Neil Joslin – Chief Operating Officer, e2e Total Loss Vehicle Management tells us now that the lockdown restrictions begin to be eased, e2e will continue to maintain the ‘valuable lessons’ gained throughout the lockdown period.
As the Government eases restrictions and encourages the country back to work, I fear there is a potential risk that as we all rise to the challenge and rush to fire up the engines of our businesses and the economy we may lose some valuable lessons that we have gained during lockdown.
At e2e we are reflecting on the positives that we experienced as a team and business from the lockdown period and seeking to apply new learnings, where appropriate, to help us to innovate for the future.
The lockdown period reinforced our commitment to teamwork and a partnership approach, within our organisation and our network and outwardly with our clients. I was immensely proud of our HQ staff who despite adapting to remote working and furlough cycles remained a superbly unified team, determined to deliver the highest service performance for our clients regardless of the challenges presented by COVID19. They did this with energy, determination and impressive attention to detail, whilst at the same time caring for each other, for example running out of hours social Zoom sessions to make sure everyone had some fun and was coping on a personal level with the unprecedented times.
Our network members equally rose to the challenge with daily communications to update on staffing levels, monitor vehicle collection capabilities and timings and advise on-site accessibility. Network members supported each other to ensure the e2e service and standards could be maintained – a unique benefit derived from our business model as the UK’s largest network of progressive vehicle salvage and recycling agents with 50 nationwide, environmentally compliant sites.
The depth of our relationships with our clients was evident immediately and throughout and demonstrated the very real benefits of our partnership approach. We applied an increased focus on data during lockdown, mining for additional insights that further supported business decision making and which proved to be extremely beneficial for ourselves and our clients. Our insurer clients shared with us excerpts of their data on vehicle usage and motor claims which enabled us to geographically map our service provision in order to ensure network members were ready and able to meet their needs. At the same time, industry concerns had been raised about an increase in motor claims fraud with respect to ‘burnt out’ total loss vehicles, driven by the pandemic and associated economic hardship. We monitored the situation closely and were able to provide clients with data insights which indicated that for the period of five weeks since lockdown started, Category A ‘burnt out’ total loss vehicles increased by virtually 100% as a percentage of our instructions for the period. Latterly the level has reverted to near normal rates and we continue to monitor.
During lockdown, we launched an Emergency Recovery Assistance Service, provided within 90 minutes, which meant our clients could very swiftly support their policyholders. This market-leading turn-around time has proved to be incredibly popular, so much so that clients have asked and we have agreed to retain this service post lockdown.
At a high-level, the period has been a great reminder of the key metrics needed to run our business. We have vast pools of data that we regularly dive into to assess performance and identify improvement, but the last three months have focused our minds upon the really important measures and metrics which keep our business healthy. An obvious example is company finances and how critical it is to protect cash, particularly at a time when every other business is doing the same – protecting cash.
Looking forward we are already seeing the impact of the renewed increase in road usage with motor claims on the rise. Our data, compared to two months ago tells us volumes are rising more rapidly than at any time during lockdown. Beyond more road usage, the increase in total loss claims can be further explained on two counts. The first is the difficulty in sourcing parts to repair vehicles that ordinarily wouldn’t be written off, and we are supporting clients with this challenge via access to our 5million warranty assured reclaimed parts. The second is the upturn in people buying used vehicles, preferring to drive rather than use public transport, resulting in more ‘aged’ vehicles on the road. With the predicted severe depression we are in tune with the need to maximise business efficiency for ourselves and our clients and our investment in technology and work processes, assisted by our lockdown experience continues.
We have always been proud of our partnership approach and our focus on our people and network members who are at the very heart of our business and right now, as we begin to chart new territory for the post COVID environment, I really couldn’t be any more proud.
To find out more about e2e, head to www.e2etotalloss.com
