Pumping the brakes on tool redesign
Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) offers drivers the most diverse line-up in the luxury segment with 14 models. After MBUSA launched a redesigned website full of rich media, it didn’t take long for it to identify and fix glitches to ensure a positive shopping experience for its customers, the company says.
"We had just relaunched our web site, and we felt it was critical that we got it right," says Eric Jillard, manager of the digital marketing and customer relationship management department at Mercedes-Benz.
The carmaker noticed soon after the relaunch, for example, that its build-your-own vehicle configurator was not as easy to use as site designers had expected. But before it directed its web developers to rebuild the build-your-own tool, it used Emplifi to determine exactly how site visitors were using the tool and get their feedback.
Mercedes also uses Webmetrics Inc.’s analytics technology to determine how these visitors clicked through the site before and after seeing the videos. But the analytics alone wouldn’t provide as comprehensive an understanding of what visitors think of the Mercedes-Benz brand.
Customer insights drive same day solutions
Emplifi’s unique intercept survey technology presents a pop-up window to randomly selected site visitors asking them to take a site usability survey; visitors who agree are presented with a survey window as they leave the site. Survey results, including ratings as well as comments by participating site visitors, are instantly available for review on a dashboard accessed through its SaaS portal.
Focus groups are one way to gather this type of information, but Mercedes figured this approach would take too long. Instead, Emplifi enabled Mercedes to get the confirmation it needed and begin developing a fix the same day.
Hatton was able to quickly run a report on the voice-of-customer data to show specific comments visitors had made about using the build-your-own tool, she says. She then passed that on to the web development team to update the tool’s functionality.
"Within hours of having a hypothesis about a problem, we’re able to identify the issue quickly and get the information into the right hands to fix the problem—instead of taking much longer to form a focus group," said Craig Chaplick, Supervisor of Digital Marketing and Customer Relationship Mgmt, Mercedes-Benz
Improving the customer’s on-site experience
Once developers addressed the problems with the configurator tool, Mercedes-Benz then was able to see through ongoing customer feedback that visitors were reporting an improved site experience.
Mercedes has worked with Emplifi in other ways as well. When a competitor suffered a rash of negative publicity last year over news about drivers who experienced problems with car accelerators, Mercedes-Benz built on its own reputation for safety with a video series that highlighted the positive reports it had received from customers about their personal experiences with Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
The carmaker then posted those videos on its web site and ran a TV ad that directed viewers to its site to view the videos. Mercedes then used Emplifi to survey the customer response to the videos. The luxury carmaker learned that the TV ad was an effective means of driving repeat visitors to MBUSA.com, and that those who viewed the videos on MBUSA.com thought better of the car maker’s brand compared to site visitors who did not watch the videos.
The takeaway
MBUSA manufactures luxury vehicles that offer comfort and high-end technology, and the carmaker wanted to ensure that users have a similar experience when visiting their website. MBUSA worked with Emplifi to engage customers for their feedback with responsive, secure, and accessible survey technology. By understanding the customers' needs, expectations, and perceptions of their experience on MBUSA.com, Mercedes-Benz was able to make critical decisions to improve the site redesign.
Do you need help understanding your customers’ paint points? How can you boost customer satisfaction? If you’d like to get customer feedback to help elevate experiences, schedule a demo with an Emplifi expert today.
