We’ve all seen the news reports that retail demand for buying autos, SUVs and trucks is extremely strong. Edmunds reports that vehicles now sit on dealer lots for just 57 days on average, which is the fastest sales pace in at least five years.
But the purchase is just the beginning of a long-term relationship between buyer and auto lender. With the industry doing so well, it’s a good time for auto lenders to prioritize ways to better serve all these new and current customers.
Adopting these four best practices for statement delivery and other auto finance communications is an important lever for boosting customer experience and building loyalty.
- Consolidate on one customer communications management (CCM) platform. Even if you aren’t going through a merger or consolidation that leaves you with multiple platforms, you may have a mishmash of incompatible systems. CCM allows you to better organize and centralize communications while reducing the number of templates. Doing so improves efficiency, accuracy and brand consistency. When one company moved to Nordis, it cut templates from 1,200 to about a dozen.
- Cater to customers’ communications preferences. The best strategy is offering omnichannel communications because vehicle buyers want to choose from electronic, text, automated voice response, call center, digital wallet, and mailed options. Still, the trend is definitely toward electronic statement delivery of loan statements. Use of lender mobile apps for account management increased eight percentage points while the use of the websites increased two percentage points during the past two years, according to the J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Consumer Financing Satisfaction Study.To encourage more digital adoption, train call-center employees to routinely ask about opting in for e-statements, mobile payment reminders and other digital communications with a brief, easy-to-understand script.
- Reduce costly phone calls by improving self-service portals. Offer an exceptional customer experience with self-service portals and websites that are optimized for both mobile phones and desktop users. It’s critical that customers can quickly find what they are looking for, and it doesn’t take too many clicks to complete their tasks.
- Create statements and communications that are clear and compliant. Make statements easy to understand and easy to pay:
- Add a prominent link to the payment amount at the top of the statement in bold red letters to encourage online payment
- Highlight payment options, including links to set up automatic payments
- Provide information on total payments made, payments remaining and payoff amounts
- Place “Go Green, Go Paperless” links to encourage customers to sign up for digital
- Offer helpful information about additional products and services, including trade-in deals or special new-car pricing
Our Expresso Financial® CCM platform makes it fast and easy to implement these best practices for financial services communications. ExpressoFinancial seamlessly links to our ExpressoPay® electronic bill presentment and payments system, enabling customers to manage the entire billing and payments cycle on one platform.
Connect with us to learn now we can help you meet the communications preferences of today’s consumers. Contact us to get started.
