Automotive industry: how much can I save with AR optimizations of my downstream processes?

#1: Save money and increase ROI through first-time resolutions

Time is money, and it is absolutely essential in customer service. When anyone – whether consumer or company – brings a car to service, their satisfaction with the service is closely connected to the amount of time it takes to fix the issue at hand. Faster is better. But the quality of the service must be impeccable.

AR can significantly speed up time-to-resolution by offering technicians the option to call a remote expert directly with their smart glasses, share what they see, and discuss any issue at hand directly with that expert while having their hands free to test out ideas directly.

When implementing this type of AR-powered support, your savings potential will center around:

• Total service cases per year
• Current average time-to-resolution per service case
• Time saved in % with the help of AR
• Current number and cost of service-level agreement (SLA) violations
• Reduction in number of SLA violation with AR-powered support

Furthermore, offering a superior after-sales service can translate into a new revenue stream and a faster return on investment (ROI), e. g. with superior service levels being offered at a premium price.

#2: Save money through reduced travel costs

If a car is brought in for service with a complicated issue that your on-site mechanics cannot handle, what is the standard procedure? At Toyota, the mechanics would need to contact the manufacturer with a description of the problem. In addition, they would need to reach out to the dealer‘s technical support department to ask for assistance. Only after scheduling an appointment with an expert and waiting for them to arrive on-site, could the team make progress on the issue.

Imagine what happened when they got the option to simply put on a pair of smart glasses, contact a remote expert, and share exactly what they saw to discuss how to best fix the car. Not only could they fix complicated issues faster, but Toyota could also reduce their field visits by an impressive 20%, cutting down on travel time and costs significantly.

#3: Save money through lower training costs

In a highly competitive industry such as the automotive industry, it is essential to keep training and onboarding procedures accurate and efficient. Oftentimes, current setups require in-person training sessions, which are not only costly but also hard to organize if you only have a limited number of trainers available. AR presents an opportunity to streamline training through more substantial content creation capacity, allowing for a partly or fully remote on-boarding process.

Furthermore, this represents opportunities in terms of strengthening knowledge sharing and on-going employee training. Particularly in the mechanical field, a large portion of the experienced personnel is retiring in the coming years. The workforce that is to replace them are generally attracted to other job types and tend to have a greater focus on the more software-heavy electric vehicles. This creates a knowledge gap on both sides. The “old-school” workforce are stronger in traditional mechanics and the younger workforce are better at fixing software related issues – however, both need each other and both groups are often scarce. Here, AR represents a great chance to make the valuable knowledge of different expert groups easily accessible to other groups – either through standard training modules or direct calls.