Becoming a ‘true growth partner’ with Kavak, Mexico’s unicorn
How do you revolutionise one of the most significant industries of the last century?
That’s the challenge Kavak, the Mexico-based scale-up that is changing the landscape of used car sales, set themselves when they launched in 2016. Fast forward to today and their model – allowing customers to buy used cars on finance – has attracted the attention of Softbank, secured Series B investment, and put Latin American innovation firmly on the map.
Angela Del Duca, who leads the company’s customer experience and telesales teams, believes that once you’ve identified an industry ripe for disruption, the best place to start is by finding efficiencies. The business has used Aircall as a key part of its journey so far; as Kavak continues to grow, the coming months are the most critical. Here’s what it looks like on the ground.
Building strong customer relationships with empathy
Kavak’s commercial operations are fairly straightforward, with the main workflows focused on inbound customer service and a telesales team usually responding to triggers from their online channels.
When potential customers register their interest on Kavak’s used car sales platform, or request a call back, the team springs into action. The faster you engage, Del Duca believes, the more likely people are to talk to you – and this is where voice, rather than web chat, really comes into its own.
“Realistically, you only buy a car once or twice in your life; it’s a big decision, and people take a lot of care. At Kavak, we’re committed to supporting customers throughout their journey – and that starts from the very first interaction.”
Voice as a foundation to build on
Whether it’s the first contact or a final check-in months after a customer has bought, Kavak puts voice at the heart of its communication strategy. Del Duca realised early on that for the team to keep exceeding response and sales targets, the business needed a system that could support her team wherever they were.
With staff on the move across Mexico, she identified three key areas such a system would need to cover: simplicity – both for implementation and daily use – reliability, and mobile compatibility. Aircall ticked all three boxes.
“We needed a phone system that was easy to use, as well as flexible enough to support our teams as they continued to grow,” says Del Duca. “That’s one of the main reasons we chose Aircall.”
Being able to create numbers for different countries and regions in a single click, and easily change the number agents call from, was also a key factor. With her customer service team based in Mexico and customers all over the country, this was a very important feature for Angela. In fact, many Mexican customers are wary of calls from different cities or regions – Aircall solved this problem completely.
Scaling and optimising business processes
Always on the move, the telesales team started using Aircall’s mobile app to ensure performance could be maintained wherever they were – something that became even more vital as Mexico introduced measures when COVID-19 hit the country.
Despite this, Kavak was still looking ahead, focusing on maintaining its rapid growth. When they started working with Aircall, the business hadn’t yet started using a CRM – but the ability to integrate with one was crucial to the partnership.
“We knew we’d use a CRM one day,” Del Duca says, “and I loved that so many integrations were already available with Aircall. From there, I was immediately convinced of how valuable a partner the company would be on our growth journey.”
Kavak has also made use of Aircall’s API to build their own Analytics dashboards, which are essential for tracking the team’s activity, especially in telesales. This enabled Del Duca to set KPIs such as number of calls per day, time spent on calls, and quality of interactions thanks to the call tagging feature.
“It took our developers no time at all to build dashboards with Aircall data in our own reporting tool, Tableau. The API documentation is really well written.”
A true growth partner
As the business heads into Q1 2021, Kavak is ready to start using a CRM, with Salesforce lined up for both sales and support teams from January next year. Combined with Aircall’s analytics capabilities, it will give the business much greater control over its data across both sides of the business – and a better understanding of where new efficiencies can be found.
Del Duca believes “this new development will help us take Kavak’s commercial operations to the next level. I appreciate how closely Aircall has partnered with us on this journey so far – not only do I love the product, but I love Aircall’s team as well. I look forward to taking our collaboration to the next level next year.”
She had a final message for other high-growth companies too:
“If you’re going through a digitalisation process, it’s crucial you find solutions that are tailored to your company. That way, they can scale with you. It really is that simple.”
