Emirates Transport

Salesforce was more than a technology partner for us, it’s a key part of our vision to transform transport and mobility in the UAE.”

Talal Al Najjar | Head of Digital, Emirates Transport
 
Circa 35,000 employees
 
 

Emirates Transport pioneers mobility-as-an-experience with Salesforce

Travelling can be hard work; from buying and maintaining an affordable car, to learning to drive, or making sure your kids catch the school bus in the morning – life would be much simpler if there was an app that could do all of that, and make getting the whole family from A to B a breeze.

Well, in the United Arab Emirates, there is. OneET is delivering mobility-as-an-experience (MaaX) with a one stop shop aligning 32 transport services run by government agency Emirates Transport, ranging from coordinating school buses to retreading tyres. This is the result of the bold transformation of the agency that took it from only catering to government bodies, to opening its services to all consumers in the country within one year. To achieve this, it had to pivot to focus on the customer and their experiences, providing lifetime value to citizens however they choose to travel.

“Salesforce gives us the power to get 360-degree visibility of the customer and of every vehicle, tyre, or partner in our network,” said Talal Al Najjar, Head of Digital at the company. “We’re getting ready to launch a truly connected, next generation mobility service across the entire UAE.”

Managing transport across the UAE

To achieve its vision of operating as OneET, the company needed to simplify its complex and siloed IT estate and centralise company data. It turned to Salesforce to help unlock 360-degree visibility of more than two million customers and to connect and streamline operations across departments. 

“Building a connected experience doesn’t just make life easier for customers and staff, it will also help us establish lifelong relationships with citizens to maximise cross and upsell opportunities,” said Najaar.

Working with Salesforce and implementation partner Smaartt Digital Consulting in early 2019, the team implemented Salesforce and integrated it with multiple operational systems and ERP. 

“Having the right partners was crucial to the success of the project, we’re two thirds Emirates Transport pioneers mobility-as-an-experience with one super app for government bodies, businesses and citizens. Learn the role of Salesforce of the way into our transformation and we’ve established best practices to help us get our platform where we need it to be,” commented Deepak Thomas, Head of IT Projects.

Emirates Transport is now centralising data across 38 companies within the group and unlocks better visibility of the customer, prospect, and vehicle lifecycle, creating a truly connected enterprise. This helps teams in every department to more effectively serve customers and collaborate across the group. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud underpin both the OneET app and Emirates Transport’s intelligent CRM platform.

Creating a connected customer experience

When OneET was ready to launch to consumers, trust was a key differentiator that gave Emirates Transport a competitive edge: both in terms of the brand’s reputation, and its unique single source of trusted customer data. “As a government organisation we’ve built up a lot of trust, which puts us in a unique position to grow our business and become a market leader,” said Thomas. “When we launched our app we didn’t need to do a big marketing campaign because people already knew us – and our high engagement rates reflect that.” 

In addition to the app, online portals built on Experience Cloud help customers access services from the app or web browser. “Overall, self service reduces manual data entry for our teams, and empowers customers with faster access to services.” commented Thomas

Three of the company’s services are currently accessible via portals, with the rest on the roadmap for implementation. “Customers can log into the community for vehicle registration, or to book an inspection. And parents can book their children on to school buses or get the latest info on when they’re running during the pandemic,” revealed Thomas. “We launched digital vehicle registrations in October 2020 and handled more than 4 million transactions through the portal in the first six months.”

Sending relevant communications to the right people at the right time

The self-service portals are also part of the company’s omnichannel vision, and Marketing Cloud supports communications by email, social media, and WhatsApp via an integration.

“Marketing Cloud helps us target the right people at the right time to build stronger relationships and maximise the impact of our communications,” revealed Thomas. 

For example, the team can segment people who are eligible for driving lessons but eliminate contacts who are already learning and send each group on the most relevant journey. 

With 250,000 students travelling by school bus every year, this is a significant opportunity to engage with teenagers when they get their provisional license. And when they pass their test, Emirates Transport can help them find an affordable car, insure it, and keep it running with relevant reminders through Marketing Cloud and easy access to services through the app or portal.

Automated workflows support service delivery

And to deliver these amazing customer experiences at scale, Emirates Transport leveraged Salesforce’s Platform capabilities, with smart workflows to streamline services such as vehicle maintenance, and launch new services to amplify the group’s offering. 

Automated processes built on Salesforce Platform support the vehicle maintenance process from the moment a customer requests a quote through to approval, then underpins fulfilment of the service with trigger-based actions to register the task, schedule field visits where applicable, and generate invoices and receipts through the integration with the ERP system.

And customers aren’t the only group enjoying the new technology; the employee experience has also been elevated and modernised with Salesforce, with better access to comprehensive customer data and greater automation cutting down on manual entry. “We ran change management programmes to help users adjust to the new environment and incentives to use the platform,” added Najaar. “Today, if something isn’t logged on Salesforce then it doesn’t exist.”

Next on its roadmap, Emirates Transport is planning to leverage Einstein to perform smarter analytics on company data to improve lead segmentation and prioritisation. It’s also starting to use Social Studio for social listening and hopes to be able to boost engagement in the future.

“Salesforce was more than a technology partner for us, it’s a key part of our vision to transform transport and mobility in the UAE,” said Najaar. “We’re adding new functionality and optimising our app and internal processes every day so we can add more value to millions of people and improve fleet management for 35,000 vehicles.”

 

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