By Jeofrey Bean

Customer Experience Leadership: Many times, giving the customer more control in an existing situation can innovate a new product or service and upset dominating players.

This is particularly true if you consider Internet communications and giving the customer a sense of empowerment. Do not mistake this for assigning the customer an undesirable self-service role for cost reduction. That’s another rule!

READ MORE

By CEI

No matter how safe our roads, vehicles and drivers become, traffic accidents are still going to happen, and fleets are going to spend money –lots of it – fixing those vehicles. Fleets spend on average four percent of their overall operating budget on collision repairs, and are always under pressure to reduce expenses.

By following these eight steps for each and every accident, fleets can save up to 10% or more on their annual accident repair bill:

READ MORE

Ever since GPS-based fleet tracking was introduced in the early 1990s, drivers have objected to the big-brother aspect of the technology. Today, GPS tracking is so common that it has become more or less accepted by drivers.

Nevertheless, many drivers still distrust management and the uses they believe the company is making of the data being collected.

Now, however, Azuga, a Silicon Valley start-up, is applying gamification techniques to resolving any remaining tension between management and drivers.

READ MORE

Self-driving cars generate a lot of headlines. But there’s already a new kind of car on the road that’s completely changing the vehicle market.

The connected car is equipped with internet connections and software that allow people to stream music, look up movie times, be alerted of traffic and weather conditions, and even power driving-assistance services such as self-parking.

By 2020, BI Intelligence estimates that 75% of cars shipped globally will be built with the necessary hardware to connect to the internet.

READ MORE

If you read the news each day, you might be under the impression that few people drive to work alone. Headlines frequently shout about the popularity of carpools and HOV lanes and new bike paths and how more people than ever are taking mass transit — especially in Planet Earth’s growing cities.

But the website Flowing Data was suspicious of such assumptions. And so, it took data from the United States Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey and compiled it into a beautiful, interactive, county-by-county map that shows exactly how Americans get to work.

READ MORE

More and more, fleets are beginning to realize that using the power of the ever-present smartphone or tablet, whether the device belongs to the company or the employee – brings a whole range of new possibilities.

Chief among these, said Ron Katz, Chevin Fleet Solutions Senior Vice President, North American Sales, is the ability to use these devices to help manage compliance, fulfil legislative obligations and to proactively monitor maintenance oversight.

READ MORE

Once upon a time, frugal four-cylinder engines were to be found only in the most modest of motor cars. Today, they are being fitted to even luxury models.

The big difference, of course, is that present four-bangers are turbocharged—that is, they are force-fed more air than normal, allowing them to burn proportionally more fuel. The result is a compact power unit that punches over its weight, yet gets good miles to the gallon while emitting less in the way of pollution.

READ MORE

By Matthew Betz, Vice President Business Development, Fleet at Motus, LLC

“Time is Money” – Benjamin Franklin

“Productivity – The amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy – is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of CEOs and Finance Ministers.” – Tim Jackson

It’s not often that you can improve on a Benjamin Franklin quote, but for purposes of our conversation today, I really think Tim Jackson’s quote is much more useful. The question you may be asking yourself, as a fleet professional, is “Why should I be thinking about driver productivity? After all, isn’t that the job of sales management, or operations management, or an efficiency consultant?” My answer is simple – If the quest for increased productivity is what haunts your CEO, doesn’t it benefit you to find opportunities to help the Modern Mobile Worker increase efficiency and productivity?

READ MORE

There’s little question that the nation’s highways are safer than ever, with traffic-related fatalities at historic lows. However, one trend that has safety officials concerned is that operating a motor vehicle under the influence of prescription drugs or marijuana is fast exceeding drunk driving in the U.S.

While stricter and more aggressively enforced drunk-driving laws has helped reduce the number of motorists having alcohol in their system by nearly one-third since 2007, one in four drivers tested positive for at least one drug that could influence his or her safety behind the wheel.

READ MORE

Apple Inc. may already be positioned to evolve into a global automaker in many ways that other Silicon Valley companies aren’t.

The Cupertino, California-based tech company has put a few hundred employees to work on a secretive project to develop an electric automobile, a person familiar with the matter has said. While Apple often tests ideas that don’t get released, the work underscores the company’s long-held desire to play a greater role in the automotive space, which is ripe for more of a merging with users’ digital lives.

READ MORE