Guest blog: Julia Thirtle-Watts, Remarketing Manager
We say it every year but this really was an extremely busy March. First we had an increase in the volume of vehicles to collect from dealers, due to customers handing back their vehicles at the end of the contract and driving away in a shiny new 13 plate vehicle.
We also collect vehicles directly from customers and we were challenged in March due to the number of vehicles being returned, coupled with unseasonal snow. I think we’ve all now had quite enough of weather forecasting and watching poor, stranded drivers on the TV. My team and I worked very closely with BCA Logistics, our collection agents, to minimise disruption to our customers and support and influence performance.
It’s important to ensure collections are managed on time and I’m pleased that we were able to maintain really, really good service. Two of my team went out with BCA Logistics for a couple of days to experience what happens when a vehicle is handed back. We learn so much from activity like this and make a point of encouraging it.
Vehicle inspections can occasionally be affected by weather conditions. It’s a challenge to inspect vehicles when they are covered in snow and ice but this is where the superb working relationship of our partners really comes in to play, with one group ensuring the vehicles were cleared of snow for SGS, our inspection service providers, to carry out their appraisals. Everyone in the remarketing process has a purpose and we do not underestimate the value of the guy or girl clearing the snow off the vehicles (while we’re sitting here in the warm).
On March 20, it was my turn to feel the cold. I held a Touch Metal Workshop at Chelmsford Car Auctions, in Essex. This is an opportunity for our colleagues and customers to shadow an inspector and see how they inspect vehicles: to observe the approach taken, get a better understanding of the standards they adhere to, find the damage on the vehicles, record the data, and take photographs using the camera… essentially getting stuck in! Early start (4.30am) to get round the M25 and prepare for the day, but it’s well worth it.
The morning’s session was attended by people from our LP Go brand, a division of the company that focuses on smaller fleets, as well as some colleagues from IT. The afternoon’s session was held to meet, engage and get feedback from a large fleet management company. It was -2º that day; honestly, I could not feel my feet or fingers by the end of the day.
These workshops really are mutually beneficial. Last year we made changes to the way we apply charges for damage, based on feedback from these Touch Metal sessions. Our customers told us that we should apply a more proportionate cost for panel repair to an extra-large panel (for example the extended side door on a commercial vehicle) when the damage is small. So we made a change to pricing. Feedback to this change has been really positive.
In March, we also completed the transition from an old platform to a new remarketing system, called CRI. It’s a system already in use in 25 other LeasePlan countries but we needed to be diligent and cautious & ensure the “plumbing” worked 100% for the UK processes, and that any pain from the change was invisible to customers.
I had little appreciation of the planning, preparation and testing involved at the start but I certainly do now! It’s the beginning of an exciting era for us in Remarketing, as the new system is a massive future enabler for us to sell vehicles and also radically to improve the way we communicate damage recharges to customers – watch this space.
Julia Thirtle-Watts is General Manager of LeasePlan’s Remarketing Operations department, responsible for the collection, inspection and administration of vehicles after the end of their leased period.
