THERE has been a big increase in the number of salary sacrifice drivers booking their service, maintenance, and MOTs online since the Covid-19 pandemic began according to the latest statistics from Tusker’s SMR network and service booking partner, Fleet Assist.

Online bookings have moved from 12% in 2020 to 37% in 2021 as drivers have made a significant switch from telephone bookings to using the Fleet Assist’s web portal or Tusker’s API link. Whilst over 60% of drivers still make their service booking via a telephone call Tusker believes the trend to book online is set to grow.

Fleet Assist has also seen a 75% increase in Battery Electric and Plug-in hybrid service bookings in line with Tusker’s continued on-boarding of low or zero emission salary sacrifice cars onto its fleet. Currently 73% of deliveries made to drivers are EVs, a rise from just 13% in 2019.

There are multiple reasons for drivers moving online according to Kit Wisdom, Tusker’s operations director. He said:

“Online booking speeds up the time between the service or MOT request and a driver’s car being booked into a dealer. Being able to make online bookings also suits many of our drivers working in the health service or who work unsociable hours who don’t have the ability to make phone calls during their working day.

“The accuracy of the vehicle information is always very high as it is only entered into the system by the driver once and the Fleet Assist team can immediately direct it to the right dealer to optimise workflow,” he said.

Tusker partners with Fleet Assist for its service bookings with Fleet Assist using Tusker’s work direction rules to direct the drivers’ bookings into its preferred garage network. Fleet Assist’s garage network sits at more than 5,200, of which in excess of 75% are ‘EV ready’.

Online bookings work both for the driver and Tusker explained Fleet Assist’s head of business development Karen Ewer.

“Our Atlas IT system captures all the driver and garage trends daily giving our leasing and fleet customers direct access to business intelligence to help them understand maintenance trends in detail. How drivers have embraced online bookings has been surprising, but it shows how the recent pandemic is changing driver behaviour. The speed at which Tusker drivers have embraced EVs is further proof about how open company motorists are to change,” explained Ewer.