Zingg
Zingg is a platform designed from the ground up, bringing powerful digital features to car dealerships. The platform aims to iterate and improve upon the desire phase of the car purchasing lifecycle with the ultimate goal of bringing a delightful experience to customers and sales representatives.
Introduction
The car dealership model is no different than it was 100 years ago. The traditional approach to dealing cars involves maintaining inventory on premise and a staff of knowledgeable sales representatives to coordinate relationships with customers who are in the market for a new or used vehicle. With an ever-increasing digital adoption of internet-based technology, the model has not yet truly been disrupted or improved.
A disrupted field involves a reimagining of how workflows should function. We see many pure internet interfaces such as websites or mobile apps providing a different direction for customers to purchase vehicles from, however nothing that attempts to bridge the gap between in-person and online experiences. The platform was not designed to disrupt an existing industry, however more-so to modernize and improve a legacy system in dire need of change.
What problem Zingg aims to solve?
In general, the customer experience for buying a car in person has not changed. It is old and outdated, however is not inefficient. The used car market for car dealerships in 2021 was around USD 150 billion. This grew 7.9% in the last year. There is clearly value in the car dealership model, no doubt.
The incumbent however is facing competition from the new online only car dealership model, with a total market size of USD 36 billion and a 6% growth rate in 2021. Customers are finding convenience in purchasing cars through digital interfaces at a growing pace compared to a consistent 4.3% growth rate between the 2016-2020 period.
Zingg delivers the promise that an omnichannel approach to the car dealership is not only important for its survival as a mechanism driving current (partial) vehicle commerce, but something that should be commoditized and adopted in terms of importance.
The Desire Phase
Although what is a dent in a potentially huge market, Zingg works to perfect a particular stage during the general purchase lifecycle of vehicles.
Interest:
This happens before a customer decides to make a visit to a car dealership. They know they would like a new car however, are still indecisive as to what make or model they would like. All they know is that they would like to visit a car dealership to start the process.
Desire:
A customer visits the lot and is generally greeted by a sales representative. The customer either peruses the car lot or heads directly into the store. The potential indecision experienced by the customer is either mitigated or removed after having consulted with the representative or the customers research while on the lot.
Action:
Once a customer has decided to purchase, the formalities take place where pen is put to paper and other legalities are handled.
Notable Features
Dynamic Data Integration
Our system has been developed to automate the inflow of data provided by a clients CDN via FTP. The backend follows a multi-tenanted database paradigm, allowing for multiple clients to use the system in isolation while sharing a single datastore with each other.
The system was built to leverage containerization technology, distributed on a Kubernetes cluster. The system comprised of over 50 different hand written microservices.
Business Adoption
As of November 2021, the platform has been under testing at a well respected, household name car dealership in northeastern Pennsylvania with over two hundred vehicles in stock.