You’ve bought your dream car, showed it off to friends and family, driven many trouble-free kilometres but for some unknown reason things start to go awry.
Your next step is to take it to the dealer to sort it out but once it’s been checked in there’s a whole lot of cogs that start turning that you’re mostly unaware of.
All these mechanisms that fall into place are what manufacturers call CX or to give it its proper name, Customer Experience, which is designed to measure how good (or bad) they fare when it comes to your ownership of their vehicles.
Last year while attending the reveal of the Mustang Dark Horse in Detroit we had an interview with Elena Ford, the Chief Customer Experience Officer for Ford.
In a frank interview she said: “Obviously product is important, but the experience the customer has is equally important. We can’t sell the car, wave to the customer and say ‘have a nice life’ and move on. We have to engage with them constantly.”
And when it came to South Africa she said there had been a slight decline in customer satisfaction in 2022.
“Customers in dealerships in South Africa want good communication, the basics of a good sale and a service experience. They want to come in and have a really good dealership experience. We need to work on that and fix the basics. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we just have to do things right,” she said.
Obviously Ford South Africa took it to heart so we caught up with Kuda Takura who heads up Ford’s local Customer Experience to see if things are looking up.
“There’s a good story to tell,” he started off.
“We have different approaches and models the way we assess, enhance and improve customer experience.
“Data is obviously the driver provided by Forrester annually which Ford uses on a global scale and Customer Viewpoint (CVP) which we get every month.
“When you buy or service a car you get a survey with a bunch of questions including whether you would ‘recommend’ which then gets us to better understand your experience.”
To put it in context when the previous generation was launched in 2011 it far exceeded Ford’s expectations. They were taking people out of premium and normal family vehicles which according to Takura was good but problematic and presented them with a unique challenge.
“We were used to about 700 units a month of the old Ranger but the new one was peaking at 3 200 bakkies which was great for sales but the network was taking strain from a service and experience perspective.
“We were starting to see blips as people started coming back to us on social media, CVP reports and communication with Ford saying they enjoyed the product but that service wasn’t great. It didn’t help either that there were a couple of mechanical issues.”
How to fix this then?
“Obviously there’s a lot of internal discussions taking place with production teams in different markets, marketing and communication all taking place at the same time to address the issues.
“There’s a question in one of the surveys that specifically asks ‘how does Ford resolve a problem with your vehicle or if you have an issue quickly’ with a scorecard, which we use to determine our progress.”
At that time (2020) Ford’s scorecard was in the 60s.
“But the CVP info allowed us to drill down and identify where ‘fix it right first time’ issues were prevalent and address them at specific junctions.
“I introduced Vehicle Offroad Time (VORT) where we could see where the failure points were regionally, you can zoom into the customer experience they’re having and determine who the vehicle belongs to so we can pick up the phone and call you.”
Ford then implemented a replacement vehicle while the car is in for repairs.
“It’s a like for like replacement. If you’re a plumber with ladders, pipes and toolboxes a Figo wouldn’t do.
“Customer care obviously plays an important role so once you buy your car, Ford has all your details and when something happens you get hold of the call centre and depending on the issue the necessary remedies are put in place.”
It may sound simple and logical but there’s a lot of things that have to fall into place for it to be effective.
“So, over the years with different initiatives and a drive to make our CX top-notch, we’ve managed to make that number move up to 73 percent which is a significant gain.”
“We also have a customer journey mapping wheel that looks at two things; shop and buy and own and use that we use throughout Ford globally so we can map the journey from when you purchase the car to using it daily that also has some additional focus points to ensure the best possible experience and address any issues as quickly and smoothly as possible.”
So, as you can see there’s more to it than just getting in and driving like it was in the old days. There's a lot of effort, technology and human capital that goes into making ownership as seamless and hassle-free as possible.