Fleet Management Market Research
Fleet Management is the management of commercial vehicles for trucking, shipping, logistics and railcars.
It’s often said that America’s economy and many other economies run on trucking. Fleet Management is the core of many economies.
Fleets consist of cars, vans, trucks, construction machinery, forklifts, trailers, Aviation machinery, aircraft, ships and rail cars. Key decision makers in Fleet Management include Owners, Operators, Fleet Managers, Dealers, and Independent Repair Technicians.
With the rise of technology, drones and IoT, significant opportunities for growth and disruption exist in the industry.
About Fleet Management Market Research
Market Research provides the insight, data, tools and strategies to keep Fleet Managers, Dealerships and Commercial Vehicle companies competitive in a fast-paced market. Here are the key topics we examine in Fleet Management Market Research:
- Purchase decisions
- After sales
- Customer service experience and expectations
- Ways to improve their customer relationship
- The path to purchasing new trucks
- Pricing and Willingness to Pay
- Brand perceptions of client and key competitors
Opportunities
- Consider improving the customer experience in order to drive more traffic to dealer service centers.
- Stronger customer connections
- Personal Account management style service
- Proactive sending of updates and news in a non-sales manner.
- App with 24 hour customer service support
- Word of Mouth Marketing
- Supply Chain Management
- Boosting volume by lowering price
- Offer incentives to visit service centers
- Train staff on effective customer service
- Explore ways to handle high traffic during heavy seasons
- Creating a loyalty program:
- To encourage owners/managers to bring in trucks for regulatory issues, offer incentives
- Provide deals on OEM parts or a new truck to foster repeat business.
- Implement a client training program to allow in-house techs to do simple repairs as a measure of good faith.
- Lowering maintenance costs at dealerships
- Providing a Fast Track at Dealerships for simple repairs
- Increasing dealership repair staff during heavy business seasons
- Assigning Service Reps who know individual client’s business
- Creating a 24/7 hour customer support app
- Offering the option to come out to the site
Challenges
- Information sources
- Licensing and compliance
- Vehicle maintenance
- Maintenance costs
- Subrogation
- Safety
- Liability
- Vehicle leasing and financing
- Driver retention
- Speed management
- Vehicle insurance
- Availability of mechanics
- Efficiency and Sustainability
- Accident management
- Vehicle telematics: tracking and diagnostics
- Driver management
- Driver reputability and reliability
- Oil prices
- Fuel management
- Costly Upgrades
- Low brand awareness
- Noisy, Rattles or Bumpy driving experience
- Emissions problems
- Poor reliability and frequent breaks down
Purchase Decision Drivers
- Purchase criteria and triggers
- Branding, function vs emotional benefits
- Regulations
- Repair costs
- Performance
- Technology Customization
- Driver needs
- Fuel Economy
- Extended warranty
- Maintenance
- Improvements
- Price
- Quality
- Customer Service
- Brand differentiation
- Availability of dealers
- Better weight and efficiency
- Extended warranty
- Technology
- Cabin features
- Style
- Promotion
- Advertising
- Comfortable interior
Dealer Service Quality Barriers
- Perceptions that OEMs are high price, low value.
- Perceptions that new vehicles are becoming too complicated to fix in-house
- Perceptions that vehicle complexity is deliberately done by OEM to force trucks into their service centers.
- Perceptions that when drivers bring the truck in, they tell you that you need to fix 10 other things than just the problem
- Perceptions that dealer repairs take too long.
- Dislike of hard sales pitches
- Perceptions that Independent dealers are faster
- Higher perceived value from Independent technicians who will come to your site
- Independent mechanics are viewed as faster and cheaper than dealers
- Perceptions that dealers don’t care about the small companies.
- Perceptions that the customer service is rude
- Perceptions that service is inconsistent
- Feelings that customer service is considered poor at dealers and is a barrier to wanting to go in.
- Feelings that the dealer is not on your side after the purchase.
- Perceptions that dealers are not approachable
- Lack of a relationship with dealers
Concept Testing
Concept testing can gain reactions to and refine potential marketing and communications efforts of the client service department. If our client wishes to implement pricing programs in order to incentivize customers, quantitative research can test messaging, pricing scenarios and volume simulations to understand potential revenues from new service programs.
Barriers and Customer Painpoints
The key barriers to going to the dealer for maintenance may include for example:
- Price
- Excessive length of repair time
- Lack of courteous staff
- Unwanted Upselling
- Inconsistent Service
- Slow service during heavy season
How Companies can Uncover Opportunities from Fleet Management Market Research
New opportunities can emerge from Market Research such as the following examples:
- Optimizing pricing
- Streamlining the repair time
- Becoming more responsive
- Building relationships Customers by going directly to drivers
- Educating mechanics on newer technology
- Providing a list of improvements required from manufacturers and dealers
- Assigning a consistent representative for my business
- Extending warranty lengths
- Creating a fast lane for simple repairs
- Improving customer service
- Making drivers feel like they are with you for the life of the truck
- Offering incentives
- Providing Loaners
- Giving regular updates from the manufacturers