ZENITH: Steady growth fuelled by service and sacrifice
Date:
09 December 2013
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Author:
A difficult move
Salary sacrifice contracts to staff not eligible for company cars remains a key growth area for Zenith, with nearly 6000 vehicles live for the firm and predictions that the route will become more important.
"We're expecting it to continue to grow as wage inflation becomes difficult, as it's a very tangible benefit now on offer at zero cost to the employer, yet to the employee it's a very tangible route to car ownership," says Hughes. "Customers are seeing it as a very nice value-added benefit."
Zenith is increasing the complexity and flexibility of its sal-sac offering, having added a lead-in product to help a customer take a vehicle equivalent in price and size to the one they have ordered within seven days of placing the order.
It's designed to help those that need a vehicle immediately because of an accident or MoT failure, but waiting times on the car they want leave them transportless for a period of time.
In the longer term the firm is also looking at redeployment of vehicles that are terminated mid-contract, with a view to bringing down early termination charges by making it easier to find homes with existing customers for vehicles part-way through their contract.
The complexity of the system also means Zenith can closely track what people are quoting on and therefore where manufacturers should be targeting their vehicles and prices to best effect.
"Salary sacrifice is about 20% of our total mix. It's growing organically alongside the business and is a really important part of our product and service," declares Hughes. The next step will be the imminent arrival of Vauxhall's plug-in electric Ampera, and Zenith will also run a car internally to gather knowledge, having already run two Nissan Leaf electric models.
But underpinning everything Zenith is doing is its Pulse dashboard platform. Introduced around 18 months ago, the system is used by the company itself and by its customers.
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