Audi had a good foundation to build on given recent retail environment innovations, digital tools and products, but its people and processes continued to lag behind — ultimately leading to a poor and inconsistent customer experience at the dealership. Unlike its vehicles, the sales journey didn’t meet customers’ expectations — lacking differentiation and inspiration — or the needs of internal stakeholders with record-high turnover among sales employees.

Constrained by local dealers’ limitations and having to work with a newly refreshed store design, we needed to get creative in helping Audi AG break out of the classic industry model while driving incremental sales, delivering a premium and differentiating retail experience through a new sales personnel strategy and customer-centric sales journey.

In conducting comprehensive market and primary research, including ‘mystery shopping’, to understand current pain-points and identify opportunities, we quickly realized the main problem was a “one size fits all” sales process where the experience depended heavily on the one person delivering it: the sales advisor.

To dramatically improve the overall customer experience, we arrived at a new dealership concept that introduced 3 new specialty support roles for sales advisors as well as signature, customer-centric experiences.

I served as the day-to-day project director, leading workshops and working collaboratively with various teams from around the globe, including Audi AG and local market representatives such as Audi of America, to co-create, build and refine the new concept.

In preparation for the global pilot (11+ markets), we created implementation guidelines that unpacked each recommended experience and staff interaction in greater detail.

From a business perspective, we validated our concept and future experience vision through reduced labor costs driven by fewer FTEs (Full-time equivalent hours) and to promote practical understanding and adoption of our concept, we created a modeling tool that enables dealers to evaluate the impact of the new concept on their particular business.

The new staffing model and support processes served as the foundation for a re-imagined Audi sales experience, moving beyond just a ‘sales process’.

Based on our recommended experience improvements, strategic rationale pointed to potential upside beyond the breakeven point, driving meaningful impact to the bottom line. The concept has been rolled out across different markets and continues to be a success.