They could have sent out a press release saying that they've got a great aftersales service program. But Audi went one better and invited us to experience it for ourselves.

Photos: Audi Singapore

So you're an Audi owner. Or maybe you'd like to imagine yourself as one. Well, Audi has decided you're worth planning out a thorough and premium service experience for.

From ensuring a short booking lead time to housing state-of-the-art facilities, Audi is aiming to keep up with their fast growing population of Audi cars in Singapore. We got to 'test-drive' the service program first-hand when Audi 'delivered' an A7 to our doorstep, and told us to head to the new Audi Centre to get a feel of what their owners would encounter in a typical service experience.

"Designed to delight customers at every touchpoint", a personalized greeting flashes as we enter the car park to the service bay. We're told that you can book a service appointment in as short as one week in advance. They'll even send you an SMS reminder a day before.

No need to hunt for a parking lot or wonder where to go, the Basement 2 car park is dedicated to receive you. Just pull up at the service reception bay and a service advisor will attend to you promptly. He will then run through the areas that your car will be worked on for the day, and proceed to give you a cost estimate.

Good news if you own an A8, an S, an RS or an R model, because you get a dedicated service advisor who will give you the exclusive attention. This is a great initiative not just because the aforementioned models belong to rich owners, but more so because the cars deserve to be managed by someone who understands the nuances of these top of the line models.

So you've handed the keys over. What next? Well, you can be a real anal busybody and ask the service advisor to show you around and explain in detail how they diagnose your car. Which, as you can see from the photos, I readily did. It's really a straightforward task actually. Just plug it in and the program will run through the whole car, alerting the operator if anything is amiss. It can also check specific parts of the car, if you had happened to bring it in for a faulty component.

If you insist, the Audi service advisor will also allow you to watch your car being worked on. I reckon that would be a rather abnormal request, so as a normal person, I decided to enjoy the showroom facilities instead.

So I head up to Basement 1, where the Premium Customer Service Lounge is located. The fully equipped bar here serves up a pretty mean cuppa, along with a range of yummy pastries. While waiting, you can read, surf the Internet, or shop! Yup, a range of Audi Genuine Accessories® are on display to tempt you to dress up your Audi. Or you can pick up a last minute birthday gift from their range of lifestyle products in the Audi collection - ok, I'm stretching that one a little bit, but hey, you never know.

This is all an option if your service is going to be a quick one (under 2 hours perhaps?). If it's going to take longer, or if time is money to you (and it will likely be if you drive an Audi), then you have the option of taking a cab to wherever you need to go, with compliments from Audi of course.

All in all, it was a pretty smooth and relaxing experience. With 10 service bays here, the facility within the Audi Centre complements the main Audi Customer Service venue at Ubi. These two locations serve the 12,000 Audi customers in Singapore, that's 10,000 more than the 2,000 cars that were from a decade ago. Judging by the experience I had, I think Audi looks set to keep their customers happy. I did wish that I got to drive 'my car' home though.