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Tools
Arval's series of business tools are generally developed according to customer requests, and built by the consultancy before going to the sales team for a review prior to being pushed out into the market. The Rental Calculator had to go through an extra level of approval because, in a break from the norm, Arval posted it on its website for general use by the industry, rather than taking customers through it face to face and then leaving it with them, as is the case with the firm's other operations.
"It's on our website because it's very simple to use and difficult to draw the wrong conclusion. It's intuitive," explains Marchment.
"We have the range of tools because generally we'll have an hour with a customer and a broad range of subjects come up," he continues. "It's almost a debate you end up in rather than a customer meeting and it does spark interest." He says the rental calculation devices can be a slow-burn, with people coming back to ask questions in the following days to check that figures are correct.
"With all our models it's got to be simple and quick because we don't want to be labouring the point for too long," Marchment declares. "We've got 60 seconds to get a point across and want the customer to feel confident using the tool and not needing a half-day training course to use it." Those tools currently developed include rental, accident management, grey fleet and free-fuel calculators.
"We can often be sat in meetings with customers specifically looking at an issue, and discussions can go off at a range of tangents, and it's nice to have the tools to deal with specific issues as they arise," comments Mike Waters, Arval's senior insight and consultancy manager. "In most cases, they're part of a broader discussion with customers, and work better when you can work through the numbers with a customer to reach an appropriate conclusion, although that's not to say we won't put more on the website in the future."
"Lots of them don't give a definitive answer - they facilitate and allow as to challenge the decision-making in a friendly way," adds Marchment. "You talk to a fleet operator that has been doing things
in a certain way and if helps open them up to other possibilities."
Fuel types are another headache for business car fleets, with Arval finding that fleets with a diesel-only policy are unwittingly omitting hybrids from their plans. "They don't associate petrol with hybrid and therefore they're ignoring a whole load of vehicles that could help them meet their CO2 objectives," says Marchment, who claims the firm deliberately avoids mentioning fuel type when talking about whole-life cost.
"One area we will be doing more work on is the number of technologies in the marketplace: petrol versus diesel, and petrol or diesel hybrids, as well as full-electric versus range-extender and plug-in hybrid," says Waters. "It's making the decision-making process more complex but providing more opportunities to make good decisions rather than bad ones."
"We're seeing an evolution of fleet policies, and diesel really will become very outdated - I can see three or four policies so they can put the technology where it works best," concludes Marchment. "Our challenge is to show customers that with the technology you don't have to have a one-size-fits-all policy and it may be doing more harm than good."
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Business Car Magazine © 2020 | Business Car is part of NS Media Group.
