The Telematics Update Awards for 2014 may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate some of the winners and their achievements. Last month we looked at Inrix and it’s award winning Traffic Scorecard which took home the Content Aggregator Award and today we’re looking at Xtime, which won the award for Best Automotive Application.
The big take home for Telematics Update’s (TU) judges when it came to Xtime’s service, was that it had a very “clear philosophy,” of what it wanted to do. TU also said that it had the potential to become a big player in the industry, according to DealerMarketing.
The piece of software in question is known as ServiceTelematics, which connects a vehicle with an automaker’s dealer network. It’s designed to keep both the driver and the dealer up to date on the car’s health. Should a problem occur, the onboard computer will detect it and send a message to both parties. The driver then has the option to schedule a check up, or maintenance session with his preferred company through the in-dash telematics system’s email function.
Xtime’s ServiceTelematics then sends details to the company in question, giving them the diagnostic breakdown of the problem and other data that might be of use to those charged with fixing it. The dealership or garage can then confirm the order right to the vehicle, giving the driver near instant piece of mind.
“Xtime takes great pride in being at the forefront of the connected car movement and creating platforms that represent the ultimate customer experience,” said Neal East, Xtime CEO. “We are elated that the telematics community recognizes our innovations and that an increasing number of major automakers are looking to Xtime to power their in-car service scheduling.”
Xtime’s software and hardware packages are currently installed in a variety of vehicles for company’s like Volvo, BMW, Infiniti and Honda.
Honda’s Bluelink software builds in Xtime features.
About Xtime
Xtime is supported by over 6,000 dealerships around the world, booking over two million appointments a month for its clients. This has led to over 70 million appointments in total being booked since the company was founded back in 2004. Since then it’s gone from strength to strength, growing at the unprecedented rate of 50 per cent per year. For its partners, it’s brought in as much as $5 billion.
The idea behind the Xtime service is to improve customer retention, bringing new car buyers back to the showroom service department time and again, which in turn makes them more likely to buy from that same company again. This boosts dealer revenue and profitability, whilst also increasing customer satisfaction, two aspects of business that don’t always go hand in hand.
The Telematics Update Award isn’t the first one that XTime has received. Over the past few years it’s been ranked as one of the top 500 companies in the world by Deloitte and even broke into the top 300 on the BVP Cloudscape top privately held firms list.
