Citroen has put aftersales service firmly in the spotlight with a number of initiatives intended to improve its service to fleets.

A one-day training course for service managers and dealer principals entitled ‘who killed the fleet customer’ is outlining to the retail network the importance of the fleet customer – not least because they are worth three times more than a retail customer in service revenue due to the higher mileages and more frequent servicing.

All 90 business centres are going through the training which identifies the key elements of importance to fleets, such as minimising downtime.

“We have to change the hearts and minds of the network to make them more responsive to the needs of the fleet sector,” said Andy Wady, Citroen fleet director.

Reaction times to service and repair booking requests via Epyx 1Link have already been tackled as part of the Business Class programme. Citroen now employs an Epyx member of staff at its call centre who contacts dealers if they are slow to respond to an enquiry within 30 minutes.
Result: response times have fallen from 60 minutes at the end of last year to 24 minutes in June. Citroen is now targeting a 20-minute response time.

“A lot of leasing company systems have a 50-minute threshold and then the job gets flicked to an independent,” said Wady. “We lose the business because we are not quick enough.”

The Epyx employee also assesses jobs that have been rejected by a dealer; often there is no good reason. Consequently, jobs refusals have fallen by 74% - just 26 were refused in June compared to more than 100 per month last year.

“To compete with the independents is about quality of the service, ease of doing business and the price,” added Wady. “A lot of our focus in on the aftersales provision because this generates more sales in the future.”

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