In 2023, Cheqq.com and Kairui Saichi Consulting jointly launched the "Outstanding Contributors to China's Automotive After-sales Service" selection and publicity activities (hereinafter referred to as the "Character Selection Publicity Activities"), aiming to show the breakthrough and leadership of the leaders in this field every year, as well as the growth force brought to enterprises, and sort out the development context and trend of service quality in China's automobile market.
In 2024, the character selection publicity campaign will start again, and conduct in-depth dialogues and exchanges with leaders through in-depth enterprise visits and research. In this interview, Li Xi, executive vice president of Cheqq.com, had an in-depth conversation with Mao Shaohua, director of the customer association department of GAC Toyota, on issues such as customer satisfaction improvement, digital transformation of customer service, customer service team capacity training, and new trends in future industry development.
Li Xi (right), Executive Vice President of Autoqq.com, had an in-depth conversation with Mao Shaohua, Director of the Customer Relations Department of GAC Toyota (left)
"Customer first" is the concept that GAC Toyota has always implemented in the field of customer service for many years. In the interview, Mao Shaohua believes that the basis of good customer service is to "insist on doing difficult but right things for a long time", all for the smile of customers.
Be willing to be the "signal light" of the enterprise and deepen the concept of "customer first".
GAC Toyota's production workshop (Photo courtesy of GAC Toyota)
2024 is the 20th anniversary of the establishment of GAC Toyota, and Mao Shaohua, who joined the company at the beginning of its establishment, is already a "veteran" of GAC Toyota, and has successively worked in the personnel and general affairs department, painting and molding department, and assembly department. In 2014, Mao Shaohua served as the head of the customer relations department, and he has been working for nearly 10 years. As a special independent department in the GAC Toyota system, the customer related department is responsible for external communication, listening to customers' voices, and internally coordinating product development, sales and after-sales service departments to solve customers' problems. Despite the complexity of the work and the heavy responsibilities, during the interview, Mao Shaohua was full of pride when he mentioned the work of the customer related department, "Among the global automobile companies, only GAC Toyota has a customer related department, and we serve customers full-time."
When it comes to GAC Toyota's concept of "customer first", Mao Shaohua said frankly that GAC Toyota has put forward many "first" concepts, from quality first, safety first to environmental protection first, etc., after years of running-in and experience accumulation, finally put "customer first" in the first place. As a link between customers and various functional departments of GAC Toyota, the Customer Relations Department, under the leadership of Mao Shaohua, has comprehensively promoted the "Customer Month" activity within GAC Toyota. The event first originated in Toyota, Japan, and the customer association department broke the tradition and worked together with the quality management department and the quality assurance department to build the "customer month" into the first company-level theme activity month of the year in the form of a platform.
On the one hand, the company launched the "Good Deeds Based on Customer Satisfaction Improvement Platform", and invited representatives of good deeds from R&D, sales and other departments to speak on stage at the company-level kick-off meeting, and reported to the leaders of various functional departments to share cases based on customer service improvement. For example, what efforts have been made, how to achieve customer satisfaction, etc., through the display during the "customer month", the enthusiasm of the business department to participate has been greatly mobilized.
On the other hand, we go deep into the production line and make use of the 23 quality corners in the production plant to display the collected customer voices in the quality corners, so that the employees in the production line can understand the needs and suggestions of customers for products at any time. Through these two measures, the concept of "customer first" will be deeply penetrated into all aspects of the product and truly implemented.
During the interview, Mao Shaohua laughed and said that the customer association department he was responsible for was the "signal light" of GAC Toyota. In the process of serving customers, the customer association department is the first to understand the voice of customers, and it is often necessary to participate in the company's internal R&D, factory, technology, legal affairs and other departments to help dealers better serve customers.
Innovative ideas and talent training go hand in hand to continuously improve customer satisfaction
GAC Toyota Quality Learning Center (Photo courtesy of GAC Toyota)
For the improvement of customer satisfaction, how to solve problems for customers quickly and effectively is the key. In this regard, Mao Shaohua, who has been in charge of the customer related department for many years, has accumulated rich experience, and has also put forward the work concepts of "one-stop service" and "active CR", and promoted the establishment of the world's first CR business standard.
The so-called "one-stop service" is actually very easy to understand, according to Mao Shaohua's introduction, it is to accept customer consultation and complaints, deal with and solve problems, collect customer voices (VOC) and urge relevant departments to improve to form a systematic closed loop, and the full-time department is responsible for co-ordination to provide customers with more professional services. On this basis, in 2018, the Customer Relations Department innovatively proposed the concept of "Proactive CR", which includes two strategies: "awareness improvement" and "method transfer". Among them, "awareness improvement" refers to service awareness, and "method teaching" refers to the transfer of some good working methods and experience in CR business practice. Through the implementation of these two strategies, we will guide dealerships to strengthen the awareness of "customer first", build a complaint response and management system for their own stores, improve customer satisfaction, and consolidate GAC Toyota's customer base. At the same time, a special customer relations room has been set up to select outstanding models from GAC Toyota dealerships nationwide, jointly produce CR business standards, and form a standardized system for CR workflow and content. Through accurate and friendly response to customer inquiries, comprehensive complaint management, and the use of VOCs, dealers can realize the completion of the process, that is, find problems by themselves and improve them independently.
In addition, in 2018, the Customer Relations Department launched a unique CR "Story Collection" based on excellent improvement cases of channel dealers. According to Mao Shaohua, CR "Story Collection" has become one of the four major business cards of the CR department, and at the end of each year, it will look for particularly excellent dealer stores in various fields across the country, and invite store representatives to explain cases at the meeting, so as to promote the common improvement of channels and provide customers with a higher quality service experience.
A corner of the corresponding office area of GAC Toyota's customers (Photo courtesy of GAC Toyota)
In addition to innovation at the work level, Mao Shaohua also attaches great importance to the cultivation of customer service talents. He believes that in order to continue to achieve customer satisfaction, the competence and quality of service personnel are very important. A good customer service person must have at least three qualities. The first is service awareness and attitude, to have empathy, to be able to stand in the customer's perspective empathy, the second is to have a certain degree of automotive professional knowledge, including service process and vehicle technical knowledge, and finally to execute, to be able to pay attention to the voice of customers, and quickly feedback within the company, and finally give a reply within the promised time to customers.
In terms of personnel training, the customer related department has also done a lot of work, and the service personnel must go through at least 2 months of training from entering the department to finally be able to work online, and can only be able to take up their posts after reaching the standard; in addition, the implementation of a wide range of rotation system, including intra-department and cross-departmental job exchange, to ensure that each employee has more than 2 positions of work ability. In addition to capacity training, Mao Shaohua also attaches great importance to the creation of the department's culture, as he said in an interview, "the service department employees have to receive the negative emotions of customers every day, and the pressure is very high and needs to be released." To this end, Mao Shaohua took the lead in organizing the "rookie long-distance running team", using the rest time to organize employees to go to a beautiful place for long-distance running activities, relax and enhance the unity within the department.
After years of hard work by the customer related department, GAC Toyota's customer satisfaction has made great progress. According to the data of Cheqq.com, in 2023, GAC Toyota's satisfaction with the resolution of customer complaints on Cheqq.com will rank among the best among joint venture brands, and it will be awarded the title of 2023 China Automotive Customer Voice (VOC+) after-sales service benchmark brand. In this regard, Mao Shaohua said that behind the honor, the CR department has actually made a lot of efforts. On the one hand, in response to customer complaints, the CR department will take the lead in convening personnel from the relevant five departments to hold monthly meetings to discuss solutions and improve the attention of dealers to customer demands. On the other hand, adhering to the department's guiding ideology of "everything for the sake of smiling customers", we make every effort to solve problems for customers. Referring to this, Mao Shaohua shared a real case, the sixth-generation Camry had a dashboard problem before, according to the age of the car, these cars are actually more than 15 years old, and the warranty period has long passed. However, under the coordination and promotion of the customer association department, the new dashboard was replaced free of charge for these car owners, and the customers were moved and gained a group of loyal fans. "GAC Toyota actually invested a lot of money in replacing the dashboard," Mao Shaohua said frankly.
Three Strategic Guidelines to Promote Complaint Reduction Activities
Mao Shaohua, Director of Customer Relations Department of GAC Toyota (left) and Li Xi (right), Executive Vice President of Autoqq.com
The first quarter of 2024 has passed, and the business of the customer related department is also progressing in an orderly manner. When referring to GAC Toyota's strategy and planning in customer service this year, Mao Shaohua said that the focus of the next step of the customer association department is still around the "complaint reduction activity based on customer satisfaction", and has formulated a three-aspect strategy for this purpose.
First of all, at the level of dealer groups, build a benchmarking platform for the three major groups, deepen the satisfaction management function of the group headquarters, and extend the good systems and cases of the three groups to more small and medium-sized groups, so as to attract the attention of more dealer groups and improve customer service capabilities and levels.
The second is to build a "3+1" urban improvement structure in an all-round way, continue to promote the model of "City of Improvement" and "City of First Goodness", and strengthen the good atmosphere of sharing experience and learning from each other. At the same time, in the "city of improvement" to choose good dealers, in the "city of good" to set up a benchmark dealers, so that all dealers in the country in the whole structure of the competition, to achieve the goal of independent management of the excellent city, play the city improvement benchmarking effect.
The last is to build a key improvement circle in South China, because Guangdong is a large sales volume of GAC Toyota, with the strategy of "long-distance friendship and close attack", to create a one-day rapid communication method around Guangzhou, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and gradually transform the South China region, which has the largest business volume and complaint volume, into a benchmark area with high satisfaction.
"Judging from the work in the first quarter, the promotion effect of the above three strategies is still good," Mao Shaohua said with relief.