Towards Seamless Simplicity!
This article has been posted by Dominic Piché, Business Developpment Manager, Automotive Industry Specialist
About the Dilawri Group
Dilawri is Canada’s largest group of auto dealerships with 76 franchised dealerships across 34 brands. They are spread across Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.
Privately owned and operated by the Dilawri family since 1985, the company continues to expand across Canada, building a reputation for automotive excellence.
With more than 4,000 employees, the Dilawri Group is proud to offer quality products and exceptional service in each of its locations.
The Dilawri Group is not only a leader in the automotive industry but is also a proud supporter of the communities to which they belong. Indeed, the Dilawri Foundation, established in 2002, continues to contribute financially each year to a variety of charitable causes across the country.
Their mission: “A passion for providing exceptional products and customer service that fosters a customer relationship based on trust and duration.”
Their values: “Passion for excellence, client focus, teamwork, integrity, willingness to grow and grow the good.”
Expanding into Québec
How can we help improve the local customer experience? What can we do to maximize our added resources efficiencies? What aspects of business can be improved by moving to the cloud?
These are all questions that managers of the Dilawri Group reviewed before initiating their 2015 expansion into the Quebec market following the acquisition of their second dealership in the province, Subaru des Sources.
The Dilawri Group came to Quebec with extensive experience in several competitive markets. They also had a powerful desire to make their Quebec expansion another company success story. They achieved this by focusing on the adoption of their mission and value statements in each of their new dealerships. The goal of this focus was to achieve total customer satisfaction in all areas of business through their passion for excellence, continued innovation and the development and operation of advanced automotive dealerships.
A Partner, not a supplier
In addition to important infrastructure improvements, the Dilawri Group decided to tackle their telephone systems situation, because as we all know, the telephone is often a customer's first contact with the dealership. By 2017, the Dilawri Group had grown to 8 dealers in the greater Montreal area. This meant that 8 dealers were managing 8 telephone systems plus all the service contracts associated with each.
How can the management of this set-up be improved to support continued expansion? “It was a big challenge,” says Nick Avdeliodis, Vice President of Operations at Dilawri.
Based on the strength of SBK Telecom’s expertise and the reliability of its service, SBK Voice, the Dilawri Group made the decision to migrate to a cloud-based telephony solution. SBK Voice provided the Dilawri Group with the ability to move each of its Montreal dealerships onto a single platform. By centralizing onto one platform, they were able to consolidate monthly invoiced telephone services, that had been to this point always over provisioned by each dealership to address two known high seasons. This move immediately provided the group with monthly savings of more than 50% when compared to those of managing 8 systems and their associated voice services.
The flexibility native to SBK Voice is another benefit that the Dilawri Group took full advantage of. There are no minimum monthly services requirements, such as the number of telephone lines, quantity of telephone numbers, extensions total, or automated attendants. This flexibility is what allows the Dilawri Group to only pay for what they need and use.
Data driven decisions
Visibility and access to the data needed to take the right decision are but two benefits immediately felt by Dilawri Group’s Montreal area dealership BDC Managers following their migration to SBK Voice.
“This new platform provides us with a great deal of flexibility during peak periods to ensure that resources are available at the right place which allows us to better serve our customers,” says Nick Avdeliodis.
With their 10th dealership added to SBK Voice in 2021, BDC Managers had by now been taking full advantage of the contact center tools available with the service add-on. SBK Analytiq is one such tool. This customizable contact center dashboard was personalized to provide real-time data pertaining to call volume, abandoned calls, etc. This information is now used to improve agent queue allocation to address seasonal call volume spikes, survey the success of various programs, and customer experience improvement initiatives.
The Dilawri group today
The final member of the Dilawri Group Montreal was migrated onto SBK Voice at the end of 2021. This last migration was the conclusion of a long and mutually beneficial project and the beginning of a true partnership.
The Dilawri Group came to Quebec with the goal of extending their knowledge into the province and introducing us to their customer experience strategies. SBK Telecom was able to leverage its expertise and provide a solution capable of being centrally managed and that includes the flexibility needed to adapt to different seasons. The cherry on the sundae, however, is the more than 50% savings on their monthly telephony invoice. All for a service that includes more than they need.
“This solution allows us to grow while ensuring consistency in the customer experience across the group’s concessions,” says Nick Avdeliodis.
Service based on the same values of excellence! This is the strength of the collaboration between the Dilawri Group and SBK Telecom.