CarMax responds to Covid-19 by launching a contactless curbside pickup option for customers buying cars
CarMax is a leading retailer of used cars based in Richmond, Virginia. Their focus on innovation and iconic customer experience aims to deliver a seamless car buying and selling experience to its customers. After homes, people invest heavily in cars. CarMax has enabled a contactless curbside pickup option, keeping in mind the challenges a customer faces while buying cars during a pandemic.
Addressing pandemic needs
Customers have always expected convenience and personalization, but after the Covid-19 pandemic, these expectations have accelerated.
“While many of our customers prefer to do the transition online and have the car delivered home, most of them still would like to experience the car before they buy it,” says Shamim Mohammad, Chief Information and Technology Officer.
However, the pandemic has highlighted the need for companies to become agile in these situations.
The CarMax Curbside option allows customers to buy and sell cars either online or in-store. They can also take a solo test drive before they purchase the car.
To reduce the risk of exposure to Covid-19, they have implemented strict social distancing policies and ensure that their cars are sanitized for the customers. Additionally, they extended the duration of the 90-day limited warranty and want to provide financial assistance to those who are finding it difficult to make payments.
Driving an omnichannel experience
The underlying technology to drive this innovation is their omnichannel strategy. Their research shows that customers like to be in control.
“We allow our customers to take the driver’s seat and decide how, where, and when they like to buy the car from us.”
Customers can start their process online and during the process, they can get in touch with an associate. They can also go to the store to pick up their car or test drive. They are looking for safe ways to buy a car and through the curbside option, customers can save time as they can select their car, choose the financing option, and trade-in offers on an existing vehicle from home.
“In order to enable omnichannel strategy, we had to bring in a lot of technologies with a cloud-first mindset. We also had to leverage platforms, and make changes within the technology we already had in place,” he says about how business processes had to digitally evolve during the pandemic.
They have over 70 locations where customers come in and buy cars but the transition to online changed their technology and how they interact with their customers.
Promoting personalization
As the car buying experience shifts to a digital space, they used data science to curate car recommendations. Customers can filter through pricing, mileage, and brands. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning to collect customer data that helps to prepare a database of information to recommend cars. However, they prioritize the privacy of their customer’s data.
The CarMax technology team is driving innovation that is having a direct impact on revenue generation. Their omnichannel experience coupled with a customer-first mindset are lessons to be kept in mind while designing business models during a crisis.
“In two weeks, we were able to change all our technology, all our business processes, train our thousands of associates all across the country and come up with a marketing campaign,” he says as an example of how quickly the company could adapt and evolve.
