If you run a rental fleet of cars or RVs, you probably don’t need much convincing of the following statement: Your business is highly complicated, complex, and labor intensive. Anyone who manages a fleet knows that it can be extremely difficult to manually track maintenance needs, insurance paperwork, inventory management, and more. This entire process demands a solution that works hand-in-glove with your business needs so you can concentrate on sales and customer service.
Thankfully, there are professional solutions — like those run by Zubie — that can provide your rental business with many major benefits, save you money, and allow you to redirect limited staff resources to more useful purposes. Here’s a look at some of the many benefits of rental fleet management.
Equipment That Works Together
Are there one-off solutions that you can purchase from other companies? Absolutely! You can always purchase dashcams, GPS monitoring, or maintenance trackers from other companies. After all, there is no question that these tools can be valuable.
However, if you do so, you miss out on an invaluable opportunity to have your rental monitoring equipment work together.
For example, one service you may need to track is the potential valuation of a vehicle in your fleet. Such a tool can help you determine the net worth of the cars and RVs you manage. However, it can be challenging to determine this information without an in-depth understanding of how past customers have used your fleet. You’ll need to know the vehicle’s maintenance history, where it has been, and how often it has been used to have a solid idea of how much the vehicle is worth.
The above example is a prime example of showing how comprehensive vehicle solutions can work together. This information can easily integrate if you have a total fleet management system. If you don’t have such a system, you may have to pull different data points from half a dozen systems or more. Doing so will complicate your life unnecessarily, add to staff burdens, and potentially provide you with inaccurate information.
Comprehensive Solutions Reduce Staff Training Time
If you manage a fleet of rental cars or RVs, consider all of the data points you have to monitor or potentially access:
- Maintenance logs
- GPS monitoring
- Theft protection
- Valuation tracking
- Driver performance
- Vehicle performance
- …much, much more….
If you have different systems for different facets of your business, you are in a world of confusion among your staff. Your employees will have to understand how these systems work, how to answer questions about these systems, and how to manage updates to the various technological tools.
In other words, you may need a separate staff person to track these updates and ensure you get the most out of your various tracking systems!
This example is inappropriate from an efficiency and staff time perspective. Thankfully, there are better ways to manage fleet concerns. Purchasing comprehensive solutions that integrate — like those offered by Zubie — ensures you have one platform to track and one platform only. Using one platform allows your staff to train on a single system. It also means you can work with one vendor instead of multiple, allowing you to have a single point of contact to address any questions or concerns.
How Professional Fleet Management Benefits Your Customers
Every rental company has had moments where charges against a customer that the customer disputes. “That dent was already there!” or “The fuel wasn’t filled when I drove it off the lot!” are two of the most common complaints.
Thanks to professional solutions, this is no longer a concern.
Professional fleet management addresses and logs this information in electronic form, complete with pictures and other evidence. You can send this data to your customer before they drive your vehicle off the lot. Doing so can protect customers from themselves and ensure that you and your customer are on the same page about the rental history of a vehicle.
Protect Your Property From Customers
Let’s face it: Customers can be your worst enemy if you are in the car or RV rental business. You can lay out every regulation for customers and make them sign paperwork acknowledging what they can, cannot, and have to do with the vehicle they are renting. Still, in the end, they may violate these conditions anyway.
For example, many rental car companies have restrictions on where their vehicles can go or how much they have been driven in a day. These instructions are always clear to customers, but sometimes, customers ignore these restrictions.
Thanks to certain programs, like Asset Trak, you can always know where your vehicle is. Other programs, like a Rental Connect program, are linked to diagnostic data. These tools can allow you to determine if your customers are violating their rental conditions. This feature allows you to contact them and change the behavior before it becomes expensive or dangerous.
In other words, technological fleet management tools enable you to protect your fleet and your customers from expensive fines. These protections can improve customer relations and increase the odds of generating return business in the long run.
Professional fleet management services won’t just benefit you: They’ll benefit your customers. Furthermore, they can save you time, money, and invaluable staff attention. Are you looking for more information on how fleet management services can help your business grow? Contact Zubie today, and let us provide you with a demo, quote, and free trial.