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Mazda Europe strengthens customer experience with Salesforce & Customer Link

On Sep­tem­ber 10, our net­work­ing event took place in Kon­tich, where we sat down with Michel Schacht from Maz­da Europe. Togeth­er with Katrien Ver­meiren (Hype­r­i­on), we talked about Maz­da’s evo­lu­tion, their focus on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, and the move from lega­cy sys­tems to a mod­ern CRM environment.

25 September 2025

Mazda Europe in a nutshell

Maz­da is a Japan­ese automak­er head­quar­tered in Hiroshi­ma. In Europe, oper­a­tions are coor­di­nat­ed from Lev­erkusen (Maz­da Motor Europe) and Wille­broek (Maz­da Logis­tics Europe). Maz­da Europe oper­ates in more than 20 coun­tries and com­bines sales, mar­ket­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice, finance, legal, and logis­tics.

Each year, Maz­da pro­duces more than 1.2 mil­lion cars world­wide. For Europe, the brand tar­gets around 200,000 new­ly sold vehi­cles per year, depend­ing on the eco­nom­ic cli­mate and avail­able mod­el range.

Beyond sales, logis­tics is also a crit­i­cal pil­lar. Maz­da imports vehi­cles from Japan, Thai­land, Mex­i­co, and the US through ports like Zee­brugge and Antwerp. The com­pa­ny also man­ages a large parts ware­house from Wille­broek, sup­ply­ing Euro­pean deal­ers daily.

Customer experience at the center

Maz­da rec­og­nizes that the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence goes far beyond the moment of pur­chase. Con­tact with deal­ers, main­te­nance fol­low-up, and how cus­tomer ser­vice han­dles ques­tions or com­plaints all form the basis of a last­ing cus­tomer relationship.

To strength­en that expe­ri­ence, Maz­da decid­ed a few years ago to replace their lega­cy CRM sys­tem (Siebel). As Michel puts it: ​“We were one of the last dinosaurs still run­ning on Siebel.”

After an exten­sive RFP process, Maz­da chose Sales­force. This plat­form brings togeth­er case man­age­ment, cus­tomer man­age­ment, and mar­ket­ing automa­tion, allow­ing deal­ers and nation­al sales orga­ni­za­tions to com­mu­ni­cate with cus­tomers faster and more consistently.

Why work with Hyperion/​Customer Link?

A trans­for­ma­tion project like this isn’t just about tech­nol­o­gy, it’s main­ly about peo­ple and cul­ture. Accord­ing to Michel, the decid­ing fac­tor was cul­tur­al fit:

  • Hype­r­i­on offers the nec­es­sary flex­i­bil­i­ty, in a sec­tor where process­es don’t always run rigidly.
  • The con­sul­tants bring tech­ni­cal and func­tion­al exper­tise that’s imme­di­ate­ly deploy­able, with­out long learn­ing curves.
  • Thanks to expe­ri­ence with­in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor, they under­stand the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges fac­ing deal­ers and nation­al organizations.

That com­bi­na­tion means Maz­da sees Hype­r­i­on not just as an imple­men­ta­tion part­ner, but as a spar­ring part­ner who thinks and grows along­side them.

Partnership in practice

What Michel empha­sized most dur­ing the inter­view was the way of work­ing together:

“It’s great working together in the sense that we can communicate very openly. If certain deliverables aren’t met, we discuss it. No arguments, always solution-focused.”

Michel Schacht CRM Domain Lead - Mazda Motor Europe

That open­ness and trans­paren­cy cre­ate a last­ing part­ner­ship in which both par­ties have room to course-correct.

Conclusion

The con­ver­sa­tion with Maz­da Europe con­firms how impor­tant it is, in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions, to focus not just on tools, but also on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, cul­ture, and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

At Hype­r­i­on, we’re proud to help car­ry Maz­da Europe’s trans­for­ma­tion forward.

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