Maxi-Lease Car & Van Leasing provides business and personal vehicle leasing options, as well as offering specialist insurance solutions. While looking to replace a member of the team responsible for front of house it outsourced its call-answering to Moneypenny, a leading provider of outsourced phone answering, live chat and digital communications. This stop-gap led to a more permanent partnership and increased productivity. Steve Marsh, Manager of Maxi-Lease Car & Van Finance and Maxi-Lease Insurance Solutions, told us more about how the partnership developed.
The challenge
With thousands of vehicle leasing brokers in the country, Maxi-Lease specialises in a personal, approachable and professional approach to clients, going that extra mile. It is a small business, but is in the same market as bigger companies with more money, staff and resources, so maintaining its personal approach is critical for its business and success.
A small business, with four employees, means a tight team and when one of the Maxi-Lease team left their role, it left a hole in the business that needed to be filled quickly. Steve Marsh at Maxi-Lease said: “Every lead matters. We’re a small team up against some of the big boys with massive marketing budgets and a staff of over 600 people, so we can’t miss a single call.
“When we were interviewing for a new member of the team, we would miss calls and that was always at the back of our mind. We knew that those calls could be important or urgent, and we didn’t want to leave the caller waiting so we were all trying to balance answering them with doing our day job; not ideal. There was also the issue of balancing how important each call was so it meant we had to go through them all and this made it hard to focus and prioritise on other things.”
Another key challenge was creating that all-important first impression. Maxi-Lease prides itself on its personal, friendly approach but also on making a good, professional business impression to set the tone for current and future business relationships. A bad first impression, where the call is not answered, or a client is kept on hold was high on the list of challenges to avoid.
Furthermore, as a small team there were elements to some roles that people simply did not enjoy and one such area was outbound calling. Marsh said: “Larger businesses have a specialist outbound calling team, a team who regularly contact clients to see if they still require help or wish to change their car. We had people who were great at customer service and sales, but this area seemed to be harder to fulfil.”
The solution
Maxi-Lease required a short-term call-answering service to allow the rest of the team to be able to continue to focus on what they were good at and to create a good impression while allowing the flexibility and space to hire the right person.
The inevitable Google search highlighted Moneypenny’s services and encouraged Marsh to call to find out more. “Moneypenny was my first click and after gathering all the information, I knew that they would be a good fit for us, almost too good to be true,” said Marsh. “However, I also assumed that this would be an unachievable for us due to the expenditure attached to it. I was pleasantly surprised and so we agreed an interim package for Moneypenny to handle just our call-answering, initially.
“Now, I can finish the task in hand without panicking that the call I have just missed was another sale that we’d missed out on, for example. One day, I remember I started a finance option seven times as the phone rang, and I needed to make sure that it was answered. Due to the sensitive nature of the finance agreements they time out after 15 minutes so you have to start again, I think it took nearly two hours out of my day to complete just one. Today, I have the peace of mind that if I am mid finance option, Moneypenny will answer any incoming calls and make sure they’re handled efficiently.’
Meanwhile, Maxi-Lease continued the recruitment process but remained uninspired by the options available to them, specifically in the outbound calling department. They turned to Moneypenny to see if it could also support them on outbound calls. The service was trialled, and productivity rose by 200%, making it a win-win solution.
“The Moneypenny outbound calling team spend a fraction of the time on making the calls each week, however, I believe that because they are trained specialists in this and it is their job that they are specifically employed to do, it is a much better solution, proven by the fact that by employing the service for just a few hours a week compared to a full-time employee we have experienced 200% increase in productivity in this area.
“Currently we work with both the call-answering and outbound calling teams to enable Maxi-Lease to work better. The call-answering is like the Moneypenny PA is sat in the office with us and allows us to benefit from a bigger team. We’ve not missed any calls and we’ve definitely picked up calls that have turned into good calls as we’ve called them back straight away. And most importantly, we can pop out for a sandwich or for a quick break without worrying that we will miss a call; that’s the biggest life improvement.”
Having investigated the option of outsourcing areas of the business in which there was little expertise or desire to undertake, Maxi-Lease has improved its processes and benefitted its business, with immediate results. Embracing the Moneypenny technology and people has meant that Maxi-Lease can convert more leads, have more flexibility in the working day and ensure that every call is answered and managed in a timely and professional manner.