Connexion Telematics uses Salesforce to keep pace with fast-moving automotive dealers

When Connexion started, it was selling an internet radio streaming product called miRoamer directly to car manufacturers. Connexion was part of the global automotive supply chain and it was a very narrow playing field. This all changed when the company moved into the telematics space, introducing technology that tracks – in real-time – a car’s key performance indicators like its GPS location, engine performance, driver behaviour, fuel consumption, and more.

The technology proved popular with fleet managers and auto dealerships and Connexion turned to Salesforce in 2014 to help it expand into these new channels.

Fast forward to today, the Australian-listed business has found success in the US market with the latest iteration of its technology—OnTRAC—used by 4,000 dealerships to manage their courtesy transportation programs. The business uses Salesforce to provide all these dealerships and individual users with streamlined and responsive support.

“Moving into the automotive dealer space, we’ve had to work at dealer speed. Salesforce has supported us to be more agile and highly responsive to customer needs,” said Tasso Koutsovasilis, Chief Operations Officer, Connexion Telematics.

In choosing a technology partner, Connexion paid close attention to prospective platforms’ ability to communicate with other technology solutions. “We chose Salesforce because we knew that, from an API perspective, it could communicate with our customers’ platforms and systems easily,'' explained Koutsovasilis. “That connection to our OnTRAC and CXZTRAC applications, for example, provides us with a single view of the customer.”

The adoption of Salesforce combined with Connexion’s continued product innovation, have helped the business build meaningful and lasting relationships with customers like General Motors and have provided a foundation for growth. It has also supported the business’ product diversification strategy, resulting in a year-on-year increase of more than 10% in the number of Connexion products used per account.

“We’ve now transitioned from a startup to a business with positive cash flow,” said Koutsovasilis. “This enables us to continue to invest in developing new products, expanding our resources in the US, and providing value to our customers and commercial partners.”

It’s important that Connexion customers can white-label its solutions with their own branding. For example, if General Motors has the system installed in its vehicles, it looks like a General Motors solution. So, it’s important that customer support is branded, too.

Salesforce helps Connexion provide this multi-branded support to 4,000 dealerships and 15,000 users. Experience Cloud underpins a portal with FAQs and online training which enable users to self-serve. The portal is maintained by Connexion’s internal Community support team and can be easily updated whenever there’s a product change or customers require new information. In many cases, changes are made in real-time which is particularly important in a fast-moving dealer retail environment faced with challenges like COVID-19.

Koutsovasilis shared that, before, support materials were embedded into the OnTRAC app and every change, no matter how small, had to align with the business’ two-week agile sprint cadence.

"We can now be more responsive to customer needs while freeing our developers to focus on value added activities like improving our product,” said Koutsovasilis.

Connexion has also experienced a 17% reduction in the number of support tickets received. Those remaining are generally more complex issues and the business uses Service Cloud to manage and track these through to completion.

“Because we work with channels, we constantly need to communicate metrics like service response times, severity, type of case, and continuous improvement scores. Service Cloud gives us operational clarity, and a defined process for how to handle things,” Koutsovasilis said.

Connexion is now focused on extending its product, so it can meet more of its customers' needs. For instance, developers are currently working on an API that would allow dealerships to track toll data in OnTRAC and easily on-charge costs to those using its courtesy vehicles.

Slack, the secure channel-based messaging platform, helps Connexion’s development team to collaborate on these types of projects and has sped up delivery times.

“Slack was especially helpful in collaborating on the release of our CXZTRAC SaaS service during the 2020 Christmas period. We used it for brainstorming, decision-making, organising JIRA tasks, and automating pull requests through integration with Bitbucket. All of this helped to reduce development time,” said Frank Chen, Lead Developer at Connexion.

“The Slack Connect feature also enables more seamless collaboration and communication working with our external partners, particularly in the mobile app development space,” said Josh Liu, Full Stack Developer at Connexion.

“Through all of these solutions, Salesforce has become a key part of our business and will undoubtedly continue to help us increase our market penetration and the value we provide to our customers,” said Koutsovasilis.