The challenge

During the Covid lockdown, lenders experienced an extraordinary surge in call volumes as customers faced redundancies, reduced hours, and furloughs. Many customers urgently requested forbearance and payment deferrals by phone and email. At the same time, frustrated customers turned to social media to voice their concerns about delays in getting assistance. If not addressed promptly, this situation could harm the organisation’s reputation.

MotoNovo Finance acted promptly to seek a digital solution to process inbound applications for forbearance in line with Financial Conduct Authority guidance and relieve excessive demand on their contact centre staff.

The solution

Flexys created and supplied a digital self-service solution that captured customer information on the MotoNovo website and via email and messaging. The solution catered for measures such as furloughing, forbearance, reduced working hours, redundancy, and illness.

The solution allowed MotoNovo to:

• digitally collect standardised information in less than 3 minutes, saving up to 45 minutes of agent time per customer.
• triage and prioritise cases automatically to make significant efficiency gains.
  ‍

Fully operational and saving agents time within one week

The solution was fully integrated into the MotoNovo customer portal, a digital facility for customers to manage their loans, including payments and configurable repayment arrangements powered by Flexys digital debt collection software. 

Flexys delivered the solution remotely, and it was operational within one week, enabling MotoNovo to have a digital solution available to customers before the final FCA ruling on payment deferrals.

Customer submissions were used to make automatic decisions and integrated into other systems. All data captured was automatically available in real-time in the data warehouse for reporting, enabling managers to gauge the impact of payment deferrals and inform future customer communications. The language and the questions/answers lists were fully configurable to allow MotoNovo to easily encompass further FCA rules.

The results‍

After going live, the Flexys digital journey immediately reduced the abandoned call rate by 93%, enabling customers to get through to an advisor more quickly.

The Flexys journey handled up to 280 engagements per hour, freeing MotoNovo staff to devote more time to customers who needed extra support, including those in vulnerable circumstances.

The Flexys journey created a 24-hour customer service availability, with 25% of engagements taking place outside contact centre opening hours. This was particularly useful to shift workers and those with variable working patterns. It also helped to free up contact centre capacity during working hours.

Customer reviews 

MotoNovo customers awarded the Flexys digital solution a Net Promoter Score of 73 (an NPS of +70 is deemed 'exceptional').

Conclusion: Flexys solution frees up thirty full-time staff‍

"Flexys were undoubtedly one of the best partners we worked with and played a significant role in the MotoNovo Finance story."CEO, MotoNovo Finance

The Flexys digital solution was implemented at MotoNovo Finance in just one week, automating the payment deferral application process. This quick deployment saved the equivalent of thirty full-time staff, providing crucial relief to customer service teams already under immense pressure from urgent customer inquiries. 

Delivered as a cloud solution, the journey required no internal resources to deploy.

By creating extra capacity quickly, it removed the need for MotoNovo to divert staff from other business functions to cover the increase in collections activity, which would have created a knock-on effect and risk to other customer service departments.

The solution helped to cement MotoNovo’s reputation for excellent customer care and minimise adverse reviews.

Talk to us about digital journeys that save resources and deliver great service for customers.