Shift Magazine - June 3, 2019 - 15

LENDERS
LENDERS

"

SERVICE

Customers expect
for all of us to
communicate better
so that when you deal
with a customer, it's
kind of in one voice.
Will Stacy, GM Financial

F

DEALERS
LENDERS
LOG IN

"

ord Credit launched two pilot programs this spring,
prompted by one question: What does the data tell us?
As Ford Motor Co.'s captive finance company pored
through J.D. Power benchmarking data and its own customer satisfaction index, it found that customers weren't happy
with the experience at the end of a lease. They called the process confusing and stressful.
"We really looked at the data. We looked at customer verbatims and the fact that we know that 300,000 customers"
each year can renew their relationship with the company or let it
expire, said Krista Conyers, director of customer experience for
Ford Credit. "We knew we can make a direct impact right now
today with those customers."
Ford Credit's findings inspired the pilots, which began in April:
personal lease assistants - a team that knows the details of a
customer's account and begins working with the customer four
months before the end of the lease term - and "Drive New.
Now" - a platform that gives customers a personalized offer for
their next lease from their originating dealership.
Auto lenders have long used their massive data pools for
credit decisions, but today many are using datasets to work
better with their customers, such as how the customers want to

communicate and which products they find appealing. It's only in
the past few years that such efforts - long used in commercial
banking - have trickled into auto financing, said Jim Houston,
senior director of J.D. Power's automotive finance practice.

UNIFY THE SYSTEM

At least one of the captives also plans within the next year to
work more closely with its automaker parent to offer the customer a unified account. GM Financial, General Motors' finance
company, plans to use GM's data with its own.
"If we can provide the customer additional convenience,
we want to explore those use cases," said Bob Beatty, GM
Financial's executive vice president of customer experience.
A GM customer today, for example, may have an OnStar
password, a GM password and a GM Financial password. The
companies want to create a unified account system, in which a
customer's credentials apply to all of GM's channels, said Will
Stacy, GM Financial's chief marketing officer. Most customers
don't understand how separate lenders tend to be from dealers
and automakers, he said.
"Customers expect for all of us to communicate better so that
when you deal with a customer, it's kind of in one voice," he said.

june 2019 * shift

15
Shift Magazine - June 3, 2019

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