Volkswagen Fleet Services is rolling out Ebbon-Dacs’ MoDel electronic vehicle delivery and collection solution to all 63 of its fleet business partner dealerships around the UK.

It aims to improve customer satisfaction to both leasing companies and Volkswagen drivers following the successful completion of a three-month trial.

The trial involved 18 fleet business partner dealerships and the fleet customers of four major leasing companies, Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions, GE Capital Fleet Services, ING Car Lease and Volkswagen Group Leasing, achieving a customer satisfaction rating of over 99%.

Volkswagen Fleet Services now plans to have the system installed and its fleet business partners fully trained in its usage by the end of this month, ready for the delivery of new registration vehicles in September when, with 6,000 vehicles expected to be delivered to fleet leasing customers during the month, almost 2,000 are expected to go through the MoDel process.

MoDel is an online solution which fully automates the new vehicle delivery handover and collection process and which has been developed as a joint venture between Oxford-based online solutions provider, Ebbon-Dacs, and motor accessories supplier, VGroup International.

It allows customer satisfaction information to be fed back instantly into Ebbon-Dacs’ market-leading Leaselink e-procurement platform, which is used by the overwhelming majority of UK leasing companies, this helping users improve their CRM techniques.

It also reduces the time taken to record vehicle delivery and handover information, verifies the condition of vehicles and collects and analyses customer feedback, as well as speeding up the invoicing and payment process.

Iker Lazzari (pictured), national contract hire and leasing manager at Volkswagen Fleet Services, who is overseeing the project, said that during the trial a total of 580 new vehicles had been delivered to fleet customers through the various Volkswagen fleet business partners taking part and had been judged a resounding success.

“We are delighted with how the trial has worked and are now committed to a roll-out across the network national,” said Lazzari.

“All our fleet business partner dealerships are being invited to attend training sessions at which the configured and securitised handsets will be distributed and we aim to have complete integration across the network.

“To underline how committed we are to delivering an improved services to the leasing community , we will also be making a contribution to the costs of the project by paying for the airtime and the software while the retailers will cover the cost of the handsets and security.”

A series of review meetings between the various stakeholders to review progress of the trial found that there was unanimous approval for a go-ahead and that any issues were small and were ironed out very quickly.

Feedback from drivers was collected via five customer service questions to rate the overall experience and was also extremely positive, said Lazzari.

“Uptake of MoDel amongst leasing companies is continuing to grow and at Volkswagen we want to be ready to facilitate the needs of our customers so that there is the potential to hand over all of our leasing deliveries this way in 2013.

“Vitally, the system will play an important part in measuring the performance of our fleet business partners as we strive to improve the service levels we provide to our leasing company customers and their drivers,” he added.