The government’s six-month extension of MOT-due dates in March 2020 has had a “huge impact” on the accuracy of the aftersales records of dealers across the UK.
That’s the view of Marketing Delivery, which examined 150,000 customer vehicle records held by 100 dealers and found that 41% of the MOT-due dates were correct.
In March 2020, the UK government extended by six months the renewal date for any MOT that expired between 30 March and 31 July 2020, to ensure consumers were not forced to visit workshops during a Covid-19 lockdown.
However, motorists were then free to book in an MOT before the new expiry date, and there have been a significant realignment of millions of test cycles.
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has reported that around five million tests were deferred, as 2.1 million MOTs were carried out in April and May 2020 compared with 7.1 million during the same period in 2019.
Marketing Delivery is pushing its VoiceBox system, which can access DVSA records to retrieve correct MOT dates and through a Keyloop integration automatically upload them to the dealer management system, offering significant time savings for data administration teams.
VoiceBox can then be used to send automated SMS and emails to customers to remind them when their MOT and / or service is due.
There is also the facility to ensure messages are not sent to customers who are no longer the registered keeper of the vehicle.
Through the Keyloop integration, customers will receive communications with the correct MOT dates meaning they are more relevant to the individual. The messages are fully GDPR compliant and can be opted out of easily.
“Maintaining MOT data accuracy has always been a challenge; it has been made much worse by the automatic extension,” explains Marketing Delivery’s Managing Director, Jeremy Evans. “That extension put a question mark against a huge volume of MOT records, and many dealers have not caught up.”