Proactive technology brings dealers closer to their customers

When machines play an integral part in the success of your business, your local equipment dealer is much more than just another supplier. They are a key business partner that strives to help you do more, for less, and more profitably. That is the thinking behind a whole raft of initiatives dreamed up by Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE) to help dealers use connected machine technology to drive down the cost of ownership and improve productivity. 

One such initiative is to improve the way dealers work with customers during the lifetime of their machines. It consists of a more proactive and digital approach to identifying customers’ needs.

The new processes merge successful aftersales best practices from our global dealer network with connected machine data and internal expert know-how . “The result is a set of initiatives designed to give our dealers actionable and traceable triggers to reach out proactively to customers in need with the right offer at the right time,” says Mihail Ivanov, Product Manager Proactive Sales at Volvo CE. “These prompted interactions are helping make things easier for customers, and their businesses run more smoothly.”
One dealer where this is delivering positive outcomes is at US dealer Volvo Construction Equipment & Services in California. Here, every customer gets assigned their own specific person at a dealership. A trigger in the software prompts an action. “Our aftermarket organization changed from being completely reactive to very proactive,” says Brian Farrell, Aftersales Manager. One of the cool things about the initiative is that it is a co-operation between Volvo CE, the regional organizations and the dealers. So successful has the pilot project been in California, the plan is to expand the initiative across Volvo CE’s dealer network. 

“There are lots of instances where we have improved our service to customers, but one that comes to mind is an undercarriage inspection that we did for a customer,” continues Brian. “The trigger that we received through the system prompted us to go and proactively inspect their machine, and it turned out that they needed an undercarriage overhaul very badly. That saved the customer countless hours, if not days of downtime.” 
Doing business with Volvo has never been easier.