TAFEL MERCEDES-BENZ

Since 1958, Louisville, Ky.-based Tafel Motors Company has been delivering exceptional Mercedes-Benz shopping and service experiences. Under current owner David Peterson, Tafel Motors is dedicated to ensuring that buying and maintaining a luxury car is just as pleasant as driving one.

In 2014, Tafel Motors began exploring ways to provide a more engaging customer experience, especially in its service center. Joe Atkinson, Tafel’s General Manager, saw the potential for RFID technology that welcomed guests to the dealership and alerted Service and Sales personnel of their arrival, but realized that an RFID system could not operate as a silo. “We wanted a system that could fully integrate with all of our key business operations,” Atkinson says. “In other words, much more than just ‘flash my name’ on a screen.’

Tafel’s new RFID-based Automated Guest Recognition Service had to integrate not only with its service center system but also with automotive Mastermind, the dealership’s analytics platform. And it had to do it in real time – even when a guest came in with no appointment or for a complimentary car wash where no repair order is opened.

Tafel chose to work with MDL because of its vast, singular-focused experience integrating its technology into more than 180 dealerships and because it has open partnerships with dozens of dealer technologies in CRM, Loaner Systems, Mobile Tablets and Sales Analytics systems, including automotive Mastermind. The entire integration process—from site inspection to RFID system installation to quality testing and training—took less than five weeks to complete.

According to Atkinson, Tafel has used MDL’s RFID technology to great advantage in its service center. Not only do the welcome screens provide each incoming customer with a “Ritz Carlton” level of personalized welcome, creating a more positive experience, the system has helped Tafel’s service department identify where it can streamline its business processes and save the customer valuable time. “The results have been improved CSI, retention, and efficiency with my service staff,” says Atkinson.

The biggest and most notable impact of the MDL integration has been a dramatic lift in monthly sales at Tafel Motors. The dealership had seen a nice sales boost after it first started using automotive Mastermind, but these results were greatly improved with the addition of MDL Guest Recognition Services. “When we added the seamless MDL/automotive Mastermind integration, our results are now consistently even higher,” says Atkinson. “We are selling considerably more cars.” According to Atkinson, the integration of the MDL and automotive Mastermind technologies has resulted in a consistent 37% boost in monthly sales.