Know your customer, know their journey

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Hit it. That’s what I’m talking about. Wait. Okay now. From the beginning.

Nathan Anibaba:

Gabriele Lochis is Head of Digital Marketing and Development for Arval UK, part of the BNP Paribas Group. He is responsible for defining and implementing the UK digital marketing strategy and executing the short and mid-term UK digital transformation strategy for B2B and B2C acquisition and retention. Gabriele Lochis, welcome to ClientSide.

Gabriele Lochis:

Good morning, Nathan. Thank you for the invite.

Nathan Anibaba:

BNP Paribas is the third largest bank in the world, but in the UK it doesn’t really have the mainstream brand awareness that you would expect. What challenges does that present when growing Arval UK, the vehicle leasing division of the bank?

Gabriele Lochis:

Yeah, sure. So the main challenges comes from the retail and small business. The UK market has plenty of car leasing actors, from car leasing providers like us but also especially brokers or dealers, or even partners.

So, some of them are very well-known, who’ve established a very strong brand awareness, reputation. As you know, in the UK, you can basically buy anything from the brokers; people are more keen to go to them rather than the multinational pure players like us. So that’s why we have a very strong relationship with brokers, because they can also play the role of our brand ambassador.

If we then move to what we call mid, large market, the situation is quite different because we have a very well-established reputation, our brand is well-known, and we have a more mature audience. So someone is already expert and knows about what does it mean leasing a fleet and managing a fleet of vehicles, and our services and expertise are highly recognized.

Nathan Anibaba:

So let’s talk a little bit about the consumer and the business division, because obviously you’re targeting lots of different segments of the audience. You’re targeting consumers and you’re targeting businesses.

Nathan Anibaba:

When people visit the site and they’re looking for mobility services, whether they’re a consumer or a business, the content needs to change depending on who they are. So what challenges does that present from a brand and communications point of view?

Gabriele Lochis:

Sure. So, based on the different type of users who are visiting our website, the needs are really different.

Gabriele Lochis:

So you can start from someone who’s just looking for a vehicle. So they go on the website for looking for product services, but basically to benchmark offers or prices. Those represent the majority of our visitors today on our website. So they are doing benchmark by themself. They are doing an analysis for their own, single vehicle. This is quite common globally across our business. So it’s not just a UK way of mindset, I would say, it’s really a typical behavior of a retail customer.

Gabriele Lochis:

In this case, in terms of content, the focus here is more about educate about the business or what car leasing means, what does it mean leasing a vehicle versus just purchasing one or other solution like PCP. At the same time, we have to also explain why choosing us and not a broker or a partner or other competitor.

Gabriele Lochis:

So it is a mix of showing correctly and easily the offers they’re looking for; the prices so they can reach easily the vehicle presumably what they’re looking for while they’re visiting the website, but, at the same time, explaining why there is this cost behind, what it’s composed by.

Gabriele Lochis:

Then you go to the audience. So we’re talking about mid, large companies. They’re not looking for a price. They don’t care, honestly, about the single price. They come only to find a good partner who can help them, support them or managing their fleet, where not necessarily it’s just led by a price. It’s more about comprehensive set of solutions, services, but also expertise that can help them to optimize the best their fleet.

Gabriele Lochis:

In that case, the core services, not maintenance or insuring the vehicle, yes, that’s the basic. It’s more about what else you can give me to optimize my fleet. We can have solutions such as special product to manage from a telematic perspective, or electrifying the fleet.

Gabriele Lochis:

So, as you can see, that’s the challenge for us. One single landing page, which is our home… Let’s start from the homepage. Then, how I can drive the correct user to the correct content?

Nathan Anibaba:

So what’s the reason why businesses choose to work with you as opposed to your competitors, other vehicle leasing companies in the market, and how do you communicate that through your communications?

Gabriele Lochis:

Yeah, sure. We partly belong to BNP Paribas. So it’s a banking group. This gave us a lot of security in terms of sanity of the company. As you said earlier, it’s the third largest bank in the world. We’re following basically what are the main principle.

Gabriele Lochis:

So the main principle for the bank is being at the service of our clients in the world in which they live. Their mission is to contribute to a responsible and a sustainable economy by financially advising clients according to their highest ethical standards.

Gabriele Lochis:

So, as you can see, it’s a mix of advising, but also ethic principles. We offer secure then sound and innovative financial solutions with regard to the environment, local development and, of course, social inclusion. For us, CSR activities are absolutely important and very transverse, not across all the different segments of our customers.

Gabriele Lochis:

If you’re then trying to project those views of the mission from other group, our business is basically providing a connected solution in [inaudible 00:06:34] services in order to the companies to be able to optimize their employees’ mobility and outsource the risks associated with the fleet management.

Gabriele Lochis:

We also have cases sometimes where the company, the prospect for us, is already a fleet. So they bought the vehicles, but in this case they need just a support for all the service that go around. This is changing more and more, and they understood that it’s better not to buy vehicles but just to lease them. This is just the companies that are at the early stage of this kind of approach to the leasing against the purchasing.

Gabriele Lochis:

And then if you go to the other side, so we’re talking about big companies used to having multiple countries only these vehicles, what they actually are looking for is expertise, advice on how they can better optimize their own fleet.

Nathan Anibaba:

So tell us then how you think about segmentation and how you target your audience, especially since there are so many different sizes of businesses and their consumer audience that you’re targeting. How do you think about segmentation and targeting?

Gabriele Lochis:

Yeah. So, offering our services from an individual, it can be you and me, to a multinational, it can’t be the same because the needs, as I said also earlier, and especially expectations is different.

Gabriele Lochis:

While for individual and professionals it’s the price and the type of vehicle that drives their interests, for me, the large companies, their need is more to find an expert who can advise on how to better operationally also perform their fleet, or can be also to build a greener mix of company cars, to propose also innovative products.

Gabriele Lochis:

Let’s think about car charging stations or dedicated mobility solution for the employees. We think about e-bikes but also salary sacrifice schemes that are becoming more and more popular and pushed by the employers to provide better mobility solutions for their employees.

Nathan Anibaba:

Makes sense. You’re obviously tasked to deliver growth for Arval UK, part of the BNP Paribas Group, both in the short-term, now, median term, but also in the long-term. But obviously building a brand takes a very long time to do that. You still need to deliver in the short-term. How do you think about balancing short-term performance with longer term brand building?

Gabriele Lochis:

Yes. First of all, the majority of our fleet is composed by what we call a retail customer. So, retail is a mix of individuals and professionals, which are the most difficult client to persuade to keep at the end of the contract, because the way they enter in contract with us, which is benchmarking with different offers against different competitors, is their way of searching also the new vehicle at the end of the contract.

Gabriele Lochis:

So we have to be sure that during the time they are with us, three, four years, we are capable to really let them understand what are our brand values and let them understand especially what they’re going to miss if they’re going to then choose at the end of the contract to go with someone else.

Gabriele Lochis:

So one of our key ingredients of our brand building comes from our customer satisfaction, and this is something that, as I said, now we have to work on every day. It’s one of our pillars of our sales and marketing strategy, and it’s something that we are constantly monitoring. I’m sure you’re familiar with NPS, net promoter score-

Nathan Anibaba:

Yes.

Gabriele Lochis:

… as well as what we share with our prospect on our website.

Gabriele Lochis:

Trust is also an important pillar because it takes, well, decades to build. We don’t have decades, of course, with our customers. So it’s something that at the same time can be lost in a second. So it’s something that we always have to work on. I can give you an example.

Gabriele Lochis:

So to maintain our customer trust during the pandemic, we had to revise our approach to both our social media channels but also our website, to enable us to disseminate the right information to our customers quickly, reducing impact on our call center teams. That’s something never happened before for us, but actually for everyone now, as you know perfectly, two years ago.

Gabriele Lochis:

So, through this approach, we were able to have customers who had experienced difficulties using our Q&A format on our website, which directed them to social champions within the business, who are still responsible for responding to inquiries specific to their area of expertise, quickly, helping to retain trust in our brand.

Gabriele Lochis:

So the impact of that, for instance, was not just in terms of process, but also in terms of [inaudible 00:11:42] in the company. We had to adapt ourself to what the customers were expecting from us due to our unprecedented circumstances.

Nathan Anibaba:

So, as we all know, trust in banking is the foundation of the banking industry, and if it’s eroded, then it can have a huge impact on the brand. Talk about the importance of trust and the Arval UK brand.

Gabriele Lochis:

Yes. You’re perfectly right. Being part of the group is something that is constantly monitoring, and therefore we have to follow some specific guidelines. It can be internally, so from basically also in terms of which type of suppliers we should use, or following the same grid in terms of evaluation, but also in terms of credit risk check.

Gabriele Lochis:

And also externally. A typical example is our brand logo. Our brand logo, if you notice, it’s exactly the same one everywhere. What changes is just name, the site, our green square. It means that immediately we are representing the bank wherever we are in the world. Then, understanding who you precisely are, it’s just written just beside the logo. It can be Arval. It can be Cardif, the insurance bank. It can be personal finance.

Gabriele Lochis:

The logo is always there. So it’s a clear message from the top, from the group, saying you belong to the same banking group. This is something we have to constantly remember every time we want to communicate or also we have to build a new product, in order to ensure it meets those criteria defined by the bank.

Nathan Anibaba:

And of course, in B2B, there’s been a huge amount of research and conversation around emotion in B2B and the role that emotion plays in buying decisions.

Nathan Anibaba:

For a longer time, people thought that emotion was only involved in consumer purchases, detergent, soap, et cetera, but now we actually realize and there’s a lot of evidence to back up the fact that in large B2B purchase decisions emotion plays a huge role in terms of the impact on my career, what will this do for me if I make the wrong decision, et cetera, et cetera.

Nathan Anibaba:

So, how do you think about emotion and the role that emotion plays at every point of the sales cycle or engagement cycle with a prospect, from hiring a car, returning a vehicle, et cetera? Talk a little bit about that.

Gabriele Lochis:

You are perfectly right. We actually do not distinguish really in the way we explain the product between an individual and a professional, if you’re talking about someone who’s just visiting our website looking for a vehicle, because it’s clear that the emotions are basically the same.

Gabriele Lochis:

What are one of the main advantage of leasing a vehicle instead of purchasing? If you can’t afford buying a premium brand, well, with the leasing it makes more easier to have it. Then, of course, we have to evaluate risk, et cetera. Basically, you don’t need to buy a vehicle that costs you 50, 60, 70,000 pounds.

Gabriele Lochis:

So we need to show off those vehicles because, of course, they’re not built by us. We are just leasing you a vehicle that someone has built. So our role is not to show you the car itself at the maximum because this is done by the car manufacturer, this is not our role.

Gabriele Lochis:

Our role is just to make your journey very easy to quickly find the car of your dreams, the car you’re looking for. You maybe already also visited on a dealership and show you clearly what is included on the price, but, at the same time, show you the right vehicle so that it’s really the latest model available on the market.

Gabriele Lochis:

At the same time, sometimes emotions is not necessarily related to, “I want that specific model.” Sometimes it’s just, “I need a vehicle now.” Our role is to ensure that you can easily find a vehicle that is in stock, is available now. You don’t really care about which one. Of course it should be in a range of prices that you can afford, but basically it’s just one click way.

Gabriele Lochis:

Or sometimes, and this is something that we start the process online to, again, going offline, is to look… maybe they’re looking for the best value for money.

Gabriele Lochis:

So one of the main challenges for us is not just for us in terms of marketing. I’m talking about more broadly sales, or what we call our procurement team. It’s to find the right balance between customer expectation, but also what the market proposes at the moment.

Gabriele Lochis:

So, specifically now, in the period where we’re leading now, in the beginning of 2022, but we think we’ll work throughout too over the year, as you know, we have experienced some problems in terms of semiconductor shortage that are impacting also especially but not only the automotive industry. So we know we have to lower the expectation of our users.

Gabriele Lochis:

So our role here is to let you express anyway your emotion but then guiding you, advising you to let you make more pragmatic and say, “Okay. What is really available today on the market? What we can deliver to you now?”, because we don’t have any choice and don’t have any power to produce more vehicles if there is no raw materials available. This is common throughout, everywhere, not just of course in the UK.

Nathan Anibaba:

You mentioned that customers have an expectation of the level of service that they would expect from both Arval and your other competitors as well. I’m interested to know where are the best opportunities for you to exceed that customer expectation and over-deliver and surprise and delight the customer? Is it when they are hiring a vehicle? Is it when they break down, or if they break down? Is it when they return a vehicle?

Nathan Anibaba:

I’m just interested to know where in that customer journey do you find opportunities to exceed that customer expectation.

Gabriele Lochis:

There are multiple areas in steps, moments in the life of the contract with our customers where we can give the famous plus one.

Gabriele Lochis:

So, doing at the beginning can be fine if the vehicle that they thought was not available, or delivering the vehicle earlier than expected. The delivery also of the vehicle is a very clear moment because for the first time they can really touch and see with their own eyes what will be the vehicle they’re going to drive for the next three, four years.

Gabriele Lochis:

We are very, very attentive in what is the process during the delivery. It’s not just giving you the keys and go away. We are here to explain you what the main principle, how to… Not just, of course, how to drive, but how to use the vehicles. They’re becoming more and more like a computer, as you know.

Nathan Anibaba:

Of course.

Gabriele Lochis:

Sometimes there’s not even the keys to plug somewhere.

Nathan Anibaba:

How do I turn on the car?

Gabriele Lochis:

Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Anibaba:

I’ve sat in a vehicle for 10 minutes trying to figure out, “How do I turn on this car?” Sometimes it’s a maze.

Gabriele Lochis:

Yeah. In fact, recently we also had a QR code in some cars where you can show the QR code, you land on a specific, dedicated page, welcome page, where we give other insights, as well as some links to some FAQs present on our website, like a dedicated shortcut. So they can always go straight to the information related to them.

Gabriele Lochis:

Sometimes we also have a dedicated phone number from some specific key clients. So we know already in advance who they are, so we can give more customized service.

Gabriele Lochis:

At the moment, yes, a breakdown unfortunately in case this happened. I always use this as an example, as a paradox for our business. So people more likely to renew with us are the ones who got accident during the contract. Not because of us, of course. Why? Because they can really test finally our service. Because if everything goes well during your contract [inaudible 00:20:41] you only have to call us twice to find a vehicle and to collect at the end the vehicle.

Nathan Anibaba:

Sure.

Gabriele Lochis:

Whereas if you have problems, of course we hope this doesn’t happen, then you have to [inaudible 00:20:54], but we’re also delighted because you can experience really our service and the quality of our services. Good or bad, I will let them decide. But, of course, it’s also the key moment for us to gather more user experience, feedback, to also improve for the future of our services.

Gabriele Lochis:

You have also a situation where at the end of the contract for a customer you didn’t have any problem and that for us was also even better because in terms of pure P&L. We didn’t have to pay any extra, not plan maintenance, having people that are customers saying, “Thank you, but I don’t really understand why I should lease again with you. I didn’t really experience your service. I just drive a car.”

Nathan Anibaba:

It was a commodity. Right? It’s those times when, for whatever reason, there is an issue, that’s when you can show up and really over-deliver and show the value of BNP Arval.

Gabriele Lochis:

Definitely. In fact, we have a team, what we call customer experience team, dedicated to manage also all the complaints, all the feedback coming from Trustpilot for instance, and we know that since we really put more energy and attention on that we saw much better feedback, because sometimes people are using those channels, especially when they’re angry, not necessarily only when they’re happy.

Nathan Anibaba:

Right.

Gabriele Lochis:

When you are like, “It’s okay,” you never use those tools, unfortunately, because also we would like to know why it’s just okay.

Nathan Anibaba:

Sure.

Gabriele Lochis:

And then since in the last years we improved a lot that part of the process, we gathered much, much more information and feedback that helped us already to improve the service, but also we saw the rating improving as well, because sometimes people are just… they just want to leave a message, just be heard. Okay?

Gabriele Lochis:

So we use social media, also tools like Trustpilot, to have an open channel always with our customers.

Nathan Anibaba:

Gabriele, last question before we wrap up the interview. There’s been a huge push towards electrification of vehicles in the last few years, with fewer and fewer people traveling for work due to the pandemic, more people working from home. What impact do these sort of trends have on your ability to drive growth for BNP Arval?

Gabriele Lochis:

The shift towards electrification let’s say started just a few years ago, but actually we are seeing in the last couple of years a real exponential growth.

Gabriele Lochis:

I can tell you for our business, basically, especially in the UK and the Scandinavian countries, so countries where already there are more electrified vehicles, both purchased or leased against the typical what they call [inaudible 00:23:54], so petrol and diesel.

Gabriele Lochis:

One of the reasons of this success is due to all the measures and incentive that government put in place to accelerate this transition. For example, providing low benefit in kind to support people with company cars and salary sacrifice schemes. If you’re driving an electric vehicle, you pay less taxes because you’re helping the environment.

Gabriele Lochis:

Providing grants for charge points, because we also have to consider that, okay, if I’m driving an electric vehicle, where should I go to charge? So now, as I guess you know, there is a law in the UK every new building, home, they have to have included in the building, the construction, a charging point, a home charging point.

Gabriele Lochis:

So, to continue to that transition, we want to be the leaders on guiding and promoting this revolutionary change, and we have great ambition with our strategy to take us to 2025, or the project we call Arval Beyond.

Gabriele Lochis:

So it’s true, especially in the last two years, due to the pandemic, all of us, we change our habits. We’re not going to the office every day now. It’s slightly coming back to normality now, but I think we will never go back to the usual routine.

Gabriele Lochis:

We know that also we approved everyone and have proved that we can be efficient also when you’re working remotely, and we also find out that tends to be solution to the use of public transportation. So that’s why we recently launched alternative mobility solutions such as e-bike, which is a good compromise of staying healthy and being socially responsible.

Gabriele Lochis:

We are more and more insisting on proposing a real shift in terms of the mix of the fleet of our mid to big customers towards electrification, for all I just said.

Nathan Anibaba:

I’m going to bring the interview towards a close now, Gabriele, and just ask for what advice you would give to other senior B2B executives looking to improve the customer experience across their businesses. It may not be in the vehicle leasing sector, it could be in any.

Nathan Anibaba:

What advice do you have for improving the customer’s experience for B2B brands?

Gabriele Lochis:

First of all, be objective and not subjective. So, never say, “I think, I think,” but rely only on data. If you do not have data, implement all the possible tools to start gathering data because they are the only ones that really can explain or communicate straightaway what people are thinking or acting or using your services on tools.

Gabriele Lochis:

Today you can track basically everything thanks to the technology is available today. So it’s absolutely important you start from that. So, becoming like a data-driven company. Then you can then start building your CX strategy, but based on starting from maybe what are the pain points.

Gabriele Lochis:

So the fact that we have people now dedicated on complaints or managing especially the key moment of truth that I already highlight before, but also at the end of the contract, the collection of the vehicle is not the critical moment. I’m saying this now this is critical because data told me already years ago they are areas where we have to be very careful.

Gabriele Lochis:

We had to really understand step-by-step what we are good, where we are not good, what we are perceived good, what we are not perceived good, instead of just sitting on our chair from our office and say, “Okay. What is the truth?” This is something that is still processes [inaudible 00:28:14] but in different areas.

Nathan Anibaba:

Absolutely love that, and a great place to end. Gabriele, thank you so much for being on ClientSide.

Gabriele Lochis:

Thank you very much, Nathan, again, for the invite. It was really, really interesting. Thank you.

Nathan Anibaba:

If you’d like to share any comments on this episode or any episode of ClientSide, then find us online at Fox Agency. If you’d like to appear as a guest on the show, then please email clientside@fox.agency.

Nathan Anibaba:

The people that make this show possible are Zoey Woodward, our executive producer. Hannah Teasdale is our podcast executive. Jennifer Brennan is our digital strategist, supported by Sophia Ravanis and Alice Winterburn, our social and digital experts.

Nathan Anibaba:

I’m Nathan Anibaba. You’ve been listening to ClientSide from Fox agency.

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