Ather Energy builds a dealer-centric solution to streamline and transform dealership operations

Ather Energy is widely regarded as one of India’s first intelligent EV companies, leading the technological disruption that is reshaping the automobile industry. With a firm belief that electric vehicles, with their inherent efficiency, will redefine urban mobility and the cities of the future, Ather has built its brand around innovation and reliability. True to its vision of building an open and thriving EV ecosystem, Ather took a pioneering step in 2021 by opening its charging network to all EV players — cementing its role as not just a manufacturer, but a catalyst for industry-wide transformation.

Need for a robust and scalable, dealer management system

Ather’s countrywide network of 400+ multibrand dealers and service partners forms its primary interface with two-wheeler EV owners and buyers. The company recognises that to drive better end-customer outcomes, it is critical to streamline and elevate the dealer experience. 

However, Ather’s tech landscape initially comprised custom-built siloed tools that hampered effective dealer management. Dealership teams had to juggle around 6-7 disparate applications across the customer journey. And backend operations were spread across 10-15 loosely integrated systems that impacted agility and did not scale. With dealership staff typically young, and skilled, but not necessarily tech-savvy, ease of use was also a concern. Ather sought to equip dealer teams with state-of-the art solutions, so they could deliver seamless, customer-centric experiences.

When Ather started evaluating established solutions to solve for these challenges, they found that traditional dealer management systems (DMS) were too rigid for their needs. Salesforce was seen as the ideal choice - a scalable, modular platform that could unify fragmented systems, simplify workflows, and future-proof dealer operations for rapid growth.

A unified lead management system boosts conversion rates

Ather embarked on building a new dealer-centric platform on Salesforce, starting with lead management. Ather adopted a phased approach to building out multiple use cases on Salesforce, with the objective being to gain experience one module at a time, and leveraging the learnings from each phase for the next.  

Earlier, lead capture at the dealerships was largely manual on phones or registers, since there was low adoption of the existing custom tools. To replace this, an easy-to-use, mobile-first lead management app was built on Salesforce Service Cloud. Now, sales advisors across dealerships can effortlessly capture leads on their mobiles, which are then consolidated on Salesforce. 

Within two months of the launch, adoption across dealerships – known in the Ather ecosystem as Experience Centres - had already reached >85%. Ather worked closely with dealer sales teams to showcase the value of capturing leads efficiently, managing follow-ups, and scheduling test rides, all in one place.

To drive adoption, Ather also prioritised addressing pain points. In fast-paced two-wheeler showrooms, sales advisors rarely had time for lengthy forms. Ather streamlined the process to just three fields – name, phone number, and model preference – which significantly improved compliance.

Today, leads from both walk-ins and digital channels are consolidated on Salesforce. When location data is available, digital leads are automatically routed to the nearest dealership. Others are handled by a centralised call centre, which uses well integrated engagement platforms to nurture prospects in the early stages.

At the dealerships, the LMS app provides managers with a comprehensive overview of each employee’s performance, so they can help optimise productivity, while sales advisors get focused views on the status of their own leads, driving efficiency. 

This has led to an increase in lead conversion and a reduction in lead capture time to just 45-60 seconds.

Customer and vehicle 360, and streamlined service processes enable same day complaint resolution at scale

Ather’s success with the LMS encouraged them to next implement a centralised CRM on Salesforce Service Cloud. This was built and launched in under four months to deliver faster, more contextual customer service. 

The CRM gives dealer call centre teams, Ather reps, and head office staff a 360° view of both the customer and their vehicle. From test ride history and vehicle service records, to odometer readings and recent feedback scores, the customer view consolidates every detail in real time. This is further enriched by the vehicle 360, which offers rich scooter-level insights – from the latest Bill of Materials (BOM) and service milestones, to warranty data and periodic service reminders.

This end-to-end visibility has eliminated data silos and transformed the quality of customer interactions. As Shalin Jain, Digital Products Owner, Ather Energy explains, “Our earlier in-house tool reflected our assumptions of what a CRM should do. With Salesforce, we moved to a best-in-class CRM that’s both intuitive and scalable. It brought structure to fragmented service experiences and helped us focus on speed, context, and customer confidence.” 

A streamlined case and ticketing system ensures that every customer query is logged, tracked, and resolved swiftly. Agents have access to all customer and vehicle details at their fingertips and can contextualise every query that comes in. As a result, both first-call resolution and average call handling time improved significantly, elevating the customer experience that has already been synonymous with Ather.

Moreover, dealership staff now have optimised scheduling on a Salesforce Field Service app. They can efficiently plan pick-up and drop-off for scooters that need repairs, and technicians use the 360 view to better understand the issues and carry out repairs quickly. 

Easy-to-use DMS cuts dealership ramp-up time by 95-98% to drive dealership growth

The success of its LMS, CRM, and service modules validated Ather’s vision to digitise the entire scooter value chain. So the team next simplified and transformed core dealership operations, like procurement and inventory management.

A comprehensive Dealer Management System (DMS) was built on Salesforce Service Cloud to replace the legacy "black box" system which lacked flexibility. 

The new platform is a one-stop solution that solves many challenges. It streamlines the day-to-day BAU operations of dealerships – whether it’s checking overall stock levels, drilling down to the availability of a specific color in a specific model, reserving spares or raising a spares request - to name a few.

With all processes streamlined, and the intuitive self-guided workflows that the DMS offers, there has been a dramatic reduction in staff training time – from over a week to just few hours. This has also accelerated new employee productivity, effectively eliminating the long-standing industry challenge of high staff attrition.

"With the new Salesforce DMS, we spend less time on training and more time serving customers. It's a game-changer for our profitability," says Jain. 

The DMS also empowers users with self-service reporting. Within the old system, users had to reach out to the tech team for a simple report, and this could take weeks. Dealer teams and Ather users can now create their own reports and dashboards. This gives them real-time insights into inventory, model-specific demand, and other business-critical information for sound decision-making.

Stakeholders can also generate reports in real-time for government compliance reporting. 

“Salesforce gave us an agile, enterprise-grade platform that transformed our entire value chain,” says Jain.  

“Some of our more tech-savvy dealerships say this is one of the best DMS systems they’ve worked on, with its simplified workflows, modern interface, and single-window access to everything. We’re now able to respond to market shifts and regulatory updates in real time, which is foundational to scaling efficiently.

Next: Scaling smarter with personalisation and predictive Insights

Ather is now poised to leverage Salesforce's more advanced capabilities. The company is exploring Agentforce to create highly personalised customer journeys and unlock predictive insights into customer behaviours and market trends - a key aspect that becomes instrumental as it scales its operations to new cities and expands its product line.

"We evaluated multiple DMS solutions, but Salesforce was the only platform that could handle our complexity while staying simple for our dealer teams," explains Jain. 

In a competitive, multi-brand environment, Ather has provided dealerships with an easy-to-use and robust solution that helps them deliver brand-centric, personalised experiences that capture customer attention and loyalty. All built on a robust solution, seamless information flow, and quick in-house development of tailored apps. 

With Salesforce powering their operations, Ather has created a blueprint for how modern mobility companies can scale with both speed and sophistication.