Did the pressure Toyota put on its dealers concerning Sales Satisfaction cause the Toyota recall issue? Toyota over the last several years began to focus on the dealers and how they were handling customers during the delivery process. The focus was no longer on the entire buying experience and the dealers ability to sell vehicles, but was reduced to scores on the Toyota Motor Sales Survey and J.D. Power Study. Toyota uses a scoring system called Vehicle Delivery Quality or VDQ to measure each customer’s satisfaction when they pick up or “take delivery” of their new car.
Toyota knew they were building a great product, being one of the Initial Quality volume leaders, but Toyota’s Delivery Quality was way behind the market average. Obviously, Toyota controls how they build their vehicles and every aspect of the processes and procedures in the factories. However, Toyota did not have the same control on the dealer level with every dealer having different processes for delivering new Toyotas. Toyota begin to see a pattern develop – if the Toyota store had bad VDQ scores, then that stores numbers were down usually in both sales and profit.
Was it this major concern for these bad apple stores with bad VDQ scores and a lack of control at the dealer level concerning customer satisfaction that caused Toyota to stop doing what they do well? I believe so. Toyota took for granted that they build and manufacturer one of the best automobiles in the world and stopped focusing on that and began to focus on the question, “what can we do with our dealer body to increase customer satisfaction?” Toyota had all of the solutions, Customer Experience Groups, Customer Relations Manager positions, VDQ tools, tests and training, Toyota Motor Sales Delivery Training. Toyota put managers into the field and they were involved with nothing but Customer Satisfaction and Delivery Process.
How many unsatisfied customers are there now due to the recalls? The St. Petersburg Times quoted Manny Oliveira of Sun Toyota, “If we did 50 repairs a day, just on the cars we’ve sold here, it would take us a year to finish.” Dealers are doing everything they can to satisfy the customer, most, if not all Toyota dealerships have increased their service hours some even opening 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is innate for a dealer to want to satisfy his customers. If the dealer doesn’t have happy customers, they won’t stay open very long.
However, Toyota should have continued to focus on what they do well and let the dealers focus on missing keys, door dings, missing floor mats, full tanks of gas and all of the other things that go into customer satisfaction at the dealer level. I am confident Toyota will fix these recall issues and will once again gain their reputation as a dependable car builder. I am also confident that Ford, GM, Hyundai and other auto manufacturers have narrowed that quality gap and Toyota will find it much more difficult to climb back to the top as the number one selling auto manufacturer in the world.
