At the Geneva motor show last week Mercedes-Benz announced a new online customer service portal called ‘Mercedes Me’, which aims to make company car drivers’ lives easier.
Scheduled to be launched in summer this year, it brings together the company’s various services within one dedicated digital platform accessed at www.mercedes.me.
Many of the strands of Mercedes Me, including the Car2Go car sharing scheme, service cost calculator and finance schemes are already available separately but the new portal puts them under one roof as well as adding several new services.
The portal is designed to be relevant not only to Mercedes owners, whether they be fleet managers, company car drivers or private owners, but also to people who don’t own a car.
Mercedes Me is separated into five sections: ‘Move me’, ‘Connect me’, ‘Assist me’, ‘Finance me’ and ‘Inspire me’.
Move me concerns mobility services, including car rental, taxi facilities and the company’s Car2Go car sharing scheme (a point-to-point rental service using Smart ForTwo cars in cities including London and Birmingham).
Connect me involves connectivity, including various online apps in the pipeline and for owners of certain Mercedes models, a remote link to the car itself which can find where it’s parked or pre-heat the interior before climbing in.
Assist me looks after servicing. It will be possible to make appointments for maintenance in a more flexible way through the portal and calculate potential costs.
Inspire me is an area of the portal which includes a news and magazine-style section which will be continually updated with various information as well as a section through which it will be possible to contact the company and request information or suggest areas for improvement. Mercedes describes the section as a ‘business innovation community.’
Naturally, there’s also a commercial angle in that Mercedes hopes the platform will help entice new customers to the brand – for example, seventy percent of A-Class buyers last year had not previously owned a Mercedes. To that end, the ‘Finance me’ section details all the various finance schemes available for a new Mercedes.
Mercedes Me will be accessible via a regular computer, smartphone or tablet and will also be available through smart watches and Google Glass further down the line.
For more news from the Geneva motor show click here.
