Volvo Cars has announced a new way for customers to interact with their vehicles – a concierge service which will form part of the Volvo On Call smartphone-based service offering.
Available initially as part of a pilot project involving 300 Volvo owners in San Francisco, the concierge service, available within Volvo’s smartphone app, aim to make the lives of Volvo owners easier by providing certified Volvo service providers to take care of mundane vehicle tasks like fuelling and servicing, while the owner continues about their daily business.
While Volvo On Call is still under review for South African introduction, the announcement of the concierge service pilot programme shows how, globally, Volvo has dug deep into consumer research to deliver on customers’ unmet needs.
“Imagine parking your car in the morning at work and when you head home your car has been serviced, cleaned and refuelled. These are the kind of services we want to deliver to our customers. Our research shows that people spend hours every week running these small errands – we want to give that time back to Volvo drivers, so they can do something more valuable instead,” says Björn Annwall, Senior Vice President, Global Consumer Experience at Volvo Car Group.
Research by Volvo has shown that over 70 per cent of customers want fuelling services at their fingertips, while 56 per cent want their car picked up for routine maintenance, and 49 per cent would like to be able to have their car moved to another location when desired.
“Our approach is a simple one – we aim to make life easier by employing the latest connected technology in an easy-to-use smartphone app. We are taking an open and agile approach to this, and welcome collaboration with partners which offer new and innovative services. This is just the beginning,” says Anders Tylman-Mikiewicz, Vice President Consumer Connectivity Services at Volvo Car Group.
The Volvo owners participating in the pilot project will be able to use the pilot app to identify concierge services available in the immediate vicinity and order them via their smartphone. Requests are then sent to an authorised Volvo service provider, who will refuel the vehicle, perform scheduled maintenance, or whatever additional service the owner has requested.
The app also provides a one-time-use digital key, which is location and time-specific, and sends it out to the authorised service provider. When services are complete, the car is locked and the digital key expires. The car can also be returned to where the customer left it or delivered to a completely new location at the customer’s request.
Volvo Cars’ network of digital innovation labs in California, Shanghai and Gothenburg are focusing on understanding the needs of the company’s growing customer base in an effort to further expand the range of services on offer. Due to the scalable nature of the Volvo On Call platform, new services can be easily added to ultimately offer a whole range of time-saving services around customer vehicles.