Toyota Kirloskar makes customer experience part of its DNA

Toyota Kirloskar achieved

1. 300% increase in response rate
2. 23 point increase in NPS
3. Proactive and informed frontline employees 

Summary

1. Toyota’s reputation in India is second to none. With over 250 dealer outlets in over 200 cities, Toyota is one of the biggest automobile company in the country.
2. The company was looking for a way to improve its NPS by capturing customer feedback and identifying improvement areas in real-time. They teamed up with NumrCXM to build a CX program that fulfils the unique business needs of both, dealerships and management.
3. Now, the company has empowered its frontline to proactively elicit customer feedback and identify customers’ struggles. Overall, they have improved their customer experience by taking corrective measures across all their dealerships.

Commitment to the Toyota Way

Toyota Kirloskar Motor is an Indian joint venture between Toyota Motor and Kirloskar Group, for the manufacture and sales of Toyota cars in India. They have over 250 dealer outlets spread across hundreds of cities in India.

The two pillars of the company’s fundamental DNA, also known as ‘the Toyota Way’ are

1. ‘kaizen’ (the Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement), and
2. empowerment and respect for people, especially the frontline workers.

This led them to look for a CXM solution to improve customer experience across all their dealerships.

Teaming up with Numr

The company was looking for an agile CX solution that would focus less on scores and more on creating positive experiences for customers. This is why Toyota selected Numr- to empower the dealers and management with the right tools to improve customer relationships and create strong loyalty.

Toyota wanted a true enterprise solution. A solution that had ‘ready-made’ business intelligence capabilities but was also flexible enough to fulfil their unique needs. Numr fit the bill.

Together, Toyota and Numr created a customer experience program tailored to Toyota’s unique business requirements.  

The Challenge

Mainly, the company wanted to-

1. increase its Net Promoter Score
2. improve the response rate for customer feedback surveys
3. implement a dynamic, real-time feedback system for all their dealerships
4. help the dealers understand, act on, and improve overall customer experience

The Solution

We created a listening program covering their 5 main car models. It collects feedback about customer experience during car purchase in real-time.

Our survey delved into 6 broad categories- paperwork, dealer facility, dealer commitment, sales consultant, status update, and delivery experience.

Customized, dynamic dashboards empower the dealers with right information to manage experience and follow up with customers.

The dealer-level dashboards provide real-time information about

1. Dealership NPS
2. Response rate and trend
3. Sales consultant response rate
4. Customer verbatim
5. Number of promoters
6. Alerts for Detractors, and more

Numr also worked with Toyota to develop a multi-step program designed to ensure that all customers are providing feedback. After the initial transaction, the sales agents inform the customers that a survey will be sent a few days later. The survey includes an NPS rating and an open comment box for customers to communicate anything specific to their experience.

Subsequently, Toyota dealers can trigger a secondary alert cycle from the dashboard itself to engage customers who haven’t responded to the first request.

Numr also created a comprehensive ‘NPS Handbook’ for all sales agents to help them understand the purpose of collecting feedback and improving customer experience. The handbook also includes scripts on how to engage customers.

Moreover, additional incentives for sales agents are also tied to their response rate. All this ensures that feedback is collect from all the customers.

Numr also identified ‘priority’ and ‘strength’ areas for Toyota. At the management level, based on the reports, Toyota prioritized attributes that had the strongest impact on NPS.

The Result

Toyota’s NPS increased by 23 points in the span of a year. The company’s response rate also grew by 300%.

On the whole, Toyota’s CX program has improved satisfaction, increased loyalty, filled experience gaps, and driven strategies.

With real-time feedback, dealers now have the power to engage customers and produce promoters. They are now able to understand the importance of customer experience and therefore, create positive experiences.