BMWFS - learn from Mercedes...
When a lease customer dies during his or her term, what happens to the contract?
That’s the case for less than 1 percent of the clients in Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA’s portfolio. Previously, Mercedes-Benz Financial employees were assigned to those lease accounts and spoke with the clients’ families.
The conversations were difficult not only for the family members, but for the employees.
So in 2014, Mercedes-Benz Financial brought in a grief counselor to help employees learn how to best handle those phone calls, and the company launched the Customer Bereavement Program.
Now, if the account is up to date, the deceased client’s family has two options:
• Return the vehicle within 10 days and allow Mercedes-Benz Financial to relieve them of payments; or
• Transfer the vehicle to a family member’s name. That family member can either take over the payments or pay off the vehicle.
Sometimes, there is sentimental value to the vehicle, so family members want to keep it, said Sauna Gordon, senior manager of collections. But other times, family members have no need for the vehicle, or they can’t afford it.
A year and a half into the program, employees now “feel better prepared to support a grieving family” while handling the family member’s account, Gordon said. “Both family members and our dealers who work with families after a loss have expressed positive feedback and gratitude for the program,” she said.
http://www.autonews.com/article/2016...rieving-family