FleetManagementWeekly AmeriFleet
March 17, 2015

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Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


The Fleet User Experience

Because all aspects of the fleet business center around the experience of the end user, we are especially pleased to introduce a new monthly feature in Fleet Management Weekly. This week, User Experience (UX) Strategist Wendy Eichenbaum debuts a new column: The Fleet CX Toolkit.” A companion piece to author Jeof Bean’s Fleet Customer Experience column, the articles will provide the next steps to implement and improve CX within a company. Each article will discuss a critical customer data point and introduce a tool to gather and analyze that data.

Highly skilled in her field, Wendy started her own UX consulting firm in 2008, Ucentric design, and is an adjunct professor at Cal State University, Fullerton. There she teaches a class that she created, User-Centered Design for Web and Mobile Interfaces.

We have decades-long experience in the realm of customer service and thoroughly appreciated Wendy’s first article in the series: “Pain Point Interviews: Customers Know What They Don’t Need.” Indeed they do.

Janice Sutton
Executive Editor


INDEX: Find All of the Fleet News and Information You Need on Newly Redesigned FleetManagementWeekly.com

Browse these categories:

Association News — Find out what’s going on at associations of importance to the fleet community.
Fleet Trends & Issues – Check out articles about current fleet issues and trends
Fleet Safety – Read news about various aspects of fleet safety, including interviews of fleet safety leaders
Fleet Videos – Watch video clips of fleet newsmakers
Interviews – Read Fleet Management Weekly’s interviews with industry leaders.
Telematics — Learn about the latest in fleet telematics news

Read monthly columns: Fleet Marketing, Fleet Asset Management, The Mobile Employee, On Accident Management, The Fleet Customer Experience, Think Global Plan Local, and Fleet Safety.


christiano-jim

VIDEO: Keeping Vehicle Transport Customers Happy

When it comes to vehicle transport, PARS offers a host of solutions – and does whatever it takes to make sure their customers are happy.



VIDEO: Getting the Right Information
callahan-tom
  Telematics is a Game-Changer
 

The right data helps fleet managers make the right decisions – and the information you can get from telematics today just keeps getting better.


Click here to watch video
VIDEO: Smart Safety Tips
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  Changing Lanes – Collision Free
 

Did you know you are three times more likely to be in an accident when changing lanes? Watch this video from Driving Dynamics for tips on how to avoid these dangers.


Click here to read more



The Fleet Spot


afla-logo Registration Open for AFLA’s Second Annual Mid-Year Forum

Registration is now open for AFLA’s second annual Mid-Year Forum which will take place Thursday, April 30, 2015 at the Holiday Inn O’Hare in Chicago, IL.
This one day regional meeting will focus on:
• Telematics,
• Alternative Fuels & Fuel Technologies
• Safety.
Registration rates are $100 for AFLA members and $150 for non-members.

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Bob Graham ARI’s Bob Graham to Speak at the 20th Annual Conference of Automotive Remarketing

ARI® announced that Bob Graham, vice president of remarketing, will participate in a panel discussion at the 20th annual Conference of Automotive Remarketing planned for March 18-19 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As chairman of the International Automotive Remarketing Association (IARA), Bob will draw upon his more than 40 years’ experience in remarketing to discuss the IARA’s position on significant trends that are having an impact on the remarketing industry – both today and in the future.

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Richard Traister Richard Traister Promoted to Director, Account Development at Driving Dynamics

Driving Dynamics, Inc., a provider of advanced performance driver safety training and fleet risk management services, announced today that Richard Traister has been named as the company’s director of account development.

Richard’s association with Driving Dynamics began in June 2012 in a consultative account development capacity. Reporting to Art Liggio, Driving Dynamics president, in his expanded director role, Richard will be responsible for providing new opportunities for growth by delivering ongoing market analysis, expanding constituent touch points, managing new product rollouts and conducting strategic account reviews.

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Levi McCoy LeasePlan to Share Expertise at Conference of Automotive Remarketing

Levi McCoy, director of remarketing at LeasePlan, and president of International Automotive Remarketers Alliance (IARA), will share his industry expertise during the 2015 Conference of Automotive Remarketing on March 18-19 in Las Vegas.

Levi’s experience and extensive knowledge of the remarketing industry will allow him to share valuable information with attendees at each session.

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The Fleet Customer Experience

By Jeofrey Bean

The success of people interacting with your technology is a critical part of the customer experience for your potential and existing customers. You can inspire people to go into the future with an extraordinary customer and user experience.

Putting the time, money and expertise up front to develop a pleasing IT user experience for people who interact with your technology gives people confidence and motivation to embrace the new. It is like a light, people will go to places in the future they would not see or understand if using the technology was a cumbersome and dark experience.

Tom Parham, is the Principal of Technology Leadership Services. He’s an accomplished Information Technology (IT) leader with experience at Deloitte Consulting, Genoptix and NBC Universal. – “If your newly developed IT based service dovetails with a known and desired need then you’ve got it easy. Produce it, market it, sell it.”

On the other hand, what if you have come up with something faster and better, but something nobody has been asking for or even yet imagined?

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The Fleet CX Toolkit

Jeof Bean’s monthly column, The Fleet Customer Experience, delves into the best practices for service design. But companies that are new to CX may wonder how to put this strategy into practice. So Fleet Management Weekly is pleased to introduce a new monthly column, The Fleet CX Toolkit, written by UX Strategist Wendy Eichenbaum. The articles will provide the next steps to implement and improve CX within a company. Each article will discuss a critical customer data point and introduce a tool to gather and analyze that data.

Pain Point Interviews are a quick, inexpensive, and powerful way to find out what is upsetting your customers the most. Then you can prioritize your development schedule to address the most pressing needs first.

READ MORE

 
OReGO Begins in July

By Michael Sheldrick, Senior Editor

Because Oregon was the first state to adopt a gasoline tax — in 1919 — it’s only fitting that it is the first state to adopt a road pricing project. At this point it is only a pilot program for light vehicles, and it will begin in July with 5,000 volunteers.

Initially, the program is designed to be revenue-neutral. Drivers who chose the road pricing option will pay 1.5 cents per mile driven. They will receive a rebate on gasoline taxes if they are less than the mileage. One of the reasons for adoption of the program —OReGO — was that hybrids and EVs were not paying for the roads that are financed by the gasoline tax — along with federal matching funds, also provided by those taxes.

That could become a bigger problem in the future, but the problem is immediate.

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Fleet Trends & Issues


North Carolina Amtrak Crash Renews Focus on Rail Crossing Safety

The drivers of an oversize truck and its escort vehicle had as long as 20 minutes to call an emergency number that could have stopped an Amtrak train that was bearing down on the North Carolina railroad crossing where the truck became stuck.

The emergency number was posted at the crossing and printed in materials both drivers should have possessed, and their training should have told them when to call it and where to find it.

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Clean Energy Opens Newest Public Natural Gas Station in Orlando

Last week, Clean Energy Fuels Corp. announced the opening of its newest natural gas fueling station at Orlando International Airport. The station is open to the public 24/7 and can accommodate a variety of natural gas vehicles ranging in size from passenger cars and airport support vehicles to heavy-duty trucks.

“With over 57 million tourists annually, Orlando is one of the most important tourist destinations in the United States. There is a tremendous opportunity to utilize natural gas in transportation to cut emissions, improving air quality throughout the region,” said Mark Riley, vice president, Clean Energy Fuels.

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Is Your (Auto) Job About to be Automated

Hoping to calm criticism, ride-hailing service Uber this month announced that it plans to have at least 1 million women drivers in place by the end of the decade.

But those jobs might be short-lived. A new study by Oxford University warns that as much as 47% of all U.S. jobs could be automated out of existence over the next 20 years.

Uber and rival Lyft are already giving serious thought to turning to fully driverless vehicles – as is Google, the tech giant already putting together a fleet of autonomous vehicles that will be used in a test program near its Silicon Valley headquarters.

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An Autonomous Car is Going Cross-Country for the First Time

On March 22, an autonomous car will set out from the Golden Gate Bridge toward New York for a 3,500-mile drive that, if all goes according to plan, will push robo-cars much closer to reality.

Audi’s taken its self-driving car from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas, Google’s racked up more than 700,000 autonomous miles, and Volvo’s preparing to put regular people in its robot-controlled vehicles.

READ MORE

Minimizing Driver Distractions

It’s hard to resist the temptation to do two things at once, even when one of those things is driving. To make multitasking easier and safer, automakers and technology companies have provided drivers with the ability to use voice commands to operate smartphones and infotainment systems.

Voice systems do help drivers keep their eyes on the road when compared with manual interfaces, but they don’t eliminate visual distraction altogether, a new study by researchers from IIHS and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab shows.

READ MORE

 
Big Brother in the Rental?

This week I got an angry email from a friend who had just rented a car from Hertz: “Did you know Hertz is putting cameras in rental cars!? This is bulls**t. I wonder if it says they can tape me in my Hertz contract.” He sent along this photo of a camera peeping at him from out of his “NeverLost,” a navigational device that the company has started putting in many of its cars.

“I even felt weird about singing in the car by myself,” he said. A Googling expedition revealed that my friend was not the first person driven to disturbance by the in-car surveillance system.

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On Accident Management

By Greg Neuman, Senior Manager of Quality Control, CEI

Fleets can save money on collision repairs by using alternatives to parts made by the vehicle’s manufacturer, or “OEM” (Original Equipment Maker). On average, the alternatives can be 10% to 30% cheaper than OEM parts.

While parts are just one component of a collision repair, the savings can add up to hundreds of dollars when more than one alternative part is used in a single repair , and substantial dollar amounts for fleets in the course of a year.

But for a variety of reasons, fleets need to exercise caution when using these kinds of parts.

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Fleet Management Resources 
AmeriFleet
Offering a nationwide vehicle delivery and relocation service; serving the corporate and commercial fleet industry.
GPS Insight
GPS Insight offers GPS tracking solutions to meet your organization's unique requirements and challenges.
PARS
PARS' mission is to provide you with high-quality service at competitive prices for all of your transportation needs.
ARI
Driven fleet professionals. Driving results.
LeasePlan
LeasePlan is the world's leading high-touch service provider for vehicle leasing and fleet management.
The CEI Group Inc.
North America's largest accident management and fleet driver safety company.
Element
Customizing global fleet management to achieve your goals.
NAFA
NAFA is the association for the diverse vehicle fleet management profession regardless of organizational type, geographic location, or fleet composition.
Verizon Networkfleet
Verizon Networkfleet offers GPS fleet management solutions to help small to medium-sized businesses, enterprises, and government agencies better manage vehicles and assets. For a demo visit www.networkfleet.com/demo.