Lynk & Co is “changing mobility forever” with a customer-focused business driven by Dynamics 365

A business model that puts customers and community before cars

Lynk & Co thinks the automobile industry has been static for too long. “People want something different, something more personal, that can adapt with their needs. That's what we believe we are offering,” says Madalena Albuquerque, Product Owner at Lynk & Co. 

Instead of traditional dealerships and haggling with impersonable salespeople, the company offers small SUV electric hybrids online, in one style and two different colors, with a myriad of innovative features including built-in connectivity. Rather than investing a lot of money up front or paying off a car loan over time, people can buy, borrow, or subscribe to Lynk & Co cars through flexible mobility memberships. Promoted with the tagline, “Awesome is standard,” Lynk & Co cars are available for an hour, a month, or “forever,” as the company’s website says. 

Lynk & Co operates like a start-up with a small team of highly energized creatives and developers whose values include being open, simple, sustainable, and wow—meaning continually surprising and delighting customers with innovation and elevated levels of personalization. Based in Gothenburg, Sweden, the company launched into the European market in 2021 with no dealerships and no traditional salespeople—just an easy-to-use website to book a test drive, make a direct purchase, or download the Lynk & Co app for car sharing. 

“We really like to say we are not about the car,” says Jaime Cerejeira, Head of Customer Engagement Platform at Lynk & Co. “Don’t get me wrong, we have a great car—we love our car—but our mission is to change mobility forever.” Cerejeira says the Lynk & Co vision is about creating connections and community, and giving people great experiences by paying attention to what they need and what they want for the planet. “We’re about creating community around shared values, making people feel like they are part of something they can be proud of,” adds Albuquerque. 

To bring its digital brand into a physical community experience, Lynk & Co opened stylish clubs, an alternative to the high-pressure sales environment of traditional dealerships with a decidedly no-pressure experience. People can drop in for a coffee, experience local art and music, participate in special events, hold co-working sessions, chat with other Lynk & Co. enthusiasts or crew members—and, if they want to, see a car or take a test drive.

A focus on sustainability and the power to scale, fast

To orchestrate this new business model, Lynk & Co needed a platform capable of supporting immense levels of coordination at every stage of the customer journey. The company chose Microsoft Dynamics 365. “The Dynamics 365 platform has a great mix right out-of-the-box. With its customizable tools we could create the correct processes to support the high level of complexity and flexibility needed to deliver our unique customer experiences.”

The customer experience also addresses sustainability. For Lynk & Co, sustainability isn’t just about the innovative cars they offer, but how they are used. “We know over 90 percent of the time, most cars are sitting in a parking lot, along the street, or in a driveway, not being used. We’ve created a model that allows a single car to be used by different people,” says Cerejeira. Lynk & Co car owners can make their cars available to other Lynk & Co members who prefer to carshare or borrow a car as needed. This enables cars to be used a greater percentage of the time, minimizing the cost to members, and reducing the overall environmental impact.

Lynk & Co wanted to introduce its unique approach to the world quickly, and Cerejeira says another advantage of Dynamics 365 is that “we knew it could help us expand fast.” Using the Dynamics 365 platform, including Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Sales, and Service along with Microsoft Power Platform, Lynk & Co was able to ramp up a significant presence in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden within just eighteen months. 

Freedom to choose and high levels of customer care

Giving people the freedom to choose how they want to engage is an important distinction between the Lynk & Co. business model and the rest of the automobile industry. The customer journey touches social media, the company website, the customer support Engagement Center—and through Lynk & Co clubs where people can chat with a crew member. “People can start using our vehicles without any commitment. You go to our website, you subscribe and download the app, and you say when you want to receive the vehicle. We take care of all the bureaucracy for you: insurance, maintenance, all those boring parts. It’s all totally digital. And then, we deliver the car to you,” Albuquerque says. 

The company uses Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to capture actionable customer data and link it with operational data within its cars. This is helping the company create seamless, highly personalized experiences for every customer from their first engagement to every time they use the app, drive a car, have service, or visit a club. It also makes it easy to support customers if they want to move from simply borrowing a car, to a monthly subscription, or to a car purchase. 

Personalization that bridges the digital and physical

Cerejeira adds that Dynamics 365 eliminates siloed communications to support congruent customer service experiences. “It’s helping our Engagement Center advisors be more efficient, making sure that when they get alerts or have calls with customers, they all have a 360-degree view of the customer and tools at hand to give the best, personalized, and fastest service.” 

With centralized insights the company can more readily identify what customer service processes to fine-tune. “This information is helping us enhance customer communications, inform digital marketing campaigns around car sharing, and hopefully even better anticipate customer needs in the future,” says Amanda Kullberg, Product Owner for Customer Engagement Platform, Lynk & Co.

With the customer journey orchestration features in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, customers get personalized messaging and image content. Beyond that, the system sends right-timed information on specific-to-the-customer club event invitations. These events vary country to country but have included everything from unplugged live music nights and art openings to meet-ups for running and cycling groups, community talks on social issues, or workshops on how to upcycle old sneakers.

Engagement data from these events feeds back into the platform to further personalize member experiences across all lines of business, across all communication channels—and helps Lynk & Co learn and iterate. “As we learn more about what people want and need, we’ll be able to adapt and fine-tune. This goes back to the idea that this is more than cars, it’s about creating and belonging to a community,” says Kullberg.

The high levels of personalization stretch from the digital to the non-digital world in Lynk & Co clubs with the use of Microsoft Power Apps. The company created an internal app to help club crews personalize engagement with members when they visit. “Again, we are creating connection and community. Our club crew will know your name, and we’ll even know your favorite drink,” says Albuquerque. 

More innovation, more opportunities

Cerejeira says Dynamics 365 helps Lynk & Co employees focus more on delivering personalized experiences to customers and less on the technology and processes. He adds that because of this the company is optimistic about adding AI models to further empower employees to gain greater insights out of data, provide higher levels of personalization, and use Dynamics 365 Copilot generative AI capabilities for content creation in the future.

 “We’ve only been operational for a year and a half,” adds Albuquerque. “We’ve done a lot, but we're only just getting started. We expect that Dynamics 365 Copilot generative AI will empower our teams to spend less time on content creation and more time helping customers.”

“The coming year should be exciting," says Cerejeira. “With our relationship with Microsoft and the things we can do with the Dynamics 365 platform we’re looking forward for more opportunities to improve the customer experience.”

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