A German automotive company unifies driver experiences with Okta-powered digital ID

This German automotive company is a brand synonymous with luxury. The company’s guiding principle — to be a brand for people who follow their dreams — is built into its ethos. Today, luxury is more than top-of-the-line vehicles or industry-leading performance; it includes drivers’ digital experiences and their connection to a larger ecosystem.

“Industry standards for Identity keep evolving and keeping up with those changes while focusing on new feature development is quite tough without the support of identity management specialists,” shares a product owner at the organisation. “Any updates tied up our feature development cycle, so we ended up having to prioritise Identity features over things that might create business value.”

For this company, providing a luxury driver experience means integrating digital interactions in a way that feels natural and unobtrusive. This requires unifying customer Identity across the ecosystem, and to do that, the organisation needed support from “a strong partner that manages Identity as its core business,” says the product owner. 

The team sought a partner that was compatible with its existing digital ecosystem and would allow it to implement a custom-branded, secure-by-design Identity solution.  

With support from technical partner, oparco, the organisation selected Okta Customer Identity Cloud (CIC) as the foundation for its customer Identity.

Creating a luxury customer experience for a luxury brand

The company consolidated Identity and its driver’s customer login experience with a digital ID, powered by Okta CIC. With a digital ID, both prospective buyers and existing owners can access a full range of portals, applications, and services — everything from an online vehicle configuration tool and merchandise to race stat tracking and heating their cars’ seats — with one login. 

The company was able to selectively migrate active users to the digital ID and leverage Lazy Migration to make the transition as quick and easy as possible. These drivers now have a consistent, omni-channel brand experience throughout the login process on any device through a fully customised login page designed with Universal Login. Additionally, drivers now can manage a single set of credentials thanks to Single Sign-On and device authorisation flow options.

Device authorisation flow for car logins allows drivers to use their phones to authenticate access to their vehicles via a QR code instead of typing usernames and passwords into the car’s console letter-by-letter. “Manually typing in credentials isn’t user-friendly. We found that 53% of drivers entered a password incorrectly when logging into their vehicle for the first time. That experience can be extremely frustrating, and it's our job to ensure drivers can enjoy their new vehicle as quickly as possible,” says the product owner. With the device authorisation flow, that number has decreased by more than 20%, significantly decreasing the number of support tickets submitted to call centres.

Email-based passwordless authentication also provides a seamless and quick login experience. Despite quietly deploying the option, more users are opting in every day. “We activated the one-time password option because it was easy to turn on, and we continue to see a lot of traction without any additional training,” Bischoff adds. “Users simply want to use it.”

With one Identity for each driver, the company is consolidating driver information and multiple Identities across their ecosystem of apps into a single place. This means, the team can better understand its driver’s unique interests and lay the foundation to offer more personalised journeys in the future. When a driver is tied to a single Identity, it also enables the organisation to provide more consistent driver experiences across the physical and digital landscape - at every touchpoint. This wouldn’t be possible without a digital ID, and the digital ID wouldn’t be possible without Okta.”

With Okta, the company can easily offer drivers different sign-up and sign-in options to suit local preferences and boost adoption in different markets. With this customisation, it can quickly meet new customers where they are, regardless of their preferences. For example, new drivers in Asia, where email is not prevalent, can sign in using their phone number. With Okta’s support, the team cut the development effort in half.

In addition to new features, the company also trusts Okta to maintain Identity and support a more stable infrastructure. This improved stability ensures customers always have access to their accounts when needed. “We don’t have to worry about availability anymore,” says the product owner. "Since we went live with Okta, we’ve had zero outages.”

Trusting Okta to support a secure customer journey 

As a luxury company, they have a high standard for security, and it trusts Okta to handle security and develop tools at the forefront of security standards. “Having a partner we can trust with Identity means everything is secure and up to industry standards out of the box,” the product owner explains. Now, it no longer has to manage its security policies or enforce access controls. 

“Our brand name is popular, not just among enthusiasts but also for cybercriminals, so we have to do what we can to protect our customers,” says the product owner. With that extra attention, the team takes additional precautions to protect its customers and their data. One way the company is securing its customer accounts is by using Bot Detection with Okta AI. “With Bot Detection and its artificial intelligence we can filter out white noise, clearly see when bad actors try to gain access to user information in our system, and respond to threats quickly.”

Additionally, the company uses a single-tenant, private cloud deployment of Okta CIC to retain more control over a more secure cloud environment. Overall, security improvements through Okta CIC have helped to reduce vulnerabilities.

Putting the pedal to the metal with a future-proof Identity partnership 

While the organisation looks to the future of Identity, it’s leveraged Okta CIC to reduce its time to market for new features. “By cooperating with Okta, we’ve managed to significantly reduce our maintenance effort due to standardisation,” the product owner says.

Operations and development have continued to improve, in part, because of the active, ongoing relationship between the Okta and the in-house team. “Our Okta Technical Account Manager knows our products and helps inform our Identity strategy. Because they understand digital ID, they provide crucial expertise and share best practices that address our needs. They ensure we're pushing boundaries and have become an indispensable part of our team.” Currently, these needs include exploring right-to-left language options to expand into Arabic markets and exploring new features like Passkeys and Push authorisation Requests to further customise the driver experience and better protect its users’ identities.