MotoNovo Achieves Complaint Management Excellence With Aptean Respond

Founded in 1972, Cardiff-based MotoNovo Finance is one of the largest lenders in the UK used car finance market. With a customer base of 500,000 customers, MotoNovo is part of the Aldermore Banking Group and offers a range of finance products, from Hire Purchase (HP) and Personal Contract Purchase (PCP), to digital products such as MotoClick and Quote and Propose to dealers.

The Challenges

In June 2017, Maria Vidler joined the business to head-up MotoNovo's complaints function, tasked with transforming how the business handled all complaints. It soon became clear that a complete overhaul of the complaint handling process was required. Several issues were contributing to the problem, including:

• Disparate complaint management functions across the organization

• Some complaints not being recognized or recorded

• Over 10% of complaints referred to the FOS

• 26% of complaints exceeded the FCA's 8-week timeframe

Maria explains: "Complaint handling was very fragmented, with different departments handling different complaints. There were four distinct teams, none of which communicated with each other and all of which followed different processes and procedures. Also, high levels of staff absenteeism had a knock-on effect on customer service levels."

Maria continues: “It was clear the business wasn’t recognizing and recording all complaints accurately. With a customer base the size it was, it was unrealistic that there would only be 50 ‘general’ complaints each month, which was the total being recorded. What we needed was a combined complaints function with the right people, processes and technology in place to underpin more robust, effective complaint handling.”

The Solution

After a thorough assessment of the market, MotoNovo chose to implement Aptean Respond as its dedicated complaint management software, due to its advanced functionality and ability to offer end-to-end, business-wide complaint handling improvements.

Maria explains: “Aptean Respond allowed us to bring a commonality to processes and procedures that simply hadn’t existed before, replacing cumbersome and inefficient spreadsheets. We use it to log each and every customer complaint coming into the business, putting the necessary workflows in place to trigger the most appropriate course of action to expedite a successful complaint resolution, supported by accurate and timely customer communication. It also gives us a single version of the truth, with all customer information available in a single location, reflecting every customer interaction relevant to a particular case.”

“Implementing Aptean Respond was a pivotal moment for MotoNovo, as it provided us with the technology we needed to make our customer experience a competitive advantage. It’s empowered us with new capabilities, helping us on our journey to guarantee complaint handling excellence for each and every customer.” - Maria Vidler, MotoNovo

The Implementation

A team was set up to deliver the project, tasked with ensuring that all complaints were being captured and reducing the number of complaints referred to and upheld by the FOS. Additionally, the team wanted to reduce the staff attrition rate and unlock the untapped value in complaints, using complaints insight to drive real improvements to products and services to enhance the customer journey. Firstly, the team put together a comprehensive framework outlining the transformational change required.

Maria continues: “All complaint teams were merged into a single complaints department and a complaints management information (MI) team was created. Job descriptions were reviewed and amended, with salaries aligned to training and a new competency framework, and a bespoke training programme was implemented.” The project progressed as far as it could without the help of technology. Newly trained staff now had the skills to improve complaint handling, but not the tools required to make it a reality.

The Result

This new approach to complaint handling has certainly made a huge difference. The business has seen an increase in complaint volumes from a monthly average of 50 up to 1,056 customer service/general complaints logged each month, but recognises this as a major positive, as they know it means complaints are being captured accurately. As a result, MotoNovo has witnessed several key improvements:

• FOS referral rate down from 10% to 2%

• 26% of complaints get resolved at the first point of contact

• Complaints not resolved within a 56-day timeframe, down from 26% to 1%

• Staff attrition has decreased from 52% to just 3%.

Maria continues: “The quality and quantity of management information keeps us one step ahead when it comes to identifying any looming issues too, highlighting any complaints on the cusp of exceeding the eight-week timeframe and pinpointing any systemic issues that can be addressed before they become problems.” Moreover, staff are visibly more positive and engaged with their day-to-day roles, providing a consistency of approach to complaint handling that was missing before. MotoNovo is keen to build on this success and has implemented monthly QA checks for each case handler to identify any training needs and to highlight best practices that can be shared with the wider team.

“Respond makes QA much easier. Before the project, everything was done manually, but the digital record of all customer interactions and system updates makes it much more straightforward to implement thorough and accurate QA processes.” - Maria Vidler, MotoNovo

Improving Complaint Handling With the Right System

MotoNovo’s journey shows how much complaint handling can improve when the right structure and technology is in place. By bringing separate teams together and creating one clear complaint handling process, the company built a system where every complaint is recorded and tracked—enabling better outcomes and increased efficiency.

If your complaints are spread across inboxes, spreadsheets or disconnected systems, it's hard to know what's actually happening with any given case, let alone respond quickly or consistently. Bringing everything into one system means your teams always know where a complaint stands and can act before deadlines slip. That makes it far easier to meet regulatory timeframes and keep your customers informed every step of the way.

It also means you stop losing valuable insight. When your complaint records are accurate and centralised, patterns start to emerge — the same issues cropping up in the same places. That visibility lets you fix root causes instead of just closing cases, and over time it feeds directly into a better customer experience.

Aptean provides software that supports this kind of structured complaint handling. Our complaint management software, Aptean Respond, helps you log complaints, track cases, manage workflows and keep all customer information in one place—giving your team a clear view of every complaint and the confidence to respond consistently, every time.

To see how our complaint management system works in practice, schedule a demo or contact us now.