FIAT Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Australia has embarked on a program to slash customer complaints about quality and repair work on its vehicles that will put its dealerships through intensive training courses and introduces new efficiency service programs.

FCA Australia president and CEO Pat Dougherty has previously made it clear that the company is very serious about lifting the customer experience, including rectifying problem areas by fixing vehicles at first contact with the dealership.

“We have a relatively quiet year ahead, product wise, and we now have the opportunity to put new business practices into place,” he said last month.
Mr Dougherty has nominated four FCA Australia dealers that have become pilots for a coaching program aimed at significantly improving business practices on the way to higher dealer profitability and better customer service.

The distributor’s dealer and service coaching program, introduced last month, has started with the four dealerships but will be expanded to a further 64 this year and complete the roll out in 2017.

The four dealerships are Northern Motor Group, Melbourne; and three Brisbane dealers, Northstar, Springwood and Mount Gravatt.

The coaching program puts the external coach into the dealership for three months and then maintains daily contact with the dealership by telephone.

Dealers will be coached on understanding staff behaviour, how they engage with colleagues and how to improve motivation.

Service advisors will be trained on improving interaction with other dealership departments, enhancing the customer experience and improving customer processes including follow-up procedures.

Alongside the training, the coach will run an assessment on how the dealership is performing in comparison with FCA Australia peers and with other brand franchises.

The dealer and service advisors will know exactly the level of customer experience they are delivering, how they rank with other dealers and what is needed to improve the performance of staff and improve the relationship with the customer.

The coaching program will operate alongside a new customer-oriented Net Promoter Score survey system run by outside firm BrandXP that details the customer experience and reports immediately to dealership management to encourage swift action.

The BrandXP program produces a scorecard of the customer experience, analyses the data and helps the business make changes to rectify problems or enhance what works.

The program is used globally by companies including Nike, KFC and Starbucks, and by car-makers including Honda, Isuzu, Renault and Hyundai.

The third prong in FCA Australia’s attack on efficiency improvements is the ability to immediately access the dealer management system (DMS) in each dealership.

FCA Australia director of aftersales Stephane Lamari said having access to the dealership’s DMS allowed instant and precise evaluation of the dealer’s parts stock levels and repair shop capability and efficiency.

“We are flying blind about decisions we make if we don’t know how each dealer is performing,” Mr Lamari said.

Access to each dealership’s DMS will also help FCA Australia design and assist in aftersales programs including boosting the customer experience through ensuring vehicles are repaired on the first visit.

This would be achieved by ensuring customer problems were managed immediately, while confirming that parts are available at the dealership before the vehicle was booked in for the repair.

Mr Lamari said the DMS data will begin to flow through to his office later this year.

“We need a tool to check what is right and what is wrong and we must be able to train the dealers to identify problem areas and to rectify them,” he said.

“It will give us a clearer picture of sales and service and how that impacts on customer retention.

“At the moment I can’t access this data so it is hard for me to define how many dissatisfied customers we have and what the reason is for their dissatisfaction.”

Mr Lamari said the initiative “is about us helping the dealer to improve”.

“We will show the right tools to improve the relationship with the customer. The final goal is customer retention.”

Mr Dougherty said the overhaul of FCA Australia’s aftersales programs would help dealers manage their businesses more effectively.

“We’re seeing improvements in customer service,” he said.

“We’re no longer on the bottom. We’ll continue to move up the rankings.

“But previously we were spitballing – we didn’t know when it happened and what happened. With DMS integration, we will know.

“We’ve made big steps about taking this to market but we want the customer to feel they have all our support.”

By Neil Dowling