Dear buyer,

Do you find yourself smiling after doing business with OPENLANE? It’s my job to make sure you’re absolutely grinning from ear to ear. As the head of our Marketing, Sales and Customer Service department, it’s my responsibility to ensure you’re happy every time you deal with us.

And this is how … For the next three months, I’ll be putting my writing skills to the test in a series of blog posts about customer experiences, the improvements we are making and our other exciting plans for the future.

Here are just a few of the improvements we’ve been working on:

1. A faster website

Is there anyone, anywhere in the world, who likes slow websites? A few customers found our website too slow-moving and complicated. The whizz kids in our IT Department immediately responded. They’ve been making the website faster, more streamlined, user-friendly and hassle-free.

2. Improved customer service

A fast website is nothing without fast customer support. We have increased the number of people in our support teams to offer faster, better responses to your questions and queries.

3. Better claims handling

Our new, dedicated claim-handling team offers streamlined and uniform responses to complaints. They have also revised our Claims Handling Policy. The new version will come into effect in the short term. Keep your eyes and ears open.

4. Faster processing

Delays? You don’t like them. And we don’t either. Which is why we now process payments more frequently, allowing faster release of pick-up authorizations and shorter waiting times.

And fewer delays related to our partners. We’ve improved our service level agreements with them to ensure that instead of wasting time waiting, you experience the service we want you to have.

5. Easier, faster, hassle-free 

We have our work cut out for us: we would like to sell 100,000 cars (by 2021). How do we plan to achieve this?

• By making better choices of the vehicles we auction.
• With better matches between buyer demand and the vehicles put on offer.
• By using initiatives like after-auction bidding and price barometers to increase your chances of winning.

These changes will makes everything faster, easier and more hassle-free, with faster turnover for you, better cars for your customers and plenty of reasons for you to buy from OPENLANE again!

6. Improving your customer experience

Do you remember the little satisfaction surveys you received each time you bought a car from us? We have been using this feedback to make our services better—and you happier. We will also use this information to give our sellers feedback, and to rate the sellers themselves, making it easier for you to know who you’re dealing with.

What do you think of all these improvements? Please let me know: send feedback or questions to me at [email protected]. You’re sure to receive a response.

Keep an eye out for my next post. You’ll find out about a new service we are implementing: ‘Optimo’.

Kind regards,

Gino Vleminckx

Chief Commercial Officer
OPENLANE