Toyota:
How Negative Customer Experience Can Destroy A Great Brand
In 2005 I
bought a Prius. Its been a tremendous car. Fuel efficient, quiet, inexpensive
to run. In fact it was so good I decided that when it hit 100,000 k’s instead
of trading it I would keep driving it. At 140,000 k’s I thought I would find
out how much it would be worth as a trade in on a new Prius. I was offered
$10,000 and thought, “Why bother when it is cheap to service, cheap to run and
is paid for. Might as well keep driving it”.
Just before
it hit 200,000k’s a warning light started coming up on the dashboard. It was
due for a service, so I took it in to the dealer who serviced it and asked them
to check what the problem was. They serviced the car but said that there was no
record of any problem recorded in the memory of the car’s on-board computer and
that therefore it could not be a problem that required any service response. It
was general warning light.
After the
service the light didn’t come on again until just before the next scheduled
service at 210,000 k’s. I took it in for its service. Asked again for the
dealership to look into it. Same response: “There can’t be a problem because,
(a) we can’t replicate it (I had given the dealership very specific
instructions as to how to get the light to turn on – and I am convinced that
they just ignored this), and (b) if it doesn’t show up on the car’s onboard
computer we have no way of responding to it.
Once again
after the service the light went off. Just before 220,000k’s surprise, surprise
– the light came on again. This time I called Toyota’s Customer Care line to
tell them that I was very concerned that I had a warning light coming on
regularly and that the local dealer didn’t seem to be able to identify it.
By this time
I had concluded that the real reason that the dealership couldn’t fix the
problem is very simple: Their mechanics are trained to put the car onto the
diagnostic equipment, which downloads all the internal system data from the car
and then instructs the technician as to what to do. Its designed, I believe, to
ensure the maximum efficiency and to reduce the level of human error on
machines that have a fairly narrow set of operating specifications – unlike the
cars of Henry Ford’s day. As a result, anything that the end-user reports on to
the service manager is lost when communicating with the technician. This is
important.
During the
morning of the service I received a call from the service manager at Toyota in
Nowra, Dave, who had very kindly picked up the car from my house that morning.
He called to tell me that he had seen the warning light coming on during the
time that he had driven the car, and consequently had stood by the mechanic at
the time that the oil change was taking place. Apparently there wasn’t much oil
in the crank case according to Dave. The verdict was that the engine was burning
oil.
Now this is
not really surprising in a car that has done 220,000 k’s with normal wear and
tear. But what was really unsatisfactory from my point of view was that it took
the dealer three services to actually pay attention to what I was saying, and
it still wouldn’t have been diagnosed unless Dave had stood and watched as the
mechanic worked on the car. My take on things was this: If there is a problem I
want it fixed before it gets worse. If the “experts” don’t actually respond to
me as the user of the car when I say there is a problem and the vehicle gets
worse as a result, of if there was an accident as a result, then who is at
fault?
- Is it me as the user of the
equipment who has diligently reported the fact that a warning light shows
on the dash?
- Is it the dealer who services
the car?
- Is it the mechanic who
slavishly follows the instructions from the car’s onboard computer?
- Is it the manufacturer who puts
warning systems in the vehicle but doesn’t provide for the warnings to
show up on the service computer?
I thought I
would take it up with Toyota’s customer care people. I called them a number of
times during this period and reported on the whole experience. I told them that
I was rather unhappy and that I felt that there was an internal management
system failure that needed to be addresses, and that I thought that Toyota
should contribute to helping fix the problem – by helping contribute
financially to identifying and fixing whatever mechanical problem was now
present.
The phone
staff at Toyota were quite terse. Not rude, and not at all disrespectful, but
definitely put out that they had a customer on the phone who actually wanted
them to do something.
In the
meantime I had decided that I had several options available to me:
- Get the engine stripped and
fixed (total cost unknown but with a quote from Nowra Toyota just to take
out and strip the engine of $1300)
- Take out and replace the engine
with a reconditioned engine (cost approximately $2,300 quoted by Nowra
Toyota)
- Keep on driving the car (I spoke
to a friend who runs a Toyota dealership and who I have bought 5 new
Toyotas from over the years. He told me that it was probably a pretty low
intensity problem and I could deal with it by just putting the vehicle in
for an oil change every 7,500 k’s instead of every 10,000k’s)
- Sell/Trade the car and buy
another.
I started
looking at my options for a replacement vehicle, and last Friday came very
close to buying a Rav4. However, on my way to the dealership in Sutherland
where the target vehicle was located, I decided to call Toyota one more time to
find out whether they were going to come to the party. The customer care person
I spoke to was so useless and stroppy that I got off the phone resolving that
if Toyota didn’t change its tune I would totally disengage from the brand. So I
sent a text message to the dealer saying the deal was off and turned the car
around and headed home.
On my way
back I got a call from the Toyota customer care manger, Dennis Smith. He was
pleasant but was clearly not going to bend on anything. I explained to him that
unless Toyota was prepared to acknowledge that there may be either a computer
system problem or a management system problem they would lose me as a long term
customer after a total of 8, count ‘em, vehicles (1 new Prius, 1 new
Echo, 1 new Corolla, 3 new Landcruisers, 1 new Landcruiser truck, 1 second hand
Corolla). He offered me a $100 service voucher as a token of good will, with
the rider that he hesitated to even offer it to me because he thought that I
might be insulted by it.
I wasn’t
insulted by the offer, but it fell a long way short of what I would have
expected at a time when I was seriously in the market to buy yet another new
vehicle.
I told him
that as a result of Toyota’s actions, or non-actions, they were about to shift
a customer who had been a strong brand advocate for a long time into an
extremely highly motivated brand critic.
I then went
on line and did some really serious comparative research into price,
performance, customer reviews etc for a number of AWD vehicles in the price
range that I was looking at. That led to me going out and test driving 2 – the
SsangYong Korando and the Kia Sportage (I had discounted the Hyundai ix35 from
a drive because it is essentially the same vehicle as the Kia and the diesel
engine for the Hyundai is build by Kia).
I ended up
paying a little bit more that I had originally intended and purchased a Kia
Sportage.
What is
amazing about this story is that it just goes to show how a brand that can
overtake the powerhouse global brands (in this case Ford and GM) based on a
vastly superior manufacturing quality assurance model, can also fall foul of an
inability to maintain an equivalent customer care model.
It almost
seems like Toyota built up so much self-confidence as a brand that it couldn’t
even consider its vehicles getting recalled. I think that they must still be in
denial about the series of disastrous and very expensive recalls of the last
couple of years. Its like the case of the banks in the US that didn’t factor
into their risk modelling the possibility of real estate prices going down.
When one hedge fund found this out they saw that there was a potential to take
a bet against the house and win. Toyota is in the same spot.
When a
company is prepared to sacrifice a long standing customer’s loyalty to a brand,
and turn him (or her) against them for heaven knows what internal reason, you
have to wonder why anyone should support that brand at all. They are no
different to the giants that have been before them, who have failed: EMI
Records who had the Beatles and the Beach Boys and who knows how many great
acts, and failed. General Motors: (remember when they used to say in America,
“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”. GM had to be bailed
out by the government. RCA who used to virtually own the whole ecosystem of
transmitting and receiving equipment. Who hears of them now?
Companies
reach a certain size and then feel that they don’t have to be in touch with
their customers any more. When they do they fail. In Australia people who work
for Toyota’s manufacturing operations wonder whether the federal government
will keep writing checques so that they get to keep their jobs. That money
comes from you and me as taxpayers. I don’t want to see anyone lose their jobs.
But you can’t expect for companies that don’t understand that the corporate
pyramid can only survive when it is upside down. At the top is the vast number
of consumers who engage with the brand. At the bottom is management.
Toyota’s
management and its policies are out of touch for it to remain in balance.
Therefore it has only one way to go, to topple and fall.
This is a guest post written by Andrew Konoff, Community and Marketing Manager at GoInstant. Find out more about Andrew and his blog at the end of the post.
