There is no doubt that the past year has been a dark time for many businesses, but one firm that has stood out like a beacon of light has been Silverstone Leasing.
The multi-award-winning company is Northampton’s number one car leasing broker and when many of its peers effectively shut up shop when COVID-19 first hit, it defied all the industry expectations by continuing to offer its clients all the support they needed.
The firm’s Managing Director, Scott Norville, also became a source of inspiration for many fellow business owners after he began sharing a series of heartfelt videos on LinkedIn about the pandemic. The videos also inspired his own team, who now all regularly post a mixture of informative and fun videos online, and which are generating a wealth of leads for the business.
Scott said: “The past 12 months have been hard for everyone but there are so many positive things happening in our business that it’s impossible for us not to feel optimistic about the future.
“Business has been booming since the end of last year and we set an all-time sales record in February. This was partially due to lots of existing customers renewing with us and the fact our whole team has been very active on LinkedIn during the past six months. They’ve produced some fantastic video content to highlight what we’re working on, as well as items which show off our team’s personality. As a result, we’ve received lots of requests for quotations via the platform and I couldn’t be more proud of the way our team has grown in confidence and become even more proactive in their communications.”
The team, which will soon be adding three more recruits to its ranks, is also in the midst of a busy awards season. They narrowly missed out on three awards at the recent Northamptonshire Business Excellence Awards 2020 and are currently in the running for two awards at the SME Northamptonshire Business Awards, which will be announced in June.
In addition, the firm has recently unveiled its new website which has been designed to further improve the customer journey for Silverstone Leasing’s clients.
Scott explained: “Our new website benefits from what we like to call ‘friendly automation’. Our team is still forward facing but we’ve automated certain parts of the website where we could see how that would lead to a smoother customer journey for our clients.
“For example, previously, clients visiting our website would put in a request for a quotation and then a member of our team would email them a PDF response. On average this would take about 45 minutes and it would mean that the client would have to leave our website to look at their response.
“We’ve now automated this process so everything is done through the website. This new system is generating an 85% increase in efficiency from the point of enquiry through to sending the quotation and means our clients never have to leave our website.
“Our clients are at the heart of everything we do, and this type of innovation shows why our team has previously won Customer Service awards and why we’re currently in the running for the Service Excellence award at the SME Northamptonshire Business Awards.
“Looking ahead, we’re excited about what 2021 has to offer. We’ve got dynamic plans to grow the digital marketing side of our business this year. We’ll be increasing our presence across all social media platforms and have some fantastic AdWords campaigns lined up.
“We’re also feeling positive about the vaccines which are being rolled out to combat coronavirus which we hope will make a huge difference to businesses across the country.”
For further information visit Silverstone Leasing.
