Toyota Oz eyes 250,000-plus sales

Toyota has targeted record sales north of 250,000 in Australia as it prepares for the closure of its local assembly plant, overhauls its relationship with customers and hands more responsibility to its dealer body to solve day-to-day issues with them.

The massive program, dubbed Toyota For Life, was launched last January after a nine-month co-development program between Toyota and some of its biggest Australian dealers.

Under the program, inspired by a Disney Institute (yes a division of the amusement company) customer service course attended by senior Toyota executives and dealers in the USA last year, the word customers is abandoned in favour of guests and high-pressure selling is a no-no.

“We are very careful to make sure their complete focus is the ownership experience, not just the purchase, but the whole ownership experience and living the Toyota life to the point where our guests can’t imagine a world without Toyota,” Toyota Australia sales and marketing executive director Tony Cramb told motoring.com.au.

“They achieve that by delivering great products, great value in trustworthy way where they (guests) are treated as valued individuals, where we anticipate their needs and do what we say we are going to do.”

And calling them guests?

“Someone who comes into our ecosystem is a guest,” explains Cramb. “Whether they have actually bought a car or not doesn’t matter. Whether they are with us or not doesn’t matter. They are a guest of ours.

“And the concept of guest is far more service-oriented than a customer. It’s like a guest in your own home.”

While all this might sound happy-clappy and a bit soft, this is Toyota we are talking about; the hard-nosed car company that has dominated Australian new car sales this millennium, reaching an all-time high in 2008 when it sold 238,983 vehicles. In 2014 it sold 203,501 vehicles, its lowest tally since 2011.

Cramb insists Toyota For Life is an intrinsic part of rebooting Toyota’s sales growth.

“We could do no wrong in those days, but there are a couple of significant differences now. In those days the competition was nowhere near as strong as it is today. My respect for the competition is enormous these days.

“And so we have to be better. Those days are definitely not behind us. No way at all. We will get to 250,000 sales, no doubt in my mind. It’s just a case of lining up the product to the market and getting that right.

“I have complete faith in our sales and marketing ability. I would back us against anyone. We have got a really well run group, and really talented people who are very passionate about Toyota and care a lot about it.”

With its local assembly facilities shutting in 2017, along with Holden – and Ford departing in 2016 – Toyota’s focus on improving customer relations is a key to building sales in a post-manufacturing market.

Indeed, Toyota joins Hyundai, Holden, Ford and Nissan among leading brands working hard to lift their customer satisfaction levels as the new era approaches, while some like Mazda and Subaru are already acknowledged local leaders in this area.

While some customer service initiatives such as Ford’s free loan cars at participating dealerships have been widely publicised, Toyota For Life comprises a series of confidential dealer standards, which include eight fundamental changes that rule out a series of past practices.

“The whole idea of Toyota For Life is we have a code by which we work, and a list of standards which we have issued to the dealers and we judge the dealers formally twice a year on their ability to meet those standards of behaviour,” explained Cramb.

“Obviously, we don’t want to change the competitive nature of the business and we would never try and do that, but by the same token there are things that we expect of our dealers in terms of the way they go to market … in the past we may have encouraged them to act in a particular way, we no longer do that.”

Cramb cited two specific examples of the changes that have come in with Toyota For Life. Dealers are no longer allowed to charge for erroneous extras during service that deliver no benefit to the ‘guest’, while they are granted more freedom to make judgement calls on repairs that may not fall within warranty parameters.

Cramb explained the latter item was an example of where Toyota’s initial attempt to impose standards on its dealers was rebuffed and they demanded more input into the process.

“The dealers said to us ‘the customer comes in, they are out of warranty, there is an issue with the vehicle, we know we should do it, we know you would say yes, but we have got to go through the processes that takes up to a month to get the approval in Japan or whatever you have to go through. Give us the responsibility, we won’t let you down’.

“Within guidelines, we now do that. The decision is now made closer to the guest and it gets fixed straight away.”

In total, more than 10,000 Toyota and dealer staff have been trained in the Toyota For Life philosophy over the last 12 months.