AV Case Study: Lexus of Parramatta

It should be one of life’s stand-out moments of celebration but taking ownership of a new luxury car is stressful… apparently.

Keyvan Faghihi is General Manager of Parramatta Toyota and Lexus dealership and in his estimation, handing over a new car isn’t all champagne and roses: “Often the customer has waited for months for the car to arrive – sometime years, if it’s highly customised – and, of course, they need to pay for the car at that point, so emotions and frustrations can run high.”

Car dealerships do their best to soften the blow by making an occasion of it. But, again, this can be stressful… for the dealership.

“Every dealer will print out a poster with the name of the customer and a message of congratulations. But remember, a big dealership like ours can be delivering 400-plus vehicles a month, so keeping up with that sort of output is time-consuming and constant.”

According to Keyvan another more insidious fallout of using a ‘congrats’ easel with a poster on it, is that cars have been chipped in all the excitement of a handover: “All it takes is an over-excited child to run into the easel and for it to fall onto the car… and we have a real problem. It happens more often than you’d think.”

HEADS UP DISPLAYS

When Keyvan took on his role at Parramatta Toyota he had a brainwave: do away with the printouts and use a TV instead. Further, he commissioned the developers of their CRM (a business called AMS) to develop a content management system (CMS) that allows his team to remotely schedule the screens’ content to sync with the pre-arranged time of the handover. Genius.

That said, Keyvan isn’t an AV person and made the easy mistake of buying domestic TVs for the purpose which – thanks to fact they’re not designed to run so intensively in indoor/outdoor conditions –  “lasted all of nine months”. Undeterred, Keyvan rang a contact at Harvey Norman, which has a commercial division. Harvey Norman Audio Visual System Designer, Matthew Stevens, took the job on.

“We sent a sample of a Philips D Line commercial display to Keyvan for assessment, to ensure it worked seamlessly with his CMS,” comments Matthew Stevens.

Keyvan was more than satisfied with the product and gave the green light for Matthew’s team to install a 55-inch Philips D Line display in each of the Lexus delivery bays – six in all.

Each screen takes a network connection and displays the bespoke content via a web browser. When it’s not displaying content specific to the customer the display reverts to a Lexus video loop.

“It’s a great system,” enthuses Keyvan Faghihi. “We’ve programmed it such that the displays automatically load the browser when they’re powered up in the morning. They need minimal intervention – everything’s remote.”