The year 2020 should have been a year in which innovative developments in the automotive industry would follow each other in rapid succession. The year of EASCY – Electric, Autonomous, Shared, Connected, Yearly – and the digitization of the mostly traditional garages and brand dealerships. Which of these trends actually happened? To what extent has the corona crisis changed the outcomes of the predictions?

Automotive market trends 2020: the predictions

In the beginning of this year, trend watchers such as frankwatching.com, but also financial services provider ING, and online magazine aftersalesmagazine.nl ventured into predictions for the automotive industry in 2020. This was summarized as the EASCY principle (Electric, Autonomous, Shared, Connected, and Yearly). The trends: 

Electric: electric driving would definitely break through in the Netherlands.

Autonomous: the self-driving car is also making its appearance in several large cities following the experiments in previous years.

Shared: keeping up with sustainability trends, the shared car would become increasingly popular.

Connected: it is more important than ever to be connected to the car's software as well as each other.

Yearly: This digitization requires car models to be updated annually to integrate the latest hardware and software and respond to the constantly changing needs of buyers.

The predictions for 2020 were therefore mainly aimed at an increasingly digital society which, at the same time, is also taking sustainability into account. Where individualization dominated for a long time and everyone bought their own car, we now no longer have problems with sharing a car, as long as it is better for the environment (and our wallet).

So what impact did the corona crisis have on the car industry?

Of course we didn't know what was coming for us at the end of 2019. The corona crisis turned the Netherlands, as well as the rest of the world, upside down and the automotive industry was also affected. What impact did this have on the industry? Let’s have a look. 

1. The number of new car registrations in 2020 was almost 25% lower than expected at 340,000 cars. The share of sales of electric cars was 10% lower in the first 8 months of 2020 than the sales were in the whole of 2019.

2. Due to working from home significantly more, there was a lower need for personal transport. The introduction of self-driving cars such as, for example, a taxi service will therefore take longer than expected.

3. To prevent contamination with COVID-19, we used less public or shared transport. A private car was therefore, again, preferred. This was mainly expressed in the continuation of an increasing trend in the (online) sale of used cars.

4. Being digitally connected has become more important than ever. From Zoom bingos to family birthdays via Google Hangout (you're on mute!), social life was mostly online.

As can be read in the aforementioned developments, digitization did not stand still. Annual updates to respond to changing needs therefore seem to be one of the few predictions that actually came true.

What does this mean for car companies?

As mobility preferences change, retention and customer satisfaction are more important than ever. As a car company, you can do a number of things to respond to these new needs:

1. Differentiate yourself from others by offering different services. Think of electric charging points at the garage for example.

2. Automate processes in the workplace by, for example, working with digital work orders. This ensures smoother passages, more efficiency and therefore higher turnover.

3. Ensure transparent customer communication, preferably by means of an app. There's an app for everything these days, so why not one to drop off and pick up your car? At the same time, this guarantees that there are not too many people in the queue in the shop at the same time.

Sources: ING Business, Frankwatching, Aftersales magazine, PWC Eleks, Forbes

Most sales orders have been digital for about ten years now, but that step has not yet been taken in the workshop of most dealerships. Why do we still fill in work orders with pen and paper? We will give you 5 reasons to start working with digital work orders:

1. No more doctor's handwriting.It's not always easy to read your colleagues' scribblings. How nice would it be if all notes had the same font? This would avoid many misunderstandings within the process.
2. No more searching for work orders lying around. Now you have all of your work orders in one digital overview, so you know exactly what the 'real-time' status of the passage is.
3. Save paper.With Claire, the use of paper work orders is in the past. Do you have any idea how much money your company could save on printing and paper per year? With Claire’s digital work orders you will help both the environment and your wallet.
4. No more archiving. Work orders are automatically and digitally archived, this saves a lot of time and hassle. Not only with cleaning up or scanning work orders, but also for looking up old work orders.
5. No more walking and waiting. Mechanics can be so much more productive when they no longer have to go to the reception or warehouse with the paper work order. Instead the mechanic can upload all information in Claire and continue working. 

Higher efficiency in the workshop starts with small things. The technician or receptionist walking back and forth to ask for clarity from a colleague is a very normal thing within car dealerships, while this could cost 30 minutes per technician per day! What if we could turn that wasted time into productive (billable) hours? What would that do for your company? 

The term LEADS has become indispensable in the car industry. In fact, complete tools and companies have been established to track, manage, edit and control leads. Sometimes external leads are purchased, sometimes we get them from DMS or GMS or they are supplied by importers or external suppliers. Leads are no longer just for the sales department, good leads are also becoming increasingly important for after-sales.

Every lead seems to have the goal of realizing turnover, which means that we are willing to spend money in order to achieve this goal. Leads can cost between €1.50 and €500,00 each, depending on the quality and the revenue potential.

You can therefore see a lead as a path to turnover, a path that always starts with a need of a customer or a prospect! But shouldn't satisfying the customer's needs be the goal? And isn't turnover the logical consequence of that? The better we are able to hit and solve the customer's relevant needs, the higher the reward.

We can divide customer needs into 2 categories:

• Active needs (acute desire or need, 25% of total needs)
• Latent needs (subconsciously present and needs activation, 75% of total needs)

We are not necessarily aware of it, but the very best and largest “lead generator” is your own workshop! The information that we (can) collect there provides many relevant starting points to trigger the customer at the right time in his or her active or latent need. Information that you (can) collect, categorize, classify, plan and send out yourself. How great is that!? Stop burning your money: use what you have!