Hussein Dajani, General Manager – Digital and Customer Experience transformation at Nissan Motor Corporation – Africa, Middle East, India and Turkey shares how he envisions the future of the automotive industry after COVID-19 and what changes should be made to cope with the changing dynamics of the business.
Dajani says, “We are on a journey towards an evolution in Nissan, to become a truly customer-centric organisation.”
While emphasizing the significance of data, he says, “Data is what drives us into understanding what our customers are asking for and what they are expecting from us.”
During his conversation with The Strategic View, Hussein Dajani highlighted what impacts, the recent crisis has made in different geographies and what innovative and forward-thinking initiatives Nissan Motor Corporation has taken to address the needs of the time.
1. What are the key trends in terms of technology and convenience you are witnessing in the automotive sector that are changing the industry?
The situation before the pandemic was very much different, but with COVID-19 coming into play, this has disrupted the trends in the industry in the sense of what’s happening and what’s going to happen in the next year or so. Digital now, is definitely at the forefront of everything that’s happening. Innovation, when it comes to digital solutions, is something which is growing a lot at an unprecedented pace. In terms of data, AI and Machine Learning will play a very big role in dismantling and understanding data. Customer experience is no longer a nice thing to have, but a must-have thing in any organization. Categorically, digital innovation is the most significant need of the time. Further to that, data is something which has been discussed for a very long time but now what matters the most is how technology can be deployed effectively to formulate the right data for organizations through the power of AI and machine learning. All these technologies will eventually enable the right and customized customer experience, which is the key essence of business growth.
2. How did you respond to COVID-19? What strategies were in place during the crisis and what are your plans with the rapidly changing environment due to the crisis?
With COVID-19, the most evident impact on us was, the people were hesitant while coming to our showrooms and service centres out of fear. To cope with this challenge, we initially evaluated the impact of the pandemic on all the segments of our business. Following that, we came up with an umbrella, which is a one-stop shop, a customer-centric solution called “shop@home”. If a customer now, visits any of our platforms (websites) in Africa, the Middle East, India, and Turkey, he/she will find a section titled “shop@home”. It is a one-stop-shop solution which includes customer experience solutions for existing and prospective customers. It is a complete guide for our customers with everything that we are providing them to make their shopping journeys seamless, frictionless and engaging. Whether a customer wants to buy a new Nissan vehicle or he/she is an existing customer, we are now able to facilitate them with anything they would like to have seamlessly. The journey consists of three simple steps. The first one is choosing the model of Nissan, deciding on which vehicle is the right one for the customer, configuring it and then comparing it with the other models. The second one is getting payment options, the basic idea behind this is to provide our customers with financial solutions, so that it helps them to identify the right product according to their financial capabilities. The third one is delivery options, which refer to how would a customer like a vehicle to be delivered to him/her and how will he/she be able to manage to do a test drive of the vehicle.
We also deployed a virtual showroom, where a customer can have a 360-degree view of any vehicle, just exactly as if he/she walked inside the showroom, the customer can have a look from inside of the vehicle as well in a 360-degree view. For further details and information, customers may also have an instant video call with our sales consultants.
At Nissan, we have a fully enabled e-commerce platform for our customers, where they can book or buy any vehicle of Nissan. In case the customer wants to have a test drive of the vehicle before buying it, we provide a home test drive service. We are also providing door-to-door service maintenance, where we go to their homes, we take their vehicle, we do the service maintenance to it, and we return it to them.
From the sales perspective, in some markets like Saudi Arabia, in our ‘shop@home’ solutions, we have implied ‘Nissan Live’. ‘Nissan Live’ is a live stream solution that we do out of our showroom. We organize a weekly livestreaming session from inside our showrooms, where we discuss our offers, our products and our solutions.
As a result of COVID-19 and its impact on the markets, we accelerated our customer experience solutions and our digital offering so that we can provide everything to our existing and prospective customers with complete peace of mind. Our ultimate objective is to be as customer-centric as possible and to show the customers that we understand their fears, aspirations, their hopes, their needs and their wants. Empathy is the key to us. All the solutions that we offer to our customers are available physically and digitally, and all our frontliners have been trained on those solutions so that they are fully aware of what we are doing.
At Nissan, we can provide a complete virtual solution all the way from deciding which vehicle you want to buy to buying the vehicle. The only interaction that the customer will have with us is the one when we are coming to deliver the vehicle for them, or when we are coming to do a test drive for them, but other than that, they don’t even need to come and visit us. They can do everything online and we will support them with it along the way.
3. How innovative technologies are impacting consumer behaviour and when it comes to your sales & marketing strategy, how are you tapping behavioural changes of consumers and addressing their needs?
People, especially in the Middle East region, like to touch things before buying them. The digital world cannot completely take over the physical world. However, a perfect merge between the physical and digital world will result to be the most effective solution. Having this in consideration, we, at Nissan, ensure that our customer experience journey, whether it starts from the physical world and then moves to the digital one or vice versa, is very seamless and frictionless. For instance, if a customer starts the journey digitally, and then he/she comes to our showroom, the journey would continue in the showroom from where the customer had paused on the digital side and vice versa. We refer to this as our Phygital strategy.
Customer behaviour is changing rapidly. Human beings possess the capability to learn and adapt new behaviours. COVID-19 has shown, how much human beings are capable of adapting and getting used to what we call the “New Normal”. The “New Normal” has digital in it as a very crucial part. Customers are now, not happy with the digital-less services, since it has become a demand of the time. Digital has also started to play a very vital role in educating the customers about the products and solutions and in one way or another, making them convinced about the product or not. In the case of a vehicle, buying a vehicle is the second biggest investment that an individual makes in his/her life. We’re not necessarily expecting our customers to go and do the buying online before seeing the vehicle. But with the solutions that we’re providing to our customers, for instance, the test drive at home, we are mixing the physical world with the digital world. So that the customer may have the feel of real touch, which will eventually help him/her to make a decision.
4. What is your take on digital startups who are disrupting the supply chain of the automotive industry?
The automotive industry is being disrupted at a very fast pace. The bigger an automotive company is the slower it is and the less agile it is to turn things around very fast. This creates frustration for customers because there are many pain points that the big organizations are not able to tackle. And this is where it’s giving a chance for many start-ups to come and open up. Start-ups like Garaji and CAFU are disrupting the game in a very effective manner with their ideas and solutions. These are some examples of great startups that were built based on the pain points of the OEM industry. And we’re seeing the mushrooming of many of those and I see it as a very interesting thing and also as a big challenge on OEMs to become more agile and to become faster in rolling out solutions. Otherwise, those startups will come in and take a very big market share from the OEMs.
5. Do you think partnerships with disruptive players and with your peers are essential going forward? And what initiatives have you taken as an organisation?
Absolutely! Partnerships are extremely key. We are a very big believer in doing partnerships, with the right partner, so that we can roll out the right solutions out there. In Saudi Arabia, after women in the Kingdom were granted the Royal right to start driving and following that when women started driving there, we created a solution called ‘#SheDrives’. We realized the importance of supporting women driving in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So, we did a lot of research and realized that one of the fears that women have in driving in the Kingdom is basically if something happens to them or to their vehicles while they are on the roads. So, what we did is a partnership with a company called Morni and we created an app called “SANADEK”, which means your on-road guardian. It is an Uber-style kind of app. It helps women with anything while on the road, from towing service, fuel top-up, battery change, door-to-door service maintenance, tyre change to full accident solutions.
Another example of partnerships we have is also live in India. We partnered with a company called Orix. In India, we are providing subscription modelling, where you can take a car, instead of buying it or leasing it or renting it, you subscribe to it and you can, after a certain period, exchange it or decide to buy it. Therefore, we did a partnership over there with Orix to provide a home test drive. So those are just ideas of partnerships that we’re doing when we decide to tie up with the right partner.
6. Connected vehicles, self-driving cars, electric vehicles & further new mobility services, how do you think the industry will look like in the next 3 years?
Everybody is holding a smartphone, most people are holding two to three smartphones in their hands. We can witness, the future is all about digital, the future is all about connectivity. The future is about being able to instantly request and get what you need. In India, we launched ‘NissanConnect’, which is a solution based on having full connectivity inside your car from geo-fencing to turning on your car, turning it off, opening the doors, opening the trunk, seeing how your driving behaviour is, and requesting for service maintenance. A whole suite of solutions is available in it. And this is just the start of how we envision things to happen. We recently announced our Nissan’s next new strategy, which is all based on our new brand identity (the new logo). And we introduced globally our flagship vehicle called Ariya. It’s our most connected vehicle and it showcases very well the future of Nissan and where exactly we are heading. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, there’s still a lot to come. Connectivity and connected cars are extremely important and this is something that we are 100% supporting and enabling because, at the end of the day, we look at connectivity on the innovation side of Nissan. And from another side, how we can secure the safety of individuals, while on the road. And finally, how we can be as customer-centric as possible towards our existing and potential customers.