With a keen focus on innovation and customer experience, our digital solutions drive efficiency, seamlessly integrate and enhance customer journeys.
Today we’re catching up with Jo Ashe, our Digital Marketing Manager who is pivotal in ensuring our digital solutions are effective and truly make a difference.
Can you tell us about your Santander Consumer history?
I joined the marketing team at Santander Consumer in 2016 and have been working on all things digital since, coming from Hyundai Capital’s Marketing Team.
Tell us a bit about your role and our digital tool offering?
My role as a Digital Marketing Manager within the Channel Development Team means my focus is on digital transformation initiatives, ensuring the seamless integration of our digital tools and applications. I am lucky to work on various projects and colleagues from many teams across the business to enhance customer and dealer experiences, aligning digital strategies with business goals. This includes Apply Online, Finance Calculator, MI Business App, Eligibility Checker, E-Salesperson.
How do our digital tools work to support our partners and enhance the customer experience?
Our digital applications are provided to supporting dealers and OEM’s free of charge. They call into our API’s to ensure accurate quoting facilities. Our digital applications empower our customers to self-serve parts, or all of their finance application journeys digitally. And, our digital tools are all fully compliant, which is so important in this highly regulated industry. Over 600 Dealers and OEM’s are currently using our digital solutions.
What are some of the challenges dealers face today and how do our solutions address them?
Many customers are still not completely willing to complete a full end to end online journey for their vehicle purchase. It is about empowering customers to be able to switch between online and dealership interactions in a way which suits them. Our digital tools have been built modularly, so dealers can pick and choose which most suits them and their customer journeys.
You recently launched an eligibility checker; can you tell us a bit about this?
The online Eligibility Checker for customers is our most recent launch. Allowing dealers to provide customers a user-friendly tool for them to check their eligibility and give a quick indication of their likelihood of being accepted for finance at their convenience.
The tool greatly benefits the customer, giving them the confidence in their decision to proceed with their finance application, whether that be online or through a dealership. Our dealers are also gaining improved efficiencies. Within 2 months of launching, 1 dealership had a 10% increase in efficiency.
What upcoming trends in automotive digital marketing should dealers prepare for?
Sustainability is important, and there are more electric vehicles (EV) entering the car market. There are many OEM’s pushing to promote EVs, which can resonate with environmentally conscious consumers. At Santander Consumer we’re reviewing our total cost of ownership tool (TCO) and seeing whether improvements can be made for our supporting dealers and OEMs to use within their websites. TCO is about empowering customers to think beyond the ‘on the road cash price’, to understand the true cost of running a vehicle. There is a strong focus internally to automate the customer journey and provide the best customer experience for both dealers working with us and for the end customers financing their vehicle as much as possible in a simple easy to use way.