How Automobile Club Italia improved vehicle compliance and customer satisfaction

The Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI) is the federation of the Automobile Clubs and it is a non-profit public organization that, by law, represents and protects the general interests of Italian motoring across the national territory. ACI offers the service to the motorist citizen and to the agencies of authorized motor practices with integrated management for legal events typical of the life of vehicles (cars, motorcycles, trucks), such as registrations, properties, certifications, radiation, administrative stops, etc.

From its headquarters in Rome, the ACI manages 106 locations and operates the national automotive registry throughout the country.

ACI’s challenge was to create a multichannel experience regardless of the how citizens approach ACI, whether in person or over the Internet – from home or through the various touch points. The club sought to create what it calls a “complete and enveloping experience” that assists citizens in all aspects of their contact with ACI, without any friction. This way ACI can reduce individual and social costs, such as consumption of time and pollution, and can guarantee greater accessibility.

This multichannel experience allows the citizen to be served regardless of whether it is at a walk-up counter, from home, via a smartphone, a mobile app,
or some other method. Free guest WiFi is one of the pieces of this puzzle that includes also:

• Improved web services, such as “AvvisACI” enabling citizens to get real-time notifications on all legal-administrative operations related to their vehicle;
• The “ACI Space” mobile app enabling citizens to receive technical, legal and tax information on vehicles, request roadside assistance, locate and pay for parking, and other services
• The “Qurami” mobile app enabling citizens to book the turn while in the queue
• A fully digitized process of purchasing or selling a vehicle, reducing lines and improving accuracy and citizen satisfaction.

With free WiFi at ACI locations, citizens can continue the digital experience started at home. They can use free WiFi for viewing/managing the native digital documentation, reading ACI’s magazine or just surfing online for information or entertainment.

ACI had to design and deploy the WiFi network from scratch to set the foundation for the multichannel project. Fortinet and Huawei provided WiFi access points and other hardware, after official calls for tenders. Regarding the guest WiFi solution, ACI was looking for a solution capable of providing not just Internet connectivity, but a satisfying digital citizen experience.

They needed a solution capable of offering location services over WiFi to provide citizens with a helpful and straightforward experience when getting in touch with ACI. They wanted something flexible enough to create splash pages branded for each location – to match the “local” look and feel – and to differentiate services offered in each location.

They also wanted an easy “hardware independent” solution that could work seamlessly with both Fortinet and Huawei networks. Finally, they needed a solution compliant with lean IT principles, that would be easy to manage and monitor in the cloud, as well as easy to use.

That’s when they discovered Cloud4Wi’s product suite.

What attracted ACI to Cloud4Wi’s product suite is its high value-added, which included the ability to localize the look and features offered at each ACI location, while still giving citizens a robust ACI-branded experience. With the innovative “marketplace” feature, ACI would be able to build an interactive environment around citizens, customized by location.

Cloud4Wi’s product suite also provided simplified management of guest WiFi services that perfectly fit the lean IT approach adopted by ACI.

A big deciding factor in Cloud4Wi’s favor was the company’s flexibility and speed of action – typical characteristics of a start-up that, combined with ACI’s experience and stability, are the perfect mix for the innovation. An additional reason that led ACI to choose Cloud4Wi was the considerable availability of the company staff to train the ACI team dedicated to the project.

ACI chose Cloud4Wi to build a complete and enveloping citizen experience. That has been accomplished, Cloud4Wi makes it easy for citizens to interact with ACI. We now provide a greater range of digital services and citizen satisfaction has significantly improved.

Vincenzo Pensa, Director, IT and Innovation at ACI

ACI selected Cloud4Wi’s product suite based on successful trials during early 2016 at locations in Milan and Venice. “Given the excellent results” ACI then launched an installation plan for 113 locations: the 32 largest ACI locations were installed in 2016, 50 more were installed in 2017.

In total, 113 access points were installed to offer WiFi coverage in the public areas to increase citizens’ satisfaction, by offering digital services (such as viewing/managing the digital native documentation), entertainment services (such as reading ACI magazines, regulations on practices, links to thematic websites, etc.) and other informative services.

The Cloud4Wi suite of products has allowed ACI to create a custom splash page for each location – in line with company’s branding — where the citizen comes into contact with the “ACI World” in an integrated navigation experience between splash pages, web services and mobile apps.

The product suite has also offered ACI the possibility to combine multiple login options, such as click through and social login, to collect citizens’ personal information in compliance with local regulations (GDPR), and give citizens the freedom to choose the login method they prefer.

The “marketplace” feature has enabled ACI to digitize the citizen experience by providing citizens with custom value-added services at location level, whilst connecting guest WiFi with web services and mobile apps at national level.

Finally, ACI has been able to collect depth insights into citizens and how they use WiFi across all the locations, including how often citizens are getting connected and how much upload and download traffic is being used. Empowered with this information, ACI has been able to better define the citizen experience with a never-ending interactive approach.

ACI has in plan to offer guest WiFi also in the Automobile Club Provinciale and related network of subsidiaries. This will give also the possibility to leverage the marketing capabilities offered by Cloud4Wi’s product suite, such as location-based marketing.