Automotive Experience the Future of Retail with Tesla's Innovative Kiosk System

Tesla is a listed US car manufacturer that apart from electric cars also produces battery storage and photovoltaic systems. Across Germany, the company operates nearly 30 Tesla Stores. The Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg was completed in 2020 and is Tesla's first production site in Europe.

eCube, a German expert in digital commerce, helped Tesla Germany extend their Digital Kiosk System with info terminals by implementing Storyblok, a headless Content Management System (CMS), for the efficient maintenance and presentation of vehicle information as well as gaining customer data via a form. The project also included integrating their existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for automating data collection.

Main Achievements:

• Increased customer service focus: Staff now saves time on manually entering data into their CRM system and can entirely focus on customer service.

• Automated customer collection data: Stores now enjoy a significant increase in the conversion of user data, a process that used to be completed manually.

With the help of Storyblok, Tesla Germany now enjoys:

• Easy maintenance and publishing of vehicle data and questionnaires via the Visual Editor.

• Individual data models to facilitate structured entry and maintenance of vehicle information.

• UX-optimized form design for entering prospect data.

• Decoupling from the frontend, with the headless approach, for flexible publishing of content on any device.

How it all started

In its stores, Tesla uses interactive touch screens to improve the information service provided by vehicles and to support customer advisory through self-service terminals. The digital kiosk system enables prospective buyers to autonomously explore the product world and enter their contact details, for example, to book test drives. Tesla Germany needed to overcome the technical challenge of making it easier and more efficient for Tesla employees to maintain vehicle information in the system, gather customer data in the CRM system, and also set up info screens in new stores or at trade shows. This is where eCube, a team of software developers, consultants, and e-commerce architects, stepped in to help Tesla Germany overcome that challenge.

The solution

eCube created and installed a new software architecture based on the structural principle of headless commerce that decouples the backend and frontend, allowing functionalities and content of the kiosk system to be adapted and expanded without affecting the backend systems with every intervention. The backend is organized in a modular way so that new components, such as Storyblok's headless CMS, and existing third-party systems, such as the CRM, can be connected efficiently and reliably via standard interfaces (API) or services. Hardware-oriented system programming ensures seamless interaction between touch screens and software.

The result

Tesla Germany today operates a kiosk system with hardware and software built from the same mold. The modular software architecture offers the highest possible flexibility for customizing and expanding the system.

Storyblok's headless CMS enables easy and efficient maintenance of product data in the kiosk system. Contact data submitted by prospective buyers on the touch screen ("leads") are automatically transferred to the central CRM, where they are available to Tesla sales teams throughout Germany for rapid processing. An integrated reporting dashboard provides comprehensive insights in real time.

From start to finish, the project lasted 6-9 months. It took about 2 weeks to connect the info terminal web app and the admin dashboard of Storyblok: defining the model, importing assets, introducing data sources, adding content, etc.

Working with headless architecture and Storyblok

The headless system architecture is designed to integrate devices flexibly and reliably, regardless of manufacturer and operating system. This is particularly beneficial when, for example, new screens are to be set up in stores or at trade fairs with as little effort and technical expertise as possible.

The team at eCube enjoyed the straightforward API, the simplicity of the JS client, and the flexibility of structuring their content with Storyblok. Being able to define their own components freely was very important as they needed to manage also form fields and select values in Storyblok. The image service Storyblok provides, helps the team heavily in resizing the product pictures on the fly and fitting them for the respective device.