“Everything apart from car trouble”
From a car manufacturer such as BMW, quality and service of a high level go without saying. In other words everything within the organisation, from the product itself to the dealers, should live up to expectations. The BMW Dealer Support Center in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, supports the BMW dealers in the area of IT. We spoke to Rein Heringa and Patrick Wakkermans, who are responsible for having brought the BMW Dealer Support Center up to this high level.
The car park at BMW Rijswijk is packed with shiny new BMWs and Minis, all parked carefully, nose to the curb. Even within the building, design and ambiance are the order of the day. It is clear that the people here are proud of the product and that emphasis on the quality of the product is of great importance. Even at the service desk, order and calm seem to dominate. Although according to Rein Heringa this peace and quiet is relative: “The pressure is high and it often gets hectic. In response to the ongoing automation at the dealers we are expected to have an adequate response to all IT related queries.”
Supporting dealers
Rein Heringa is the system and application manager at the Support Center. He introduced TOPdesk to the service desk, together with service desk manager Patrick Wakkermans, two years ago to register calls. Rein: “Within a short period of time we progressed from supporting a handful of BMW dealers to supporting most of the dealers in the Netherlands. That’s 64 branches in total. The implementation route of TOPdesk at the Service Center was relatively short. Luckily few problems occurred, as most employees were unsatisfied about the existing working methods.”
25 people work at the Support Center, and at the service desk itself, 14. Patrick explains that the BMW dealers are independent ventures. “They use our services - we function as the step in between the dealers and BMW.”
Range of topics
What sort of support do the dealers actually require? Rein: “We support the dealers across a wide range of issues: workstations, networks, server management, DSL, routers, email, dealer management systems, hardware, etc. The wireless connection between the network and the diagnostic equipment that is used in the cars to manage the motor management system could also be included under this. We also look after the training in specific applications for the dealers.”
Standard solutions
In practice, the dealers seem to run into all sorts of problems. Many calls are resolved by the service desk using solutions from the Knowledge base. Some problems are however of a slightly more unusual nature. Patrick tells of a somewhat odd incident at a dealer: “The network of an entire branch was down and they called us in panic. Within no time it appeared however that someone had removed the plug from the router to charge his mobile telephone.”
More structure
Rein outlines the benefits that the implementation of TOPdesk has had on the service desk: “The registration of all calls in TOPdesk means that there is more structure to the way we work. We can now handle more incidents. The change routes are also becoming less stressful, although it is still as hectic as ever as we now support more applications and more dealers.” Patrick sees “the various different points of contact during the processing of a call in TOPdesk” as a great advantage. “Moreover you can gain insight into what everyone else is working on”.
Were any challenges faced during the implementation of TOPdesk? Rein acknowledges that careful attention was paid to filling in the configuration database: “It is important that this is accurate. Luckily we use an import script to import data.”
Future
In the future the service desk is looking towards expanding TOPdesk further. Rein: “At first we only used TOPdesk for incident registration. I’m now looking for expansions and necessary modules which will really help to improve the service we provide; for example to manage stock and orders.”
To conclude: does the BMW Dealer Support Center have an answer to every question? Patrick: “Now and then a BMW driver accidentally calls us with a question. Unfortunately we are unable to assist them. We then refer them to the central service center for BMW Nederland. In fact we are able to support almost anything, except car trouble.”
FACTS + FIGURES
- TOPdesk Professional IS with Web interface and Change management
- 25 employees
- 64 clients/branches
- 500 calls per week
- 20,000 calls per year
- 250 changes per year
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