Cazoo, the UK’s leading online car retailer makes buying or selling a car as simple and seamless as ordering any other product online.
Cazoo then delivers the car directly to their door, or the customer can pick it up directly from one of Cazoo’s many Customer Centres. Cazoo owns and fully reconditions all its cars before offering them on its website for either delivery or collection in as little as 72 hours and has thousands of cars available at any time. It’s a customer-first experience built around a simple premise: why can’t ordering a car be as simple and seamless as any other purchase you make online?
With a growing number of high profile sports sponsorships, brand awareness is growing fast. Cazoo customers expect a premium retail experience.
Cazoo launched its first Customer Centre in 2020 and currently has 19 dotted around the UK. Each one provides Cazoo customers with the option to collect cars they purchase or drop off cars they sell online in addition to its home delivery and pick up service.
The challenge was to create an environment where sound would enhance the ambiance of every Customer Centre, with uniform controllability and compliance with the legal requirements of the PRS music licence. Oh, it also had to sound great too!
The Solution
With a number of Cazoo Customer Centres to kit out, a robust, versatile audio solution was essential. London-based integrator Nucleus AV turned to Bluesound Professional for a scalable audio solution that ticked every box.
The installation team worked closely with Cazoo to create a bespoke system that was both practical (in some locations, Nucleus AV would be retrofitting existing loudspeakers and amplifiers) and future-proof.
Not only did Bluesound Professional offer both Cazoo and Nucleus AV the fully integrated solution they were looking for, it also ensured straightforward installation and post-installation support.
A Bluesound Professional network music ecosystem can be operated remotely via a VPN. It’s not prone to local variations in source or tone; it’s also safe from well-meaning employees who might select their own playlists.
While consumer music streaming services are freely available, they aren’t free to use in a commercial environment – like a Customer Centre. PRS for Music, founded in the thirties to provide musicians with appropriate royalties, has the power to fine companies which flout copyright rules.
As it happens, there are four commercial streaming services built natively into BluOS that comply with all PRS requirements. Music to any commercial installer’s ears.
Technology
Nucleus AV, working with Bluesound Professional sub-distributor OneAV, outfitted each Cazoo Customer Centre with a single Bluesound Professional B400S 4-zone network music player. This robust commercial grade network player, designed for rack-mounting, has native commercial music service support built-in, allowing all content curation and provision to be handled from the cloud.
SoundMachine, one of the quartet of music streaming services on the BluOS platform, was selected for the job.
A single B400S can send the same content to four zones, or be configured as four independent players. For this project, only a single zone was used, but the company was keen to future proof its system.
“Cazoo wanted players that were built for a commercial environment, and would fit with future expansion plans,” says Bluesound Professional Product Manager, Graeme Harrison.
They liked SoundMachine because it not only provides streams of commercially licensed content, but offers messaging capabilities with advanced scheduling, he adds.
“The B400S also offers the freedom to select a different commercial streaming service if that’s ever required. Users can simply log out of one and log on to another.”
“It was always Cazoo’s intention to control all of their branches from head office, meaning branches had no system control. They figured they’d have to write specific software, but we were able to help them with a utility that allows them to control devices across subnets,” explains Harrison.
“No need for proprietary software development was another huge plus for them.”
But while the original plan was to manage the network from a central location, sporadic network issues led the Nucleus team to trial a CP100 wall mount control at one location. With illuminated touch sensitive controls and intuitive interface, employees on the ground could alter overall volume and quickly reconnect to the SoundMachine stream if a connection was lost.
During the festive season, the CP-100 also gave staff the ability to select a Christmas-themed stream, perfect for the customer ambiance Cazoo was trying to create.
Cazoo liked the additional functionality so much, it quickly rolled-out CP100 wall mount control to all locations.
Conclusion
Next-gen car retailer Cazoo needed a versatile audio solution that would enable its growing portfolio of Customer Centres to offer consumers a relaxing, enjoyable environment in which to buy vehicles, without falling foul of PRS regulations or adding the burden of undue complexity on staff.
Bluesound Professional was uniquely placed to deliver this with its B400S commercial music player featuring the integrated SoundMachine streaming service. Not only could the B400S be monitored remotely, it offered scope for future system expansion, and with the addition of CP100 touch screens (which required only an RJ45 connection with POE), the welcome bonus of local control that satisfied Cazoo staff and management needs.
Links
Website: https://bluesoundprofessional.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bluesoundpro/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluesoundpro/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bluesoundpro/
Case Study: https://www.bluesoundprofessional.com/cazoo-case-study/
About Bluesound Professional
Bluesound Professional is a fusion of hardware and software that is purpose-built for high performance networked audio for retail shops, bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms, and other commercial applications. End users can connect and control nearly any audio source, including streaming services, internet radio, or networked hard drives, while installers can confidently specify rack-mounted hardware that integrates seamlessly with smart controllers. Powered by BluOS, an award-winning multi-zone audio management software platform, made native in a comprehensive range of controllers, streamers, amplifiers, and speakers, Bluesound Professional makes commercial audio installation projects easy to configure, deliver, and use. Bluesound Professional is a division of Lenbrook International, renowned manufacturers of premium audio technologies for residential and commercial applications.
