Toyota Financial Services is “in production” with a customer-facing “self-service channel” that will give borrowers more control over their accounts and auto loans, said Gordon McGrath, the captive’s division information officer.
The new consumer-facing system comes on the tail end of an internal replacement of the lender’s customer relationship management (CRM) system. Now that the legacy system has been sunsetted, and the captive’s 4,000 employees are using the new CRM, TFS is opening it up to consumers.
“Our initial focus was on our internal team members, now we’re looking for ways to expose that to customers through self-service channels on web and mobile devices, as well as to dealers so that [customers] can see directly into that dealership,” McGrath told AFN.
“We’re doing a pilot right now with 25 dealers on some dealer-facing capabilities, and with our customers we’re in production today with integration to our website and our mobile application for that same sharing platform.”
There’s no timetable for a release, but TFS already uses the system to manage every touchpoint it has with borrowers. The new system is also part of a broader effort to upgrade the captive’s technology such that changes and innovative initiatives can be enacted faster.
Since launching the platform last year, TFS has already implemented 20 enhancements; with the old platform it would have been years before the team “would even touch it again,” McGrath said.
“Our goal is to keep rolling out new functionality on a quarterly basis for our dealers and customers,” he said. “No longer will they have to wait two to three years for a new transformation project. It’s a matter of prioritizing which initiatives we want to work on next.”
