MotoNovo Achieves Complaint Management Excellence with Aptean Respond

With a customer base of 500,000, MotoNovo Finance is one of the largest lenders in the UK used car finance market. In June 2017, the business took the decision to overhaul its complaint handling process.

Facing the Complaints Challenge

Disparate complaint management functions across the organisation meant that the business wasn’t recognising and recording all complaints, and over 10% of complaints were referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). 26% of complaints exceeded the Financial Conduct Authority’s 8-week timeframe and there was an absence of complaint management information (MI) to inform service improvements.

Assembling the Right Team

The business decided to establish a combined complaints function with the right people, processes and technology in place to underpin more robust, effective complaint handling. A team was set up to deliver the project, tasked with ensuring that all complaints were being captured and reducing the number of complaints referred to and upheld by the FOS. The team wanted to unlock the untapped value in complaints, using complaints insight to drive real improvements to products and services to enhance the customer journey. All complaint teams were merged into a single complaints department, a complaints MI team was created, and a bespoke training programme was implemented.

Choosing the Best Complaint Management System

Newly trained staff now had the skills to improve complaint handling, but not the tools required to make it a reality. After a thorough assessment of the market, the business chose to implement our complaints management software, Aptean Respond, as its dedicated complaint management system across the entire business, due to its advanced functionality and ability to offer an end-to-end, business-wide complaint management solution. Aptean Respond brought a commonality to processes and procedures that hadn’t existed before, replacing cumbersome and inefficient spreadsheets. It’s used to log every customer complaint, putting the necessary workflows in place to trigger the most appropriate course of action—expediting a successful complaint resolution, supported by accurate and timely customer communication. It also provides a single version of the truth, with all customer information available in a single location.

Complaints Management Transformed

This new approach to complaint handling has made a huge difference to MotoNovo. The business has seen an increase in complaint volumes from a monthly average of 50 up to 1,056 customer service/general complaints, but recognises this as a major positive as it means complaints are being captured accurately. The FOS referral rate is down from 10% to just 2% and the 12-month rolling average FOS uphold rate is down from between 45-80% to 24%. In addition, 26% of complaints get resolved at first point of contact, quality assurance is consistently ‘green’, and the number of complaints that aren’t resolved within the 56-day timeframe has decreased dramatically, going from 26% to just 1%. The quality and quantity of MI has improved too, highlighting any complaints on the cusp of exceeding the eight-week timeframe and pinpointing any systemic issues to be addressed. MotoNovo has implemented monthly QA checks for each case handler, identifying any training needs and highlighting best practice that can be shared with the wider team. Before the project, everything was done manually, but Respond provides a digital record of all customer interactions and system updates, making it more straightforward to implement thorough and accurate QA processes.

Unlocking Continual Improvements

The increased complaint volumes have provided a base line to drive meaningful MI which has already led to significant changes. As MotoNovo colleagues continue to see the benefits of root cause analysis and the improvements that have been made, complaints are now seen as a positive rather than a negative. The success of the transformation hasn’t gone unnoticed externally either and MotoNovo was the recipient of three awards at the 2021 UK Complaint Handling Awards including the prestigious Overall Winner Award. As Maria Vidler, Group Head of Complaints at MotoNovo, concludes: “Implementing Aptean Respond was a pivotal moment for MotoNovo. It provided us with the technology we needed to make our customer experience a competitive advantage and it’s empowered us with new capabilities, helping us on our journey to guarantee complaint handling excellence for each and every customer.”

Click here to read the full story about how Aptean Respond helped MotoNovo Finance achieve complaint management excellence, or alternatively, to find out how Aptean Respond can help your business, get in touch with our team of complaints management experts today.