One way of dealing at arm’s length during COVID isolation periods is contactless trading and, in the service industry, a Scandinavian product has become increasingly important in Europe – and now in Australia.

Sharebox is a Norwegian business that supplies lock boxes for vehicle keys for use mainly for dealerships and workshops. It isolates the customer from the repair team and customer service team, and thanks to digital technology, also separates the invoicing and payment tasks.

The box is located on the outside of the building however Sharebox also supplies indoor units that also separate customers from the workshop team and service advisory staff.

The ease of the system and its 24-hour operation also means it can reduce queues and bottlenecks in the service advisor area. 

The company claims that statistics gathered in Scandinavia in February 2020 – before COVID – showed seven per cent of cars were dropped off using Sharebox and 58 per cent used it to pick up their vehicle.

“Today, 60-70 per cent [of customers] deliver their cars for service with self-service check-in using Sharebox,” a spokesman told GoAutoNews Premium from Norway.

“Sharebox forecasts that 80-90 per cent of check-ins will be digital next year using indoor and outdoor self-service solutions.”

It said that better planning resulted in less employee overtime and faster repair times. The company claims that research from one dealership (Norwegian BMW and MINI dealership Bavaria Oslo) in February 2020 showed an Euro81,000 ($A126,000) saving over a year.

Sharebox takes the manual operation of visiting a dealer or independent workshop and transforms it into a self-service, 24-hour operation allowing customers to deliver or pick up their cars outside of normal business hours.

Sharebox entered Australia in August and is headquartered in Perth. It plans to roll out nationally plus New Zealand and in the Asia-Pacific region.

The country manager for Australia and regional manager for Asia-Pacific, Dan Jorgensen, told GoAutoNews Premium that Sharebox is available throughout Europe and is used by the Volkswagen Group in Germany for all its brands including Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and Skoda.

“We also have other dealerships in Scandinavia including Toyota, BMW, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz and we are in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy,” he said.

He said the company was in talks with some OEM distributors and believed that it could be first used in Australia by Audi.

Europcar Australia is installing and rolling out Sharebox to some of their largest locations. Other car rental companies that use Sharebox are, Avis, Budget, Sixt as well as other Scandinavian car rental companies.

Mr Jorgnsen said that users of Sharebox can avail themselves of new revenue opportunities in a changing their after-sales environment.

He said Sharebox can be fully integrated with their OEM’s DMS. He said that some users in Europe are moving to have Sharebox fully integrated with their DMS systems and believed that could quickly become available in Australia and New Zealand. Sharebox has a REST API that third-party providers can integrate with.

The concept is simple: Sharebox is a burglar-proof security box secured to the ground or dealership wall. Customers book their car for a service and use an app to gain access to the security box, placing the car key in the box.

The app also allows the customer to receive an invoice for the service work, and through most payment providers including OpenPay and PayPal, pay for the service and access the car key when the work is complete.

Mr Jorgensen said the list of compatible financiers and banks was growing.

In lockdown or restricted access situations such as the pandemic, the system means there is no physical contact between the customer and the service personnel.

Sharebox has ISO certification in Europe. The box is made in Denmark.

By Neil Dowling