In focus: Autolease Car Rental

Q: Can you give us a brief overview about your company Autolease Car Rental and what makes your company stand out from competitors?

Rameez: Autolease has been very fortunate to be one of the pioneers in car rental business in Sharjah and across UAE. Serving customers since 1982, we will be celebrating our 40^th Anniversary next year along with our valued customers.

Autolease is not just any organization. It carries sentimental value and a great legacy of our founder late HE Sheikh Salem bin Sultan AL Qassimi. Under the great leadership of our Group Director His Excellency Sheikh Abdul Rahman Bin Salem Al Qassimi, Autolease has always been focused on continuing our founder’s dynamic vision and passion towards the business and its people.

Q: Can you highlight some of the services that you provide and is your business just confined to UAE?

Rameez: Autolease takes care of all short term and long term car rental solutions in a customized way to enhance customer’s lifestyle and experience.

We have a diversified fleet with a huge selection of cars to choose from. We have small economy to big family SUV’s, suitable for individuals and corporates. The best thing that our customers love is that we get the vehicles delivered to the customer’s doorstep anytime anywhere in UAE.

Q: What feedback processes do you have in place and how do you deal with negative feedback from your customers?

Rameez: As we always strive to enhance the customer experience to the next level, we have served millions of customers from different nations since our inception. A huge percentage of our customers are repeat customers.

Any negative feedback is an opportunity for us to turn that customer to a happy loyal customer by rectifying concerns there and then. We have a very strong follow up team, who concentrate on every individual customer and their experience with us.

Q: Do you offer 24/7 customer support on your digital platforms?

Rameez: Since Autolease has multiple digital platforms like our own state of the art mobile app, website and many other digital aggregators for our customers locally and internationally, we have created a channel where we can cater to customers’ requests and concerns 24/7.

Q: Do you offer any loyalty programs or discount packages for your customers?

Rameez: Yes we do and in a much better way! Our long term existing and repeat customers always enjoy the perks of being part of the Autolease Family. We offer discount rates and complimentary free of cost add-ons to the service every time they rent from us.

In addition, last year we have introduced Autolease Rewards program in our mobile app. Here every customer will not only earn rewards on their rental but with referrals too. Rewards can be redeemed against the service.

Q: How do you ensure that the standard and quality of the vehicles you offer is maintained?

Rameez: We have our dedicated team with multiple checkpoints to ensure the quality and repeated timely maintenance at our own fully equipped workshop. This ensures the mobility of the vehicles is smooth and up to the standards.

Q: How are you incorporating the latest technology to make the customer experience better?

Rameez: We firmly believe in turning ideas into reality, as the whole world is transforming to a new digital era of artificial intelligence and augmented realities. We worked hard on this trying to give complete control of our business to the customer with our state of the art mobile app where customers can book and manage their rental. This makes their experience exciting, easy and hassle free.

Q: What are some of the customer-centric features that you are offering which make you different from other companies?

Rameez: Unlike other companies, we have always been focused on this part that small goodwill gestures make a huge difference and that’s the reason we have customers that have stayed with us for a decade. We focus on the following key factors:

• Trust – Gaining the customers trust is a key factor. This can simply be by recommending them the right product within a suitable budget.
• Commitment – Ensuring customer concerns during rentals and post rentals is a hassle free experience.
• Going the Extra Mile-We don’t miss any opportunity to please our customers.

Q: How has this ongoing pandemic impacted your industry and what are some of the new trends that you have had to adopt to?

Rameez: It has indeed been a challenging phase for a majority of businesses. However, our positive perspective towards business and its people gave us an opportunity to do things in a different and in a much efficient way. One of the key factors is the upgraded level of vehicle sanitization and hygiene. We deliver the cars at the customer’s doorstep and sanitize it again in front of them.

Q: What kind of changes are you bringing about at your company in light of COVID-19?

Rameez: We offer our staff a much healthier working environment with suitable shifts so that they can focus on their health and wellbeing. In addition, we have upgraded the level of hygiene and regular sanitization to ensure safety.

Q: Do you have any staff training programs in place and what key soft skills do you focus on?

Rameez: We conduct regular sessions over coffee where I like to listen to more ideas from our staff and to understand their concerns to boost productivity.  In addition, we have motivational programs for self-development and team building activities.

The key skills we focus on are interpersonal skills and client management skills along with sales training.

Q: How do you plan on making customer experience better in the future?

Rameez: With the help of highly sophisticated artificial intelligence, one of our key plan is to automate the operational procedures for car rentals. We are working with our tech partners to digitize the complete rental journey and make it more easy, quick and exciting for our users.

With great technology around, our future customers will have a seamless experience.

About Rameez Iqbal

Mohammed Rameez Iqbal, widely known as Rami, is the Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Autolease Car Rental UAE. He is highly successful in preparing strategic business plans, implementing business process improvements, defining organization direction and exceeding targets.