recognise it as a sales promotion. The competency of my team is very much in demand in these very specific areas”, says Mr. Schmidt. Each dealer is contacted regularly by Schmidt’s team and he has access to a pool of 65 call centre agents based at several external service providers, which he calls partners.
Success factor dealer satisfaction
The art is to organise the support efficiently and economically and subsequently achieve the highest possible dealer satisfaction. This in turn results in sustainable growth.
Each call agent has a clear overview of all the relevant call information regarding the next dealer on their computer screen. In the same window, all information about the current campaign is also available. During the call, the agent can discuss the needs, requirements and history of his or her call partner without needing to search for additional information from other system environments. Data entries are done in the same system, without having to change the window. The telephony – dialling of the next customer, selection of the next call partner – is fully automated by the system. It allows the call agent to focus fully on the current call, which considerably reduces preparation time.
Intelligent software supports call agents
A complex software solution is behind the computer screen. Mr. Schmidt works with the call centre software Elsbeth of the Canadian vendor Enghouse Interactive, which is virtually depicted on the call agents’ screen by oneclick. With Elsbeth, he can develop tailored screen masks for campaigns. They only show the customer information that is relevant for each respective campaign. In the background, the dialler takes care of the telephony. “It ensures that the company making the outbound calls complies with all regulations of the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur)“, says Burkhard Urban, head of sales at Enghouse Interactive.
Mr. Schmidt selects the customer data for his campaigns in Salesforce, the CRM software of mobile.de’s parent company Ebay. Data is imported into each call campaign via an in-house developed interface.
The dialler calls and suggests the next customer, saves all agent entries and, following the call, transfers them back via the interface into the CRM. Therefore, all call results are visible to all relevant departments in real time.
The call agent logs into oneclick via the browser. A centralised, 100% web-based application delivery and streaming platform, oneclick provides on the agent’s computer screen each campaign mask from the Enghouse data centre, completed with the dealer’s Salesforce data. It is irrelevant if this is hosted at mobile.de or a partner business. “This protects our greatest asset: the data of our customers, by retaining data ownership. Despite this, agents always have up to date information that they need for their work.“
Considerably less administrative effort
"The administrative effort has reduced considerably“, confirms Marco Schmidt, project manager at Avedo, a dialogue marketing company and mobile.de partner. There is no need for long clearances with mobile.de regarding campaign details or their implementation with the internal IT operation of Avedo: “Our agents start oneclick, open the campaign and can start immediately.“ Also the return of amended customer data and production of reports – tasks that require significant effort – are no longer necessary.
"We increase productivity by a factor of 1.5 with the solution. Efficiency of call agents increases as they can solely focus on the customer call and therefore keep in mind satisfaction of the contacted dealer,“ adds Matthias Schmidt of mobile.de. “As we run the solution via the oneclick platform, it is also very performant. Neither our team here at mobile.de nor our call centre partners have to install Salesforce or Elsbeth. Through this virtual solution, the systems only access individual data points, without saving them permanently. This guarantees high data security“.
What is his next objective? Mr. Schmidt laughs. "We have successfully integrated the current campaigns into the Enghouse and oneclick systems and are now well equipped for the tasks ahead in 2017! Now the next step is to utilise all other opportunities that this system environment provides. First and foremost, I think about quality measurement of outbound campaigns. I am sure that we can generate long-lasting success! With these type of systems, we can underpin this assessment in a data-driven way.“
Matthias Schmidt sees himself has a call centre sector pioneer. He adopted a completely new approach with this solution within the eBay Group. "I regularly exchange ideas about innovation and best practice approaches with our sister companies. What’s important in the end is the overall result in the group. I am, of course, proud that I can contribute considerably with this solution!“
