Customer care is the bread and butter of the auto lending industry. While it’s important to have reliable loan origination software (LOS) and effective loan servicing systems, your customers’ satisfaction with the service you provide is just as crucial. When customers have consistent and positive interactions with your representatives, they’re more likely to take out a new auto loan with you in the future or recommend their friends or family to your business.
However, excellent customer care requires a great deal of work. This is why outsourcing car loan customer care makes so much sense for lenders. It’s an efficient, consistent, and cost-effective way to interact with your customers at every step of the lending process. If you’re looking to improve the way you communicate with customers and increase customers’ trust in your business, consider hiring an experienced car loan customer care provider.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Customer Care
Some auto lenders are nervous about outsourcing their customer service tasks to a third party. This is understandable. After all, your representatives are the ones who interact with customers and have a direct impact on customer retention and satisfaction rates. However, performing your own in-house car loan customer care doesn’t necessarily mean that you have full control over these retention and satisfaction rates.
In fact, if your resources are spread pretty thin, handling your own customer care could backfire, as customers may not feel as if their needs are being adequately heard or met. One-on-one interactions take time and effort.
Outsourcing car loan customer care could be a better option, particularly for auto lenders that want to expand their portfolios without lowering the quality of their services. Hiring a customer care provider is beneficial because:
- It generally costs less than hiring additional in-house staff.
- It scales very well. Adding more auto loans to your portfolio won’t put an undue burden on your staff or infrastructure.
- It’s consistent, meaning your customers all get the exact same quality of care no matter what time of the day they call or who they speak with.
- Some car loan customer care tasks can be automated to improve efficiency, such as checking loan balances or payment status.
- You can follow up with customers after the loan period has ended. For example, if the customer leased a vehicle, customer service representatives can get in touch and offer additional leasing opportunities to the customer based on their specific needs and borrowing history.
And these are just a handful of potential benefits you could see if you hire an experienced and trustworthy car loan customer care provider. However, to receive these benefits, it’s important to weigh your outsourcing options carefully.
What Car Loan Customer Care Options Are Out There?
One of the greatest challenges of outsourcing car loan customer care is that there are many providers offering different types of services to lenders. While having options gives you more control over the outsourcing process, it also makes it more difficult to choose the right option for your business.
To help you make this decision, look for customer care providers that offer all of the following essential services:
| ✔ Online customer portals | Today’s customers like to have access to their information online. Building a reliable, streamlined customer-facing portal is a great way to show customers you care about their experiences and want to give them convenient access to the information they need. |
| ✔ Technical troubleshooting and support | The customer care provider you partner with should have knowledgeable staff available to help customers navigate the technical aspect of the online customer portal as well as know their way around the customer’s unique loan and payment information. |
| ✔ In-depth brand training | All customer service representatives should be trained specifically on how you prefer your brand to be represented in interactions with your customers. Communications should be consistent, accurate, and reflect your company’s culture and values. |
| ✔ Inbound and outbound support | The provider should have both inbound and outbound customer care options. This means handling calls and requests directly from customers and responding as quickly as possible to these inquiries. They should also reach out to customers directly as needed. These outbound communications must be friendly, necessary, and effective. |
| ✔ Automated call centers | Some scenarios don’t require a representative to contact a customer personally. The provider should have detailed rules and protocols for using automated call centers or messages effectively. These types of communications save time and money without sacrificing customer care quality. |
| ✔ Personalized call centers | In some cases, customers really just want to speak with a person. Providers should make it clear to customers that this is always an option. Representatives will provide accurate and personalized information to customers who call in. Good providers also keep track of which communications methods the customer prefers, which makes the customer feel valued. |
| ✔ Secure user access | Car loan customer care representatives sometimes have to work with sensitive financial information. Providers should use secure data encryption and user access authorizations to ensure this data is well protected. They will only allow representatives to access the information they absolutely need to answer the customer’s inquiries. |
| ✔ Cross sales and lead generation | At the end of the loan period, sometime before the vehicle title changes or repayment is complete, representatives should get in touch with the customer and see if there’s anything else your business can do for them. This is a good opportunity to promote cross-sales, generate potential new leads, or simply make the customer feel good about their decision to take out a loan with your company. |
| ✔ Performance assessments | The best car loan customer care providers track key performance indicators (KPIs) to improve the customer experience. This includes call wait times, email response times, satisfaction surveys, and the frequency of supervisor elevations. It keeps representatives aligned with your process and ensures your customer care is constantly improving. |
| ✔ Data analysis | Providers should care about what your customers think. Data analysis of surveys and feedback determines how satisfied customers are with the customer care and what the provider can do to improve these satisfaction rates in the future. |
Ultimately, a good car loan customer care provider should be just as motivated as you are to provide customers with the highest level of care.
How to Properly Outsource Customer Service Tasks
The most important quality of any car loan customer care provider is consistency. At the end of the day, customers want to get quick, accurate answers to their questions and feel as if the lender values them. They don’t want to be given the runaround every time they call your office or spend hours on hold waiting for an answer to a simple question.
Providers that value consistency make sure your customers never feel as if their time was wasted. They make sure your customers are comfortable contacting your company when they have questions—they might even look forward to the experience. When you hire a reliable provider that understands the auto lending industry inside and out, and that treats your customers with a high level of respect, you’ll significantly improve your customer care quality.
defi SOLUTIONS is an auto lending solutions provider that offers reliable customer care services. Our end-to-end contact and servicing solutions include inbound and outbound contact support for auto lenders looking to improve their customer communications. If you’d like to know more about our customer care services, contact our team today or register for a demo.
