Customers are looking for convenience and improved assistance from finance and leasing companies, for a seamless user experience, which means enabling customers to engage with the organization anywhere and anytime. Offering an enriched customer experience by becoming truly customer-centric and meeting today’s high customer expectations increases loyalty, retention, and value. Integrating AI enabled technology is thus paving the way towards new, more agile business models and, in the long-term, to the potential development of products and services that better answer customers’ needs.
In an increasingly competitive Romanian leasing industry, with ever-higher numbers of players entering the market, growth has begun to depend on identifying new ways to drive revenue. Visionary companies, with a clear sight of the future of the market, like OTP Leasing, had begun to realize the inevitability of bringing digital transformation to an otherwise quite restrictive and traditional sector. The onset of a global pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 only hammered the point home and accelerated the digital transformation process.
65% of customers believe that their experience on the company website is crucial in their loyalty and willingness to recommend the brand. At present, an essential pillar to base the customer experience upon is the enabling of digital interactions anytime and anywhere.
Thus, ELIZA was launched, a virtual assistant chatbot based on DRUID technology that automates the credit offer process for companies and, simultaneously, enables 24/7, one-click customer support for existing customers. Deployed directly on the OTP Leasing website, ELIZA can be accessed by both existing customers through the secure My Leasing platform and by potential customers.
OTP Leasing’s customers can have instant access to queries related to their account or the status of their installments. They can also download the necessary documentation required to report damages or to enable travel abroad. Potential customers, on the other hand, can use the chatbot to generate various installment simulations. Should they wish to proceed with the leasing offer, ELIZA further identifies and captures the company data starting from its unique tax registration code, automatically verifying its financial and legal situations, and then saving the collected information in the company’s CRM.
For customers, digital provides them with a seamless and superior customer experience, and their entire customer journey is likely to shortly become fully digital. Interestingly, in 2025, it is expected that 85% of a customer’s brand experience will occur without any human interaction.
As with global trends in other industries, asset finance and leasing are fast becoming an all-digital experience. Those finance and leasing institutions that do not digitally transform will soon find themselves in a very precarious position compared to their more digitally agile competitors.