Following years of gradual homogenization across markets and countries, it was starting to appear that a one-size-fits-all approach was a distinct possibility. However, the global automotive industry is quickly breaking back into a collection of distinct and distinctly different geographical regions.

Whether driven by regulatory changes, economic issues, geopolitical developments or a blend of all three, the result is the same. Automakers need to be able to adapt both what they are selling and the way they are selling it to reflect distinct customer needs and their CX expectations.

Over the course of 2024, the industry witnessed firsthand how a combination of economic and geopolitical uncertainty allied to existing regulatory challenges culminated in a substantial fall in sales across continental Europe, plus a wider concern that growth will not rebound over the course of 2025.

Even so, and notwithstanding the long lead in and development times required for new product launches, if OEMs were better equipped to capture and operationalize customer insights, the financial blow could have been mitigated to some extent through targeted campaigns, promotions or positioning.

Going forward, it’s abundantly clear that future success will hinge on delivering automotive products and services carefully calibrated to market and country-specific customer personas. And once again, the strength of any future strategy will be dictated by data rather than the industry’s ability to influence the direction or speed of regulatory reform.

For instance, as the European Union and North America continue moving towards automotive maturity and saturation, OEMs know that the best way of maintaining their presence and preserving market share is through pivoting to digital services and recurring revenue streams that offset the inevitable drop-off in new vehicle sales.

But success will hinge on the ability to identify and build out services that genuinely add value to the ownership experience and to back those services with comprehensive customer support and issue resolution capabilities when subscribers reach out.

And shortcomings in these capabilities were recently highlighted when attempts by OEMs to charge subscriptions for features such as heated seats or continued in-car access to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto resulted in a wave of negative publicity, bad social media buzz and an eventual U-turn.

Just as with addressing existing CX issues, OEMs need to prioritize partnerships as much as data collection and analysis to avoid making the same mistakes again. The most impactful subscription services are just as likely to be those of a third party as anything developed in-house. Now is the time to start building out existing ecosystems and putting in place data and even revenue-sharing agreements to facilitate this change of strategic direction. The same is true of any approach to customer support. An end-to-end CX delivery provider will be much more capable of devising, deploying and optimizing the necessary customer support services and requisite digital infrastructure than any OEM.