Audi wanted to offer a customer service no other car maker has even thought of before. So they went to enormous length to launch the Audi Cam service across their UK dealerships. In a nutshell, this service gives the customer a chance to monitor the process of servicing their cars at the dealership via streaming video on mobile phones or PC. How Germanic is that.

Guess it would work in Germany where people like to watch their cars getting serviced. But this service in UK, where most people couldn’t even be bothered to have their cars serviced, sounds like a bit of an overkill. Especially as it’s very thorough. The package includes narrated film clips that are embedded in customer-specific PIN-protected web page that is emailed to the customers.

The webpage itself includes video and audio commentary, VAT-inclusive pricing for each job, personal technician and service team profiles and action buttons for automatic authorisation of work. It’s kinda like having a face-to-face conversation with the technician, but you don’t have to be at the dealership.

Paul Sansom, Head of Aftersales and Service for Audi UK, welcomed the advances made by this new initiative: “Audi is unquestionably an innovator where its cars are concerned, and I’m delighted that we’re now also making real headway in advancing the art of looking after those cars and their drivers. By effectively beaming the workshop to our customers’ homes or smartphones, Audi Cam greatly simplifies the service and repair process, and at the same time breaks down more of the barriers between the service bay and the customer that have traditionally fostered scepticism and suspicion. This is genuine progress through technology in the best tradition of Vorsprung durch Technik.”