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,” the product owner adds. “Users simply want to use it.”

With one Identit