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Mercedes-Benz USA
Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (MBUSA), the automotive marketing subsidiary of Daimler Chrysler Holding Company, provides marketing services, sales programs, and technician training to 313 Mercedes-Benz dealerships. Mercedes-Benz automobiles are among the top-selling luxury brands in the United States, and their market position continues to grow. Along with sales growth, their automobile technology systems continue to advance and are now considered among the most sophisticated in the world. The rapid growth and complex systems put strains upon recruiting efforts and training capacity, but MBUSA is committed to maintaining a high degree of customer satisfaction and ensuring that capacity pressures never affect high standards in dealership personnel and technician training programs. In response to growth pressures, MBUSA’s Technical Training department is focused on effective and efficient ways to meet customer needs. Taking advantage of the
Web and an existing Windows-based dealership extranet, the Technical Training group developed information access and e-learning programs using the power of Microsoft Windows Media®. Streamed information access and e-learning programs are providing enhanced customer satisfaction and substantial cost savings in terms of travel, salaries, and lost technician productivity.
Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (MBUSA) is the automotive marketing subsidiary of Daimler Chrysler Holding Company. MBUSA employs 1,200 people at its headquarters and regional offices, and in turn provides recruitment services, marketing and sales programs, and training to 16,000 employees at 313 privately owned Mercedes-Benz dealerships nationwide.
Mercedes-Benz automobiles are among the top-selling luxury brands in the United States, and their market position continues to grow. Along with sales growth, their automobile technology systems continue to advance and are now considered among the most sophisticated in the world. The rapid growth and complex systems put strains upon recruiting efforts and training capacity, but MBUSA is committed to maintaining a high degree of customer satisfaction and ensuring that capacity pressures never affect high standards in dealership personnel and technician training programs. In response to growth pressures, MBUSA’s Technical Training department is focused on effective and efficient ways to meet customer needs.
The Technical Training department is located in Montvale, New Jersey, with four regional education centers dispersed throughout the United States. The department is responsible for training dealership technicians on new model diagnostic and disassembly procedures, maintenance, general and collision repair for Mercedes-Benz passenger cars and M-Class light trucks, and technician certification for the STARMARK pre-owned program. Each technician must have familiarity with, and ready access to, information about current model years as well as maintenance and repair details for past models. Prior to this solution, MBUSA delivered all training at their education centers or through videotaped and printed self-study materials. Each procedure video or course preparation document was created or updated and then duplicated and shipped to the retail centers. Although MBUSA anticipated ongoing costs when updating technical information, it sought a method to reduce actual expenditures and to eliminate a hidden cost—ensuring that all obsolete information was properly discarded and that technicians had uninterrupted access to the new material. MBUSA also needed to alleviate classroom capacity pressures and deliver timely educational content directly to the technician. The new method had to minimize technician travel away from dealerships, provide greater access to new training and certification material, lower the total cost of distribution, and provide students with pre-classroom preparation and post-classroom training support.
In addition to the need for efficient training methods, Mercedes-Benz dealers continually seek the best and brightest talent to fulfill customer expectations and service demands. In an effort to enhance recruitment efforts, MBUSA pursued creative methods to introduce potential dealership employees to the company’s history, its products, and the opportunities available at Mercedes-Benz dealerships.
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MBUSA developed communication, information access, and e-learning programs enhanced by the power of streaming media. Both RealNetworks and Microsoft Windows Media products were evaluated, but Windows Media proved to be a more cost-effective solution for the Windows-based enterprise. Servers running Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows Media services were installed to stream on-demand content to 313 dealer sites and to technicians’ homes via dial-up or broadband systems.
Now, using Web-based content enhanced with streaming media, technicians prepare for classroom instruction, access up-to-date model component information such as disassembly and the theory behind vehicle systems operation, and reinforce instruction following classroom sessions—all from their homes or dealership desktops. The Technical Training department continues to move appropriate certification and training courses out of the classroom and onto the network. Currently, technicians can become certified to perform STARMARK pre-owned vehicle inspections by using a Windows Media-enhanced, interactive application on the company’s extranet. Other efficiency breakthroughs include migration of component disassembly information for all current production vehicles to a library of current, indexed Windows Media files. In many cases, Windows Media-based e-learning provides an “on-demand” instructor who can demonstrate repair procedures and techniques realistically, when and where a technician needs to see them.
Mercedesbenzcareers.com attracts new dealership recruits with the help of streaming video presentations from actual dealership employees. The online information is refreshed regularly and used extensively as a part of recruitment activities that occur at auto shows, vocational schools, and events for transitioning military personnel.
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E-learning programs and recruitment efforts enhanced with streaming media are expected to benefit MBUSA and Mercedes-Benz dealerships considerably in terms of travel, instructor time, technician wages and productivity, facility overhead, and, most importantly, customer satisfaction.
According to Media Development and E-learning Manager Richard Thomas, “The use of Windows Media in conjunction with our own in-house production and development team has provided Mercedes-Benz USA with a powerful tool to deliver information efficiently. Complex repair procedures, once taught exclusively in a classroom setting or described in a repair manual using text and static diagrams, are now illustrated realistically using video streamed directly to the end user on demand. In our quest to become the best car company in America, streaming media has provided a key advantage for our communication, information access, and e-learning initiatives.”
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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
© 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Media are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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