How ŠKODA AUTO uses Teneo to drive growth across Europe

The automotive industry has undergone a rapid change over the past decade with a variety of market forces, environmental factors and user behaviors impacting some of the largest organizations on the planet.

Rapid digital transformation has been required of automotive manufactures as a result of industry disrupters and a shift in expectations from online customers. For decades, the car showroom represented the central point of sale for the automotive industry, however, converting digital users to test drive bookings has represented a challenge for the sector. The added impact of
COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 added to the pressure on manufactures to convert digital traffic to test drive bookings.

“ŠKODA AUTO needs to adapt to the changing industrial environment to satisfy its customers’ needs and become a people-focused brand that provides end-users with genuine value.”

According to ŠKODA AUTO’s 2021 Annual Report, “the Company plans to sell every fifth car online in 2025, while customers are already now benefiting from a virtual showroom concept in selected European markets. The Simply Clever strategy is designed to not only deal with physical solutions for the brand’s cars but also the associated services and user experiences.

A multidisciplinary international team built ‘Laura’ using Teneo in 2020 and quickly scaled the solution over a two-year period. The solution rapidly transformed the digital experience of visitors to ŠKODA AUTO digital properties, providing major improvements to customer journeys with a totally automated system. In a short time frame, the ŠKODA AUTO team were able to communicate and engage with millions of additional users while supporting their individual requests and requirements.

‘Laura’ was able to collect data across a number of touch points and provide highly personalized recommendations to drivers reviewing ŠKODA´s product range. The engagements and interactions helped SKODA to adapt responses based on personal preferences.

‘Laura’ is able to lead the customer into the car configurator to help specify the details including upselling with additional warranties and service agreements before can scheduling a test drive at the nearest dealer based on actual availability of a car similar to the one the customer has configured.

Thanks to Teneo’s topic switching ability, the customer can at any time interrupt the conversation and for example, return back to advice about what car to choose, or see what options might be available on a different budget.

Following the expansion of the ŠKODA AUTO CAI solution across a number of new regions across Europe in April 2022, Teneo received a 100% increase in the volume of requests from ŠKODA’s websites. The rapid increase in demand from Teneo did not cause a single moment of downtime for the platform as the system architecture automatically increased its bandwidth to handle the increased load. This allowed ŠKODA to instantly deploy the solution across their digital properties without technical issues or drawbacks to their own websites or customer engagement.