Hennecke Fleet Consulting
Consulting: DRIVER SATISFACTION
Hennecke Fleet Consulting offers consulting services for fleet management in various areas. See more about this here: Overview fleet management services.
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The following is a deep dive into the topic of driver satisfaction, in order to give you an idea about our services in that area of competence.
Driver satisfaction in a company fleet
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The internal customer of a fleet or mobility manager is the driver, resp. the employee who needs mobility. Employee (= driver) satisfaction is an important goal for each company, because happy drivers and employees will work more productive in their daily jobs, will show more loyalty to your company and may even help you to attract new employees.
Determinants of driver satisfaction
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Like in every other area of customer satisfaction, driver satisfaction is determinded by the drivers' experiences in relation to their given expectations: The fulfillment of expecations will lead to a neutral judgement, negative deviations will create uphappyness and distractors, and exceeding the expectations will lead to happy drivers and promotors.
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Drivers' expectations and experiences in general touch two levels:
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Firstly they relate simply to the perceived quality of services that they receive: the vehicle ordering and delivery process, how maintenance and accidents are handled. But also how friendly drivers they are treated by your fleetmanagement-team.
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Secondly driver satisfaction is influenced by emotional aspects related to the car itself (status symbol). What car and benefits does a driver receive? Especially in relation to other employees, but also with regards to other people in the driver's personal life.
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Note: The importance of the second level is certainly depending on the industry the company operates in. But it surely can be said that the product "car" typically creates much higher emotions than many other products. Who drives what car is always a highly emotional question, even in companies where cars are only given as tool of trade.
Measurement of driver satisfaction
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Once you have clarified what are the relevant aspects of driver satisfaction for your employees, you can define how to measure it. Key questions to be answered are:
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What content do you need to measure? What elements of the two levels ...
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Who and how often? All drivers periodically, sample of drivers, specifically after a certain event,... ?
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What technology to use? For example NPS (Net Promoter Score) method, online questionaire, interviews,...
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Management of driver satisfaction
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In the end, driver satisfaction is impacted by management activities in all areas of fleet & mobility.​ Most important areas are:
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Standard fleet operations: Improving / maintaining good quality (reliability and speed) in all operations with direct driver contact: Vehicle ordering, maintenance and accident handling, fines management,...
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A specific focus here is the communication with the drivers: Beyond the required friendlyness in standard processes, this means: Access to information about car/mobility via an App, pre-active communication to drivers etc.
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Car policy: Making specific decisions about vehicle eligibilty, vehicle options, rules about private usage, reimbursements for damages,... And further related to access to alternative ways to transport & mobility that fit into the private life of the driver.
We help you to set up efficient systems to measure the satisfaction of your drivers (internal customers) and to untertake specific actions to improve driver satisfaction. CONTACT US to learne more.
Cost savings vs. driver satisfaction
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Most cost saving initiatives of fleet management have a negative impact on driver satisfaction. For example the downsizing of vehicles or the increase of recharges to drivers after accidents. Some alternatives however have little or no impact on driver satisfaction, e.g. die financing strategy (lease vs buy) or the supplier setup.
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There may be exceptional cases where you primarily want to increase driver satisfaction at all costs. In most cases, however, driver satisfaction is a goal secondary to cost savings.
Therefore you will usually first define cost savings-activities and then have to assess the impact on driver satisfaction.
Learn more about the trade-off between cost savings and driver satisfaction: What are the concrete initiatives in the graphics here? What else can you do? Ask us for more info!