FastCompany's October edition has a great article about how MINIUSA.com has bridged the gap from customer service and sales. Here's an excerpt:

High-Tech Achiever: Mini USA
Mini USA uses Web technology to achieve one of the toughest feats in
customer service: It makes waiting fun.

Before Angela DiFabio bought her Mini Cooper last September, she'd been
dreaming about it for a year. The Philadelphia-based Accenture
consultant spent untold hours on the company's Web site, playing with
dozens of possibilities before coming up with the perfect combination: A
chili-pepper-red exterior, white racing stripes on the hood, and a
“custom rally badge bar” on the grill.

When DiFabio placed her order with her dealer, the same build-your-own
tool — and all the price and product details it provided — left her
feeling like she was getting a fair deal. “He even used the site to
order my car,” she says. “That made me feel like I was getting the same
information that he was, that I wasn't missing something.”

While she waited for her Mini to arrive, DiFabio logged on to Mini's Web
site every day, this time using its “Where's My Baby?” tracking tool to
follow her car, like an expensive FedEx package, from the factory in
Britain to its delivery. “I think most places you go to for a car, if
you order one it's just a big black hole,” says DiFabio. “To be able to
check the process made the wait exciting. It definitely gave me a
feeling of control in the process.”

Being in control. Not missing anything. Making the wait, if there must
be one, exciting. It's how every customer wants the service experience
to be. And it's what Mini USA — whose customers must usually wait two
to three months for their cars — is using technology to do. The Web
site does more than just provide information or sell products or
services. It keeps customers engaged, and when they're more engaged,
they're usually happier, too. “Our ultimate goal was to make waiting
fun,” says Kerri Martin, Mini USA's marketing manager.

It's not that Mini's technology is groundbreaking. Rather, it makes an
impact on the customer experience because of how it's integrated with
the brand: It's fun, it's individual, it makes users feel like part of
the clan. Many car Web sites have build-your-own tools, but few are as
customizable as Mini's, where the choices are endless and the onscreen
car image changes to your specifications. The tracking service, which is
fairly unusual, acknowledges and soothes customers' anxiety and
impatience — and perhaps stretches the nervous-parent metaphor a bit.
In the “scheduled for production” phase, for example, the tracking tool
assures them that their Mini “will begin to move through the 'birth
canal' at our Oxford plant. . . . Rest well knowing that your baby is in
the best of hands.”

The challenge for Mini is meeting the high expectations of such eager
customers. Critics note that some dealerships aren't as integrated with
their Web site as they should be. And when expectant Mini owners, who it
turns out are a pretty fretful bunch, found a way to track their cars
through independent shipping companies, some customers were upset that
Mini's tool wasn't updated as quickly as the information they were
finding on their own. To try to adjust these customers' expectations,
Mini added an online video that explains everything that has to happen
in the port and why its online tool might be slower than the independent
data. It hasn't appeased everyone, but it has helped soothe some
anxiety.

You can read the entire article online or you can buy FastCompany at most bookstores in the US.

Kudos to the fine folks at MINIUSA for being honored like this!