2012 looks set to be another year of tight cost control, with closer scrutiny of how fleet budgets are used and fleet managers keeping a close eye on the effectiveness of any spending.

The harsh reality is that in challenging economic conditions, people often want more for less. And when return on investment comes under the spotlight, satisfaction levels can be affected as the pressure grows to squeeze every drop out of one’s budget. Customers can be tempted to switch supply for what is ‘perceived to be’ a lower cost solution, making it as important as ever to keep a very close eye on them.

Monitoring customer satisfaction therefore becomes increasingly important. A dip in satisfaction being the early warning sign that a customer may be tempted to look elsewhere, or dropping driver satisfaction an even earlier signal of problems to come.

Some companies may look at falling satisfaction ratings bemused as to how it’s happening when their proposition hasn’t changed, nor have any of the KPIs dropped which monitor how efficiently they are serving customers. On the surface, everything looks fine – but still the ratings fall.

When this happens its vital to look at external factors.

Is it that, due to economic conditions, the customer is simply expecting more for the same money?

Have customer needs shifted?

Have your competitors “upped their game”, resulting in customers perceiving that yours has declined?

Or is it that the person filling out the survey is under so much personal pressure that ‘no-one around them can do anything right’!

The truth is, without looking beyond the customer and driver satisfaction data, you will rarely get to the bottom of the problem, and it’s often vital to adopt a holistic perspective to the market conditions impacting you.

Experteye can help with this, through our Industry Trends survey. By using this survey hand in hand with Fleeteye CSI or Touchpoint provides a far more complete picture for any contract hire or fleet management provider, as well giving them an accurate barometer to take carefully considered action based upon fresh and valid data.

It is well worth considering if you are not already a subscriber and we would be delighted to discuss it with you and provide some samples of the report.

If a fleet manager gives their contract hire or fleet management provider a score of, let’s say, 85% (100% being excellent), but the drivers give a combined rating of 60%, who is right?

Because as driver feedback starts being gathered in far greater volumes by our Touchpoint system, issues like this are going to become far more the norm in fleet sector reviews .

The reality is that, like any data, you need to dig deep to establish the root causes of a rating, whether good or bad.

Let’s take the simplistic example of a company who has decided to cut costs. The brief to its contract hire company is to re-engineer the vehicle choice list to offer lower cost vehicles, to limit the policy to restricted badges, to be far more strict with driver requests and impose a tighter regime of cost control across the board.

The leasing company achieves this successfully and the fleet manager ranks their performance as excellent.

Of course, I hardly need to tell you what will happen to driver satisfaction levels. They will almost inevitably drop as drivers cannot have the vehicle they desire and limitations impact them in other areas too.

But it’s always better to have the data, than not.

By gathering very large volumes of driver feedback helps measure service levels, conduct reviews and manage suppliers – as long as its looked at properly, and not just viewed on its headline statistic. Because, I could flip this round the other way and suggest that if driver satisfaction was at 90%, does that mean the leasing company is doing its job well? Maybe yes, but not necessarily when judged against the ‘company agenda’.

So, my point here is that, as with any research, it’s important to look at the story behind the headline.

The good news is that our Touchpoint system enables additional, bespoke questions to be asked if a fleet manager needs to get to the bottom of a particular issue and find out more.

However, the leasing company account managers that work with fleet operators across the UK will need to treat this new level of information with extreme care, spending more time interpreting and considering the results than ever before to ensure that the meaning behind the data is fully understood. On the upside though, its very easy to interpret the information and the whole process will lead to far more powerful client relationships.

There’s no doubt that every business operating a vehicle fleet wants its drivers to be happy with the service they are receiving.

Company directors and fleet managers that have been through times when drivers were not content will tell you that it leads to the endless resolution of complaints, fire fighting and re-activity, and it’s incredibly disruptive.

That then makes the fleet manger’s life stressful and in turn he or she passes that stress onto the contract hire or fleet management provider, assuming they use one.

It doesn’t matter how good a business you are, everyone in the fleet sector has endured that awful meeting when a client says they are not happy. When they proceed to list, item by item, where drivers have complained or where the support to them hasn’t worked effectively.

The reason this happens though is largely because the leasing company hasn’t been receiving the early warnings themselves. A bit like stamp collecting, every small moan and gripe has been passed to the fleet manager who has collected them over time and is now throwing the whole book at you.

Driver feedback systems are, of course, a common feature of the fleet sector. However, manual feedback cards when vehicles are delivered etc are hard and time-consuming to distribute, chase and collate. This is why many fleet providers will tell you that their own ‘early warning systems’ have been a little bit intermittent in the past.

There is though a massive demand for driver data because it is seen as a crucial, business-critical, tool to nurture long-lasting client relationships, by anticipating and dealing with service issues well before they reach the fleet manager’s desk.

This is why our online driver feedback system, Touchpoint, is soaring in popularity at the moment. And if you haven’t yet seen the system I would recommend you join the growing list of FN50 companies that are considering it, because it’s a vital tool in an increasingly competitive market.

It also means you have your own direct feed into the opinions of drivers which brings enormous benefit. Not just as an early warning system, but as a tangible way of managing your suppliers and to be more pro-active in your overall account management. It will also ultimately enable you to benchmark your driver support against the industry averages, which will enable strategic decisions to be made with far great clarity.

The UK contract hire sector is often called a generic industry. Because at the end of the day it’s probably fair to say that a similar physical end product will arrive in the company car park whichever funder or service provider you choose.

And when it comes to the additional products and services on offer, such as accident management, risk management, daily rental etc, our Fleeteye CSI survey shows that as a sector we’re meeting needs very effectively. And when you look at the companies in the FN50 league table, many tend to offer the same service mix, albeit branded and packaged differently.

So how can contract hire and leasing companies really set themselves apart and create a compelling proposition?

The answer, as I see it, is being provided through the Fleeteye CSI survey and has been for some time.

“Communication”, “Account Management”, and “Day to Day Fleet Management.”

These three areas continue to come out as less well ranked in our surveys, even though they are seen as being important to fleet managers.

And when you talk about a company’s overall proposition in any market place, these are key factors to a great offering. After all, studies show that one of the biggest reasons companies lose their clients is due to these types of criteria.

So, here lies a fantastic opportunity for companies to set themselves apart, put the softer skills at the heart of their strategy, make it a key part of their proposition and make it a priority within their sales and marketing activity.

I believe there’s a gap in the market right now. And I’m delighted that our surveys continue to highlight these vital areas, enabling our syndicate members from across the FN50 make some extremely important strategic decisions.