Creating a seamless buyer journey with APIs

22nd October 2020 | 2 min read

 
  • Customers are increasingly buying online
  • Creating a high-quality customer journey online relies on APIs
  • APIs are the invisible messengers that connect our digital world
  • You can give your customers direct access to our services in your website

How has your buying behaviour changed since the start of lockdown? The latest research shows that even the most ‘digitally resistant’ customers are now buying online rather than in person. Of course, dealerships have traditionally focused on face-to-face sales, but to maximise revenue over the coming months, a high-quality online customer journey is absolutely essential.

To ensure your online and offline offering are joined up, a lot of different systems and data need to work together. Making this happen may sound like a daunting task, but there is already a set of easy-to-use tools called APIs which are created to do just that.

What are APIs?

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are the invisible messengers that join the many dots in our connected online world. They take our searches and requests, convert them into a digital language to communicate with behind-the-scenes systems, then deliver responses back to us in a way we can easily understand. All of which happens in the blink of an eye.

Chances are you’ve already used APIs today for a range of tasks, from searching for potential new stock to watching a show on Netflix, online shopping, or searching for news.

A suite of APIs for dealerships

To give your customers access to Black Horse finance options directly through your website and dealership systems, we have created our own suite of APIs. Developed in collaboration with dealers, manufacturers and software experts, they provide real-time connectivity between your data systems and ours. This means you can create a smooth, professional customer experience, regardless of your business’ size and levels of resource.

While they’re easy to implement, we understand you and your IT team may have a few questions. So you’ll have full access to our developer website and dedicated support team. What's more, our fully featured test environment means you can check everything is working before going live on your website.

To meet the changing needs of your customers, we’re continually creating new APIs. For example, our team is currently developing a referral callback system that will enable us to notify you when a decision is ready on a finance query, rather than having to ring back repeatedly when awaiting a decision.

If you would like to find out more about our API services and how they could benefit your business, get in touch with us at motorapi@lloydsbanking.com or through your IT Team or API provider.


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