What customer isn’t going to be interested if you offer to make their life easier? Particularly if you can also throw in the benefits of convenience, greater vehicle uptime, time and cost savings!
This is the hassle free promise of Mobile Services, which leads directly to happier and more satisfied customers.
A promise that’s already being turned into reality by Thermo King Süd, a dealer operating out of Ulm in South Germany.
Giving customers the power of choice
At the heart of Thermo King Süd’s Mobile Service offering is one simple thought: why not complete the servicing of cooling units at a time and location that’s ideal for the customer? The customer in question being TruckWorks (a Mercedes service company), who themselves perform regular vehicle maintenance activities.
To provide the answer, Thermo King Süd went mobile and now:
- Drive their service vans to TruckWorks premises at a pre-arranged date
- Service the Thermo King units at the same time vehicles are in the workshop receiving scheduled maintenance
- Package this assistance up into a tailored service and maintenance contract
Coordinated value
All of which leads to some stand out customer benefits:
- A clear reduction in truck downtime
- Cuts to maintenance times and overall costs, as well as optimized schedules of work
- Greater convenience in the form of having the right skills available at the right time
Benefits that, in the case of TruckWorks at least, are multiplied through the close coordination all servicing activities – rather than the delays and inconvenience caused by having to schedule two separate trips to a workshop (an obvious comparison here is the all to frequent experience of seeing a road dug up to receive a new water pipe – then being dug up again six months later for new broadband cables etc.).
The capabilities you’ll need to succeed
So if Mobile Services is a potential new offering to help attract new customers (and impress existing clients), what are the capabilities you’re going to need? High level, you should be looking to meet three primary requirements:
- Technicians able to complete the service on the customer’s site
- Mobile service vans fitted out to carry the necessary parts and equipment
- The tools and systems needed to remotely track all services performed
If you also want to perform mobile repairs (always keep in mind that with Mobile Services you can focus on maintenance, repairs, or both!), then to this list should be added the vehicle capacity to carry a wide range of possible spare parts, some form of call center capability, and a more extensive range of tools to ensure the highest possible number of first time fixes.
Time to go mobile?
So knowing that a certain investment is required, is it in your benefit to develop a Mobile Services offering (if you haven’t already got one)? To answer that is to emphasize the day-to-day value available to dealers for ‘going mobile’:
- By making your customers’ lives easier, you open the door to potential future sales
- You get to free up extra space in the workshop, while putting your full capabilities to work
- An expanded range of services helps boost your position in the temperature control ‘value chain’
- Delivering Mobile Solutions requires a lower initial investment than a fixed workshop
