MOST Malaysian car owners are familiar with Lim Tayar - a name that promises swift and superior service; a one-stop shop for all car maintenance.

The Lim siblings, Clement and Melissa, have been jointly helming the 35-year-old family business for some years now and they have been on an expansion drive to take the Lim Tayar name across the country.

Plans were moving along with 20 centres and new businesses established, employing close to 300 people, when everything came to a halt with the nationwide lockdown in March that caught businesses everywhere off guard. Like many others, Lim Tayar closed all its centres as required by law and revenue stopped. People were unsure of the future, and the nation was in survival mode.

After the initial shock of the enforced shutdown, the Lim siblings shifted gear and accelerated the digitisation plans for their businesses to include a cashless avenue to do business and interact with customers. The duo knew the importance of restarting operations as soon as government restrictions were lifted to ensure the continued livelihood of their employees. They understood that the company needed to quickly deploy an efficient online interface that would allow them to get back into the driver’s seat and digitally connect with customers.

“We urgently needed a contactless payment solution that could seamlessly fit into our accelerated digital framework. A solution simple enough for our employees to feel confident to use with minimal training and one that was equally convenient for our customers to navigate, ” said Clement, the joint managing director CKL Holdings Sdn Bhd, the company behind Lim Tayar.

With a May deadline set to reopen its service centres, Clement and his team began the arduous task of ensuring full health and safety compliance of all 20 of its service centres, making sure that employees felt safe returning to work and customers felt comfortable taking their cars back to Lim Tayar.

Contactless connections

With many operational procedures to manage, Lim Tayar found a likeminded partner in financial technology specialist KiplePay, to help them build and enhance the digitisation of their business. KiplePay who is familiar with the needs of companies like Lim Tayar seeking to diversify its business channels and customer touchpoints, immediately set about helping the business turn around.

Familiar with the needs of companies like Lim Tayar, which are seeking to diversify its business channels and customer touchpoints, it immediately set about helping the business turn around.

“We needed to create a system that would enable cashless payments at service centres with the ability to integrate the many outlets within a single interface. We also looked into creating a more seamless online engagement with customers, to enable online bookings for maintenance appointments using their website, ” said KiplePay chief executive officer Tan Kay Yen.

To address these needs, the KiplePay Unified Payments solution was rolled out to support cashless payments by customers, both at the service centres and on their online store, while providing full integration of all Lim Tayar’s business channels.

The KiplePay 1-Click Payment system enabled employees at the service centres to quickly adapt to its simple user interface, which allows them to keep track of all maintenance-related transactions going in and out with minimal disruption to their existing operations, while the head office has the additional access to easily retrieve reports for all 20 outlets through a single consolidated dashboard that was useful for strategic planning.

The transition to KiplePay’s system was also seamless with no hardware investment required as the 1-Click Payment solution works on mobile phones and regular computers to enable easy payment collections using everyday messaging tools. This meant little training was required for Lim Tayar’s frontline staff. Bookings made easy

To assist Lim Tayar with their booking system, KiplePay created a no-contact workflow to cater to the new normal that allows customers to get their cars serviced with three easy steps, while staying safe within the government’s standard operating procedures for combating against Covid-19:

> Step 1 - Make an appointment

Customers can either book an appointment using Lim Tayar’s newly revamped online store at www.limtayarisonline.com.my, WhatsApp or call to fix a date and time at their preferred centre.

> Step 2 - Drop-off car for servicing

No longer needing to fill out forms at the workshops, customers can quickly drop-off their cars without even entering the office and return when servicing is done, doing away with unnecessary physical interaction.> Step 3 - Make cashless payments

The maintenance invoice is digitally sent to the customer who then makes an online payment.

Tan explained, “The 1-Click Payment system enables safe and fast online transactions by easily creating a payment link that is then shared with the customer via WhatsApp or other chat apps such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger and email. The customer makes the payment and settlement is made into Lim Tayar’s account two days after the transaction.”

“It was amazing that within one week, we were taking bookings online!” Clement said.

“Our customers are also making pre-payments before they even arrive at our workshops. This coupled with the fast settlement has made all the difference to our cash flow, ” he added.

The new booking site powered by KiplePay gives customers the flexibility and convenience of making appointments at their preferred outlet, anytime and from anywhere.

He said, “They don’t need to wait for office hours nor do they need to drop by personally ahead of their appointment.”

Apart from allowing customers to book their appointments and pay online, customers can also shop for spare parts and other maintenance products on Lim Tayar’s online store. Customers entering the site can choose from tyres to lubricants to brake pads and then pay using several methods including KiplePay’s cashless payment options such as online banking (FPX), credit and debit cards and of course, e-wallets.

Once payment is made, the system notifies the head office and arrangements are made for product delivery anywhere in Malaysia or customers can opt for self-pickup. For customers who also book a service session, their purchases are used during maintenance at one of the 20 workshops.

KiplePay is allowing Lim Tayar to keep track of all its online payments in real-time and the reports churned out further offer the company insights into customer purchasing patterns, which Lim Tayar is using to better manage its inventory and develop marketing programs to move overstock of supplies.

“We are seeing great benefits of using the information gathered for targeted communications on discounts and membership drives, which have resulted in increased business transactions, ” Clement said.Tan added, “The entire digitisation platform was designed to enable Lim Tayar to serve customers from anywhere in the country, faster and better. By transitioning most of their business processes online, the team at Lim Tayar can start focusing on strengthening their business.”Embracing change

Lim Tayar was already on the path of modernisation under the guidance of the Lim siblings, but this pandemic has accelerated the digitisation of the business.

“This is a push that we did not expect, but we are embracing it wholeheartedly as a chance to reimagine our business. For our employees, the new digital improvements mean simplified processes within the workplace that can lead to more business, as well as the motivation to learn new skills to enhance online customer interaction.

“Our customers, on the other hand, are seeing renewed vigour in a matured name and are quickly realising that Lim Tayar is more than just a traditional workshop, ” Clement said.

He added, “Our partnership with KiplePay has empowered us to be more confident of the path ahead for Lim Tayar in the immediate to medium term and while we are staying focused on riding out this crisis, we are prepared to forge ahead once we clear this pandemic hurdle.”Across industries, businesses big and small, are recognising the need for digitisation to stay ahead of the game and survive this economic crisis that is set to be a drawn-out affair. Both governments and corporations, from telecommunications to banks, are offering businesses grants and funding to transform their operations and brace themselves for further challenges ahead, as the world grapples with new ways of doing business.

To find out more about how businesses are transforming themselves,
visit www.digitalwarriors.greenpacket.com

Source: The Star

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