Maserati debuts multilingual roadside assist app

MASERATI Australia and roadside assistance provider Digicall Assist have teamed up to develop what they are calling a world-first roadside assistance app that provides multilingual options for non-English-speaking customers.

 

Launching this week, the app will allow certain non-English-speaking Maserati customers to request roadside assistance in their own native language.

 

The app will first be available in Simple Chinese and Italian to mirror the most common bilingual Maserati customers in Australia.

 

In the event of an emergency, the app asks customers a number of questions related to the problem to help determine what assistance is required and will ask them to take photos of the issue, which will then be sent to Digicall Assist’s team.

 

Using the app sends the geolocation of the vehicle to Digicall Assist, preventing the need to try to work out where customers are in an unfamiliar environment.

 

Once the assistance request has been made through the app, the user is patched through on the phone to one of Digicall Assist’s representatives, who may not necessarily be able to speak the language but will have the information needed to begin the process of sending assistance to the customer.

 

The app comes at no cost to customers and can be used by second-hand owners so long as roadside assistance is still valid. The app works for all Maserati models.

 

Maserati Australia COO Glen Sealey said the idea was a partnership between the Italian brand and Digicall Assist, and was an initiative born from a desire to provide a personalised experience for customers.

 

“It’s certainly something that we’ve always wanted to do. Maserati is a bespoke brand and in that regard we do pride ourselves in terms of the amount of personalisation you can do with the car, and it makes sense to then personalise where possible other aspects of the car,” he said.

 

“So, with the infotainment system you can specify your language, it makes sense then from a roadside perspective that you should be able to do that as best as we can there, as well.

 

“We do have a portion of our market that is certainly bilingual at the very least, whether it’s from continental Europe or from Asia, so while it’s picking up the Chinese languages first, we will soon roll out other languages, as well.”

 

Digicall Assist has been the roadside assist provider for Maserati for nearly 20 years, and CEO Michael Curtin said the multilingual app was a result of the changing Maserati ownership demographic brought on by the Levante SUV.

 

“We started a few months ago – the Levante has driven volume for them and it’s a different customer for them, as well, so we wanted to try and work with them in a different way to allow their customers, many of whom are first-time Maserati owners, to reach us more readily,” he said.

 

“So we sat around with the leadership over there and came up with some ideas and one of them was to try and facilitate a roadside-assistance event more readily for them, and the app that we ended up building was to address a few particular aspects of that, the first one being multilingual.”

 

He added that there were plans to roll out the apps in other markets, including South Africa and New Zealand.

 

“Digicall Assist is absolutely an Australian company, but we have joint ownership with a South African group,” he said.

 

“We have actually already been discussing with our colleagues in South Africa and indeed some of our other clients, so we definitely anticipate extending this into other markets.

 

“The obvious one would be South Africa for us because that’s a major market. We will also look at potentially New Zealand.”

 

Digicall Assist already takes care of roadside-assistance duties for Maserati in New Zealand.