The New Commercial Director of Volvo Car Caucasus about the Swedish Standard of Customer Service

Rusudan Grdzelidze is the Commercial Director of Volvo Car Caucasus. Grdzelidze has so far held the position for only a few months, but she has been an integral part of Tegeta Holding, the parent company housing Volvo Car Caucasus since 2019. Volvo Car Caucasus operates in four countries, therefore, Rusudan’s work extends beyond Georgia and covers the scale of the entire Caucasus region. At the moment, Rusudan and her team are trying to manage Volvo Car Caucasus according to the established high standards of Swedish luxury vehicle manufacturers.

Rusudan Grdzelidze spoke to Diplomat about her career growth and the company’s recent successes:

Take us through your career journey before taking the position of Volvo’s Commercial Director?

I graduated from a university in France in 2018. Upon returning to Georgia, I started working in the marketing section of Tegeta Holding. I had extraordinary mentors, I was fully involved in the activities of various brands included in the holding, I was in communication with international partners, and we planned several campaigns together. In 2020, I received an offer to move to the position of Marketing Manager at Tegeta Holding’s subsidiary, Volvo Car Caucasus, which covers four countries: Georgia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia. This year, I became the Commercial Director of the company.

The auto industry in general and especially in our region is perceived as a male field, what is your daily life like in this field and what challenges (if any) do you face in breaking stereotypes?

Unfortunately, we still haven’t overcome the stereotypes yet, although I think the situation has improved dramatically, as I’m learning more about the success of women. We have many examples of this in Tegeta as well. I am very lucky. I always felt supported by my direct supervisors, who were men. If we add this support to hard work, the result is a success that makes me very proud. Volvo’s Swedish office also strives for gender equality and aims to have 35% women in the company by 2030.

What does it mean to be a female leader for you?

To be honest, I don’t pay much attention to it. Being a woman has neither been a problem nor an advantage for me. It is very important to have interest and the right attitude towards work. I love communication and these skills help me in my daily work.

I want to know exactly how each project will go, what purpose it serves and I want to understand our goals. Proper time management is very important to me, I try not to postpone tasks and meet deadlines for all projects.

What is responsible for Volvo’s success story in Georgia and the region, and what defines the sales dynamics?

We have been on the Georgian market since 2019. We started with two auto centers in Georgia and Azerbaijan, then gradually added Armenia and Uzbekistan. Our sales increased by 50% last year, and we will definitely close this year with a big increase. We place special hope on our new partner in Azerbaijan, because Azerbaijan is one of the most promising markets for us, as it has the largest share of the premium segment. Volvo Cars always takes care of the customer. We think we will be able to do this even more successfully with two new showrooms of Swedish standards, which are being built in Baku and Tbilisi. About 4 million Euros have been invested in each of them. In the third quarter, we will host customers at the new address. We are sure that with the latest showrooms we will achieve even greater success and introduce new exciting standards into our customer journey.

What is the advantage of Volvo cars? What type of customer profile fits a Volvo car? And how would you rate the popularity of Volvo cars in our region? Which model is the most in demand?

The main priority of Volvo Cars is the safety of people. Of course, this is the first association that people have about our cars. It is a well-known fact that the three-point safety belt was invented by a Volvo engineer. He gave his patent to the world for free, thus saving up to a million lives. Volvo’s ambition is to promote better care and protect people. We hope to keep more people safe with the modern technologies that are installed in Volvo cars.

For example: the new lidar technology will be able to detect an object within a radius of 250 meters at any time of the day or night. Artificial Intelligence installed in cars will not only detect all objects moving on the road, but also calculate their next steps. Conventionally, if a person drops a ball on the road and the car notices this, it will understand that the child may be following the ball and will automatically brake or avoid the ball when it sees it. According to studies, this technology will reduce the risk of accidents by 20% and it will help us to achieve the goal of saving millions of lives.

Regarding the sales question, the most popular model in our region is the XC90, which is a family SUV with 7 seats. Next is the mid-size crossover XC60 and the third place is the compact city SUV XC40, which is very popular among young people. The advantages of our cars are comfort, premium quality and high-level safety technologies. In addition, Volvo cars are equipped with Android system that hosts Google applications, which means that they have mobile phone functionality on the car screen, which can be controlled via the voice assistant (hands-free).

Volvo Car Caucasus is constantly distinguished by novelties. Which project are you most proud of and what news should we expect from your company?

To start with, the latest news is that we became winners of the Volvo Cars EMEA Excellence Club. This is a competition between Volvo imported companies. Evaluation criteria are centered around exceeding sales plans, growth of market share in the region, diversity of service and most importantly, customer feedback. Also noteworthy are the ghost customer results and the quality assurance of the test drives, which we performed with very high scores in all four countries. It should also be noted that in 2022 we fulfilled the brand standards at 100%, this means more than 100 points, both in sales and service.

This award is a great recognition of our team’s efforts. Georgia shined on Volvo’s global map. I think this recognition yield very good results and will give us a greater opportunity for development in the region.

In addition to this victory, we already know that the 2023 Volvo Cars Global Conference will be held in Georgia, and we will be the host country. This is certainly gives us some excitement but it also comes with some responsibility. We will be able to host Volvo Cars EMEA importers, show our country and the infrastructure we are creating. Such events are beneficial not only for one specific company, but also important for the state.

I would also highlight our online store, the pilot version of which we launched in Georgia in 2021, and then introduced it to other markets as well. The customer can view the desired car in 360 degrees on our sites. After receiving the specifications of the car and all the information, he can pay directly by card and buy the model he wants.

We are also involved in various social projects. Last year, we cooperated with the United Nations and celebrated the road safety week. We also collaborated with National Geographic on environmental issues, which reinforces Volvo’s ambition to be the most sustainable automotive brand. Today, all of our electric vehicles use recycled materials. Volvo Cars has also created Nordico, a sustainable premium quality textile made from recycled plastic bottles and glass bottle caps. This material will be used in the interior of new electric cars. All our factories worldwide run on recycled energy, with a large amount of recycled spare parts.

To support the global ambition to make new car production fully electric by 2030, we are looking to increase the share of plug-in hybrids and we will offer customers the fully electrified XC40 and C40 models across the region by the end of 2023. At the same time, Tegeta Holding is trying to promote electrification. About 50 charging points for electric cars have been created throughout the country, and there are plans to expand the network in the future.

Last year was outstanding for Volvo Car Caucasus. As we already mentioned, we had a 50% increase. This is a great incentive for me as the new Commercial Director to further strengthen our team with my new position. The company’s plans are quite ambitious, as there are many important projects ahead, and this gives me more energy to continue on the path of introducing Volvo to the Caucasus market.