How Automobile Club Italia improved vehicle compliance and customer satisfaction

The Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI) is the federation of the Automobile Clubs and it is a non-profit public organization that, by law, represents and protects the general interests of Italian motoring across the national territory. ACI offers the service to the motorist citizen and to the agencies of authorized motor practices with integrated management for legal events typical of the life of vehicles (cars, motorcycles, trucks), such as registrations, properties, certifications, radiation, administrative stops, etc.

From its headquarters in Rome, ACI manages its network of locations and operates the national automotive registry throughout the country.

ACI’s challenge was to create a multichannel experience regardless of how citizens approach it — in person or online, from home or through various touchpoints. The organization set out to create what it calls a “complete and enveloping experience” that assists citizens across every aspect of their contact with ACI, without friction — reducing individual and social costs (time, pollution) and improving accessibility.

Free guest WiFi is one piece of this puzzle, which also includes:

• “AvvisACI” web services — real-time notifications on all legal-administrative operations related to a citizen’s vehicle;
• The “ACI Space” mobile app — technical, legal, and tax information on vehicles, roadside assistance, parking location and payment, and more;
• The “Qurami” app — letting citizens hold their place in the queue remotely;
• A fully digitized vehicle purchase/sale process — reducing lines and improving accuracy and satisfaction.

With free WiFi at ACI locations, citizens can continue the digital experience they started at home — viewing and managing native digital documents, reading ACI’s magazine, or simply browsing.

ACI designed and deployed the WiFi network from scratch to set the foundation for the multichannel project. Following official tenders, Fortinet and Huawei provided the access points and other hardware. For the guest WiFi layer, ACI wanted more than connectivity — a satisfying digital citizen experience.

It needed location services over WiFi, the flexibility to create captive portals branded per location (matching each local look and feel and differentiating services), and a truly hardware-independent solution that worked seamlessly across both Fortinet and Huawei networks — all aligned with lean-IT principles and easy to manage in the cloud.

That’s when ACI chose Cloud4Wi. What stood out was the ability to localize the look and services at each ACI location while keeping a robust, ACI-branded experience. Cloud4Wi also simplified guest-WiFi management to fit ACI’s lean-IT approach, and the team’s flexibility, speed, and hands-on training of ACI’s staff were decisive factors.

“ACI chose Cloud4Wi to build a complete and enveloping citizen experience. That has been accomplished — Cloud4Wi makes it easy for citizens to interact with ACI. We now provide a greater range of digital services, and citizen satisfaction has significantly improved.”
— Vincenzo Pensa, Director, IT and Innovation, ACI

ACI selected Cloud4Wi after successful early-2016 trials in Milan and Venice. Given the excellent results, it launched an installation plan across its locations — the largest sites first in 2016, with more added in 2017.

In total, 113 access points were installed to provide WiFi coverage in public areas, offering digital services (viewing/managing native digital documents), entertainment (ACI magazines, regulations, thematic links), and other information services.

Cloud4Wi let ACI create a custom captive portal for each location — in line with ACI branding — where citizens enter the “ACI World” in an integrated experience across portals, web services, and mobile apps. It also supported multiple login options (click-through and social), collecting citizens’ information in compliance with local regulations (GDPR) while letting citizens choose their preferred method.

Finally, ACI gained in-depth insight into how citizens use WiFi across all locations — connection frequency and upload/download traffic — helping it continually refine the citizen experience.

ACI plans to extend guest WiFi to the Automobile Club Provinciale and its network of subsidiaries — which will also let it leverage Cloud4Wi’s marketing capabilities, such as location-based marketing.