Meet Richard Jessop, Director of Sales – Salary Sacrifice & Corporate Partners
Richard has almost 20 years’ experience in the fleet industry and joined Ogilvie Fleet in 2015 to help grow the MiSalarySacrifice product. Since then, the growth has been exponential, with salary sacrifice vehicles now accounting for over 7% of Ogilvie’s orders. Working with businesses of all sizes to introduce electric vehicle schemes to their employees, Richard and his team look after 100+ organisations and their drivers across the UK.

What are the key challenges for salary sacrifice in 2023?
Lead times. In society we’re used to getting everything we order on next day delivery but the car sector has never worked that way. Various worldwide issues have seen lead times worsen and when there’s enormous demand to go electric from both employees and employers it’s extremely frustrating when you cannot get your client the product quickly. Our teams are working hard on getting customers into vehicles as quickly as they can – and we’ve also developed a lead time tool to better gauge vehicle lead times.

What has the feedback been from drivers using the scheme – many of whom are first time EV drivers?
If you had asked me that question 12 months ago I’d have said there was a lot of trepidation for those taking their first electric vehicle. Everyone always seems to get caught up in range anxiety when in reality they don’t travel more than 200 miles very often. But I’ve noticed a real change in attitude from our clients and now the overwhelming emotion is excitement. Those early adopters have given glowing real-life testimonies about their own experiences and so almost everyone will know someone that has an electric car and they are keen to make the switch themselves.

What does MiSalarySacrifice do differently to other schemes?
From the outset we wanted to offer our clients a complete package. As standard we cover the associated risks around employees leaving the business, our motor insurance is comprehensive and the scheme includes all the maintenance and tyres. We also offer our clients the ability to tailor their scheme to their own needs by allowing them to decide what they do with employers NIC savings and whether they want to restrict their scheme to just BEV or include PHEV also. We combine all of this with Ogilvie’s market leading customer service.

What are you and your team working on this year?
We listen to what our customers have to say. Any complaint or criticism that we receive is an opportunity to learn and improve. Following some recent feedback we are currently midway through a huge overhaul of the Ogilvie Happy Drivers app. This will give all of our drivers access to personalised information through their smartphone on what to do should they require one of our services (accident, breakdown, tyres). In addition to this we have improvements to our overall service offering. We look to improve continuously.

What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?
For anyone outside of Ogilvie it’s hard to understand just how good the people that work here are. It’s also unique to have so many people at the top of their profession able to work together in harmony for the greater good of the business and its clients. As a business this year we achieved platinum status for Investors In People. So few businesses manage to obtain that level and it’s recognition for everything that we work hard to achieve. The sum of this hard work from a great many people has resulted in another year outstanding customer service.