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Customer project

Digitalising Customer-Facing Processes
with CRM and Marketing Automation Integration

The integrated CRM and Marketing Automation architecture creates a scalable foundation for digital customer processes. Factory tours, customer feedback, manufacturer confirmations, events and campaigns are brought together in a shared data and process logic –
delivering greater transparency, process reliability and automation.

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Business Activity

The company is one of the world's leading bus manufacturers, with numerous national subsidiaries responsible for the global activities of its bus and service brands. Its product range spans touring coaches, intercity buses, city buses, special-purpose buses and bus chassis. In addition to manufacturing and selling new buses, the company operates a global service network and offers comprehensive vehicle-related services, including the trading of used buses. The parent company is one of the world's largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, with more than 40 production sites and over 100,000 employees.

"With the integrated CRM and Marketing Automation solution, we were able to set up several customer-facing processes in a significantly more digital and structured way. What is particularly valuable for us is that enquiries, surveys, event registrations and campaigns are no longer handled in isolation, but converge centrally in the CRM. This reduces manual effort, improves data quality and allows us to respond more quickly to customer needs."

Sales Specialist

The Project in Detail

Application

Several customer-facing processes were digitalised for the company on the basis of an integrated CRM and Marketing Automation architecture. The focus was on five central use cases: factory tours, automated customer surveys following new vehicle deliveries and workshop services, the online request of manufacturer confirmations, event registrations and CRM-driven marketing campaigns.

The solution consolidates the previously manual, e-mail-, spreadsheet- and form-based individual processes into a structured process landscape. Web forms capture the relevant data, transfer it to the CRM and trigger subsequent processing, status logic, communication or escalation from there.

The result is a scalable foundation for digital customer processes in which data is processed centrally, customer communication is automated and manual handovers are significantly reduced.

Starting point

Before digitalisation, many processes were heavily manual. Factory tour enquiries were handled by e-mail, coordinated via spreadsheets and aligned with various stakeholders such as security, catering or internal contacts. Information was spread across CMS, CRM, e-mails and manual filing systems.

Customer surveys had previously only been conducted sporadically and on an ad hoc basis – certainly not in an automated and fully digitalised manner. For new vehicle deliveries and workshop services, there was no end-to-end process that automatically collected feedback, clearly assigned it to the relevant vehicle or service case and escalated critical responses internally.

In the area of manufacturer confirmations, there was also a need to rebuild an existing process from scratch, because the previous implementation did not meet the required data protection standards. The request of registration-relevant documents was to be handled in future via a GDPR-compliant online process and transferred entirely into the CRM.

Additional requirements existed in event management and marketing communications: registrations were to be managed digitally, capacities checked automatically, duplicates prevented and campaigns launched directly from the CRM.

Solution

An integrated process architecture was implemented for the company in which the CRM serves as the leading system for data, status and process logic. Marketing Automation and web forms handle structured data capture, automated communication and digital interaction with customers.

The core solution components:

  • Digital management of factory tours
  • CRM-maintained visit slots published on the website
  • Multi-step web forms for enquiry, confirmation, participant list and consent to house rules
  • Consolidated overview of all relevant information in the CRM
  • Automated customer surveys following new vehicle deliveries and workshop services
  • Personalised survey links with unique assignment to vehicle, service case or job
  • Direct transfer of survey results back into the CRM
  • CRM escalations for critical ratings
  • CRM-side throttling to prevent too many surveys being sent to the same customer
  • Six-step online process for requesting manufacturer confirmations
  • German and English form journey integrated into the website via iframe
  • Complete transfer of all enquiry data into the CRM
  • Digital event registrations with real-time capacity checks
  • Form lock-out when maximum participant numbers are reached
  • Duplicate prevention for event registrations
  • CRM-driven marketing campaigns for defined target groups and vehicle topics
  • Automated welcome e-mail after newsletter double opt-in
Benefits

With the integrated solution, the company has already been able to digitalise several manual customer processes and consolidate them within a shared CRM logic. This reduces administrative overhead while significantly improving data quality, transparency and process reliability.

Particularly valuable is the combination of structured data capture and automated downstream processing. Customer enquiries, surveys, event registrations and campaigns are no longer handled in isolation, but are cleanly documented in the CRM and made available for further processing.

The specific benefits for the company:

  • Significantly less manual e-mail and spreadsheet-based coordination
  • Central process management in the CRM
  • Structured capture of enquiries via web forms
  • Better overview of factory tours, slots and participant information
  • Automated feedback collection after vehicle deliveries and service cases
  • Clear assignment of survey responses to vehicles, jobs or services
  • Fast escalation of critical customer feedback
  • GDPR-compliant gateway for manufacturer confirmations
  • Complete CRM documentation of registration-relevant enquiries
  • Automatic capacity checks for events
  • Fewer duplicate registrations and manual resolution cases
  • Better management of CRM-based campaigns and welcome journeys
Business Impact

The digitalisation of the four process areas delivers operational and economic improvements for the company:

0-0%Less administrative overhead for factory tours through digital enquiry, slot and participant processes
0-0%Less coordination effort between administration, security, catering and other stakeholders
0-0%Faster capture and processing of customer feedback through automated surveys
0-0%Less manual capture effort for manufacturer confirmation requests
0-0%Less effort for event registrations through real-time capacity checks and duplicate prevention
Further benefits
Significantly faster response to critical feedback through CRM-based escalations
Higher process reliability through complete CRM documentation and GDPR-compliant data capture
Better data quality through structured forms instead of unstructured e-mail, spreadsheet or phone processes
Greater scalability through reusable form, campaign and CRM process logic

The economic effect is driven primarily by replacing manual individual processes, reducing coordination loops, lowering error rates and enabling faster downstream processing in the CRM. In addition, responsiveness towards customers improves because feedback, enquiries and registrations are captured systematically and can be transferred directly into follow-on processes.

Strategic Value

With the integrated CRM and Marketing Automation architecture, the company creates a scalable foundation for digital customer processes across multiple areas of application. Rather than optimising individual processes in isolation, customer interactions are increasingly brought together in a shared data and process logic.

The particular strategic value lies in the fact that factory tours, customer feedback, manufacturer confirmations, events and campaigns all operate according to a uniform principle: structured capture, central CRM documentation, automated communication and clear process management. The result is greater transparency, higher process reliability and a stronger foundation for future automation.

Business Impact

The digitalisation of the four process areas delivers operational and economic improvements for the company:

0-0%Less administrative overhead for factory tours through digital enquiry, slot and participant processes
0-0%Less coordination effort between administration, security, catering and other stakeholders
0-0%Faster capture and processing of customer feedback through automated surveys
0-0%Less manual capture effort for manufacturer confirmation requests
0-0%Less effort for event registrations through real-time capacity checks and duplicate prevention
Further benefits
Significantly faster response to critical feedback through CRM-based escalations
Higher process reliability through complete CRM documentation and GDPR-compliant data capture
Better data quality through structured forms instead of unstructured e-mail, spreadsheet or phone processes
Greater scalability through reusable form, campaign and CRM process logic

The economic effect is driven primarily by replacing manual individual processes, reducing coordination loops, lowering error rates and enabling faster downstream processing in the CRM. In addition, responsiveness towards customers improves because feedback, enquiries and registrations are captured systematically and can be transferred directly into follow-on processes.

Strategic Value

With the integrated CRM and Marketing Automation architecture, the company creates a scalable foundation for digital customer processes across multiple areas of application. Rather than optimising individual processes in isolation, customer interactions are increasingly brought together in a shared data and process logic.

The particular strategic value lies in the fact that factory tours, customer feedback, manufacturer confirmations, events and campaigns all operate according to a uniform principle: structured capture, central CRM documentation, automated communication and clear process management. The result is greater transparency, higher process reliability and a stronger foundation for future automation.