In the current auto-finance market, more and more customer experiences are taking place fully online. In the UK online car purchases more than quadrupled during the first full lockdown months of 2020 as customers increasingly embraced the convenience, transparency and safety of online automotive retail.
In this new paradigm, customers can choose from a wider range of dealers and auto-finance brokers than ever before. With fewer constraints on choice, competition will be based on the experience you provide customers.
Best-in-class online auto-finance customer service will require a combination of technology and in-person support, but that starts with analysing your current processes and optimising them for a digital future.
The New Purchasing Experience
The balance of power in automotive retail has shifted in recent years. Car buyers now spend 61% of their time researching and shopping on the internet, before they ever speak to a broker or dealer. As an expert notes in a recent McKinsey report, “The days when you walk in a dealership uncertain of the exact car you want, and not 100 percent sure how you’ll pay for it, or what you’re going to pay...—those days will be a thing of the past.”
Customers now control when they choose to engage, how they provide their information and the vehicle they want. In this more fluid purchasing environment, the first consideration is how to track and monitor your customer journey. Now more than ever, a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool such as Accelerate Broker by QV Systems is essential. By bringing your data into one place you can effectively track customer activity, centralise information and determine the best times to engage.
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Opportunities in Growth
Once you are able to monitor your customer journey, the next step is to tailor your processes to provide the best customer experience at each stage. In analysing tasks within the sales workflow, we can distinguish between low value tasks to be automated, essential tasks to be streamlined and value-adding tasks to be optimised.
Automation Areas:
Software automation is ideal for repetitive, manual processes, especially those that involve handling large amounts of data, transferring information and setting tasks. Within the automotive finance workflow, modern software can easily handle basic tasks such as:
- Enquiry, consent and financial information gathering
- Form filling and information transfer between documents
- Simple underwriting
- Quote creation and sending
Accelerate Broker by QV Systems also integrates with email automation tools like MailChimp to help automate more of your customer communication, saving time on relationship management.
Efficiency Tasks:
For more complex tasks that can’t be fully automated, software can still play a large role in increasing efficiency and maximising value from your team’s time. These will often involve partial automation or targeting of efforts such as:
- Standardised dealer communications
- Sharing proposals with multiple lenders simultaneously
- Customer lifecycle management and automated milestones
By automating and increasing efficiency in the above areas you can free significant time and resources to focus on the areas of service that make a real difference to your customers.
Core service impact areas
Trust is a still key element of the automotive purchase or leasing process. The best use of your team is to inspire, maintain and grow trust with leads, customers and partners by responding to their unique needs at key junctures in the sales process. These will often be the moments when your customers are unsure, or in need of extra reassurance. Key examples of these include:
Customer education:
While some may come to you fully set on the make, model, financing type and payment structure they want for their vehicle, many will need some guidance on at least one of these issues. Your website needs clear calls-to-action on relevant pages to direct enquiries to your team. QV Automotive Website makes it simple to add forms wherever you need them to facilitate easy interaction and help customers connect faster.
Proposal Tailoring:
Once you have created a proposal for your customers based on their submitted information and your lenders’ conditions, it’s time to tailor that proposal. Accelerate Broker by QV Systems lets you work on the same proposal with your client in real time.
By using your team to check the nuances of their application according to their own industry expertise you can ensure your customers are getting the right deal, while also adding a human touch.
Problem solving:
The moment when things go wrong, we instinctively look for reassurance from an expert. Your customer may have a change in circumstances, such as changing a job or a credit issue, or there may be an issue in procurement or funding.
In this scenario, your team is your best tool to reassure your customers and keep the deal on track. By engaging quickly, being upfront about the situation and offering expert guidance you can create a stronger relationship than before.
Measuring value
When it comes to measuring the quality of service you are providing there are a range of quantitative and qualitative KPIs you can use to track progress. The methods you use will depend on your own workflows and customer needs.
Quantitative methods include:
- NPS Scoring
- Targets for reselling
- Time to resolution of queries
- Response time for enquiries
- Referrals
Qualitative methods include:
- Customer feedback
- Third party reviews
- Social media engagement
The all in one service platform
Modern customer experience requires a mix of human skills and cutting-edge technology. Broker Accelerate, our flexible platform, is designed with Brokers in mind to help you adapt quickly, improve your sales process and create a seamless auto-leasing experience.
With this all-in-one solution you can
- Easily engage, convert and manage new business with an end-to-end digital process
- Automating manual tasks to focus more on customer experience
- Choose the features you need to update your workflow with our product configurator, or select one of our simple packages, including our essential starter platform Broker Go.
To find out how QV Systems can take your firm to the next level, get in touch with our team today.
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