“I’m very lucky I’ve got a great team around me; they’re very driven and very professional. One of the areas we’re looking to spend time, money and resource on is our whole communications, especially to SMEs and prospects and how we present ourselves. People have a bad perception of Hyundai; people who’ve never dealt with us before maybe don’t know enough. It’s about talking and communicating with more of our customers and getting more customers engaged; getting the Small Fleet Leasing award adds real kudos and is great.
“The Fleet Charter that was part of our winning entry in The Best Aftersales Programme, in this year’s Small Fleet Leasing Awards, has been changed slightly to make it even more customer friendly, but the package is as is. It’s almost as though we’re setting out what the customer can expect from day one and that’s the way it has to be. Interestingly, we’ve commissioned mystery shopping in our dealer network, to check the understanding of what the charter is about and then measuring the results from the last three- or four quarters. The result is the understanding and the communication is all there at dealers and that’s really come on board.
“We’ve grown so much recently, not only do we need to attract new conquest customers, we’ve got to make sure our retention process is first class as well. So that’s why the customer experience and the Fleet Charter have to be top notch.
“We had a record year with the ix35 last year and the popularity of that car has never been greater, so we need to continue that momentum with Tucson. It’s a completely new car and looks very different from the ix35, there’s a lot of good news to talk about with that new car. About 35% of our white label business is ix35, so we need to make sure we continue with that.
“The feedback we’re getting back from our customers through the dealers is that the customers are delighted with the service. So to get conquest customers from other brands, maybe they’re not being looked after quite so well by other manufacturers. This why we spend so much more on attracting more people into the brand; we lead on some of our advertising on the ‘award-winning after sales care”, because that’s really important isn’t it?
“We now have a Fleet Aftersales Manager, he provides to me on a monthly basis, every single case of customer service. I can see how many cases, how long any of them have been going on, any issues with customers or parts – so I can see whether there are any issues and the level of detail I have now is staggering. It’s absolutely vital that our dealers provide this level of service. As I talked to them in the dealer conference this year, if they don’t, it’s worthless.“
