Oodle is one of the fastest-growing motor finance companies in the UK. Founded in Oxford in 2016, it now has three offices across the UK. The company is backed by KKR and conducted a debt financing round with Citi Investments in 2018. It services the growing need that consumers have as they look to replace broken down or ageing cars. Offering finance on over 20,000 cars from over 300 dealers across the UK. It has now helped over 150,000 customers get the best car for their budget.
The challenge
One of the main challenges that Oodle faced was understanding the requirements of its customers, who may be vulnerable. They are making one of the largest purchases they make in their life, buying a car. Which is critical to maintaining a job and other important things.
People are often hesitant to reveal the full details of their situation. The Oodle customer service teams were looking for a solution that might help them with the task of uncovering the real needs of consumers contacting them.
They selected NICE Enlighten AI, which analyses data from across voice, text and digital conversations. This uncovers insights and drive improvement to the customer experience. The solution now analyses the interactions between Oodles’s contact centre agents and consumers to identify vulnerable customers. It suggests how the agent can adapt their behaviour during the call. This helps to drive better and fairer outcomes for consumers. Which supports the Financial Conduct Authority’s Consumer Duty guidelines and has an influence on customer satisfaction scores.
Jessica Bates, COO of Oodle Car Finance, “At Oodle, our enduring goal is to provide an exceptional experience for all our customers, and we want our customers in vulnerable circumstances to receive good customer outcomes that take into consideration their situations. Our objective is to ensure consistent, fair treatment for all.
“To ensure we embed this into our culture and provide the quality our customers have come to expect, we selected NICE Enlighten AI for Vulnerable Customers. The solution enables us to rapidly and automatically incorporate the visibility and guidance needed to effectively support customers in vulnerable circumstances, ensure fair treatment and deliver exactly the service they need, when they need it.”
Making a difference at Oodle
Now deployed, the solution works seamlessly behind the scenes, measuring and analysing every interaction in real-time. The solution then surfaces the insights that can help Oodle across several metrics. The customer sentiment analysis can identify things such as pain points related to process issues, product defects, and agent training issues.
A post-call analysis can help identify trends and root causes that might improve handling times, reduce repeat contacts, and improve processes across all calls. It can suggest areas where self-service is more appropriate and help improve First Contact Resolution (FCR) metrics across all channels.
With sentiment analysis, agents can improve real-time responses to vulnerable customers. And help train agent soft skill behaviours, literally learning on the job in a way that would not have been possible a few years ago. These insights and changes to response also help improve customer satisfaction. As the best outcomes are delivered to consumers in the right way. The AI-backed solution is also helping to improve operational metrics, thereby lowering costs as agent hold times are reduced and first-call resolution increases.
Since deploying the NICE solution, Oodle has also improved how it identifies vulnerable customers. It is more accurate and identifies them earlier in the process. This is an ongoing iterative improvement as the systems continue to learn and improve from the interactions across every touch point.
Oodle already has a leading end-to-end car finance solution in place. The NICE platform is enabling it to improve the customer experience. Ensuring that it maintains customer loyalty and delivers the best experience to every customer.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
As the cost of living climbs, consumers face a dilemma. Keep the car that is breaking down, with an increasing cost of repair. Or consider purchasing a new car with a limited budget. Research by WhatCar revealed that a third of drivers are holding on to their cars for longer than before due to rising costs.
Oodle offers a different approach and one that now lends a sympathetic ear to callers because of the NICE analytics. As a financial services provider, Oodle must also balance the regulatory requirements alongside its business requirements. The NICE solution is helping them achieve this.
Darren Rushworth, President, NICE International, said,“We are pleased to help Oodle Car Finance support their employees in delivering service that not only meets the FCA’s Consumer Duty guidelines but also creates frictionless experiences that help to better support all customers, but with particular consideration for those in vulnerable circumstances. By choosing NICE Enlighten AI, Oodle has distinguished itself in its industry with real-time analysis of every interaction and rapid responsiveness to the specific needs of all its customers.”
