Loaner Fleet Management for Car Dealers
More and more dealerships now provide loaner vehicles to service customers. This is a major factor in improving customer service and satisfaction - the customer can easily bring their car in to be serviced, but still have a car to get around during the service process.
While the value for customers is obvious, often dealerships do not have effective loaner fleet management processes in place. This can make the loaner fleet concept a headache and a source of real financial cost as well.
For example, if your dealership does not have effective processes and practices in place, you may find:
- • Customers return loaner cars without gas
- • Customers fail to pay tolls
- • Customers get traffic or parking tickets
These common situations can drag down profit margins substantially, not to mention wasting management time. Your dealership needs clear policies to communicate to customers and supporting paperwork to make sure you are not on the hook for driver errors.
Additionally, your dealership must be able to track your loaner fleet at all times, including knowing where the cars are and when they are due back. Effective loaner fleet tracking will make cleanup easier and more efficient, ensuring that the next customer always has a clean loaner ready to go. Giving a customer a dirty, smelly loaner car is a fast way to reduce satisfaction!
Dealerships should also be proactive in using loaner cars for service department marketing. When you advertise services, make sure customers know they’ll get a clean and ready loaner while their service work is being done. This promotion should be done across channels - your salespeople should discuss loaners, and other marketing methods like YouTube videos and service mailers should include the loaner offer as well.
It’s also important to manage your loaner fleet for depreciation and know when a car should be moved out of the loaner fleet and onto your used car lot. You must avoid sharp depreciation and losses associated with loaner cars by moving them out at precise mileage points.
Finally, dealerships will benefit from the overall concept of fleet management by starting to manage their own loaner fleets. The general concept of personal transportation and mobility are changing with the rise of Uber and other ridesharing and vehicle subscription apps. Dealerships need to start thinking about how to position themselves in this new landscape where vehicle ownership may be less important than managing fleets of rental vehicles. Fleet management skills will separate successful dealers and there is no better way to learn fleet management than by starting it with your own loaner fleet.