At Pinewood Technologies Asia-Pacific, Joshua Bunyan manages internal and customer projects. Joshua is passionate about striving to provide exceptional customer service, always looking for ways to improve the services Pinewood delivers to its customers.

Outside of work, Joshua is extremely passionate about rugby. Having played rugby for 15 years, Joshua believes in the strong relationships one can build through sports, along with a bit of healthy competition. Currently based in Hong Kong, Joshua is more than excited about the Rugby World Cup being hosted in Japan this year, and can’t wait to get his hands on some game tickets.

In this deeply insightful chat with us, Joshua talks about the challenges of a changing automotive market, the value of great customer service and how an LMS helps in this regard.

In today’s information-driven world of the informed consumer, how important is it for the seller (in your case, car dealers) to have systems which enable them to provide exceptional customer service?

It is true that the consumers are more well-informed about their buying options now than ever before. It is therefore of vital importance that our customers know when and how to engage with “their customers” in- line with their decision-making cycle, whether that’s to buy a new car or to service their existing vehicles.

Using a management system such as Pinewood DMS helps dealers through the use of automated contact plans and reminders. This helps them engage with customers looking to replace their vehicle or those in need of a service or routine checkup, thus improving the customers’ experience.

How does learn-tech, specifically the Learning Management System, help in this regard?

As with any system, its effectiveness is only as good as those using it. UpsideLMS has helped us to develop a platform through which we can administer learning content remotely. This helps both, with onboarding as well as continual growth of our users, as our platform evolves and develops to meet the challenges of a changing automotive market, always providing new tools to improve our customers’ performance.

Being based out of the UK and having dealers (learners) in APAC, you have a vantage point to assess the differences and similarities in the level of technology adoption and penetration at the workplace. What’s your assessment?

Of course there are differences in the level of technology adoption across different markets as well as across different brands. This ultimately depends on market forces, which can be affected by wider economic conditions of different markets and the demographics each car brand targets.

For instance, a high volume brand dealer is more likely to adopt technology which helps to make the running of their service department more efficient so they can increase their volume of work, as each job will have less profit than it would at a luxury brand. A luxury brand may adopt functionality as it enables them to provide exceptional customer service to ensure repeat visits, as their customer base is relatively small to a volume brand and retention is vital.

Having said that, what we always try to do at Pinewood Technologies is to encourage customers to fully adopt the technology. After all, every business can benefit from exceptional customer service and efficiency in operations. An increase in work volume doesn’t need to have an adverse effect on customer satisfaction. As we have a view across multiple markets and brands, we can help our customer base to take lessons from these markets and brands and apply them to their businesses through better adoption of technology, to drive their business performance.

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