Trust us: Jeep boss plea to buyers

Getting back on the shopping list of new-vehicle buyers is the highest priority for struggling Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in Australia.

New FCA Australia boss, Steve Zanlunghi, says that fundamental requirement ranks ahead of his other main targets in 2017, including the successful relaunch of Alfa Romeo via the Giulia sports sedan and the introduction of the Jeep Compass compact SUV.

Zanlunghi also rated highly the need in 2017 to restructure the FCAA business so staff focussed on individual brands and the need to create a dedicated fleet department.

Those business objectives in turn rank ahead of other items on the to-do list including prosecuting a right-hand drive ex-factory business case for the next generation Dodge Charger/Challenger and the RAM pick-ups.

“I hope we have hit bottom and we are on the way up,” Zanlunghi told motoring.com.au. “This isn’t something that gets fixed overnight, it takes time. There is no magic bullet.”

Zanlunghi, who started at FCAA in August, said customer belief in the business was crucial to turning around the sales dive that has every FCAA passenger vehicle brand – Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Fiat and Jeep – all suffering declines in 2016.

“For me the priorities as I see them next year is fixing our brand perception and increasing customer satisfaction,” he said.

“If you fix the perception, and fix the customer experience, then perception goes up, then all of a sudden you are on more buying lists and all of sudden you have an opportunity to sell more cars to the customers.”

The moves made by FCAA to address its issues with customers were explored by motoring.com.au in an interview with FCA global parts and service chief Pietro Gorlier in November.

He explained a number of changes that were made by FCAA to improve customer relations in the wake of an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) investigation.

Zanlunghi revealed further aspects of the company’s changes, including cutting the costs of the 100 most common parts, investigating a five-year warranty, providing dealers with instant rather than monthly customer satisfaction ratings and instituting a new measure of dealer performance that requires retraining – at the dealer’s own expense – if they fall below a certain level of customer service.

“We don’t want to use it as a stick, we want to use it as a measuring device,” said Zanlunghi.

“If it is done correctly it's not just to discover customer issues it's to help them [dealers] grow their business as well.”

Zanlunghi said there was evidence customers were starting to return to FCAA brands, most notably Jeep, which had topped 30,000 sales in Australia in 2014 before a collapse driven by a crippling spate of recalls and price rises triggered by worsening exchanges rates.

“I am not proud of this; year to date our sales are down 49 per cent, but over the last couple of months we have narrowed that gap and it is down to 32 per cent,” he said.

“So we are narrowing the gap year-on-year and I am hoping we have got to a level where we can no start to build on top of it.”

He also took heart from an improvement in FCAA’s net promoter score, which measures how many customers would be willing to talk highly of its brands and dealers or be considered detractors.

“We have basically doubled that score in a year. Actual facts precede reality so perception is going to take a little while to catch up but hopefully that will really start to catch fire here in the beginning of next year,” Zanlunghi said.

Zanlunghi said an internal restructure of FCAA would be an important internal target for 2017.

“I have a lot of internal priorities and one of those is putting a brand focus on our organisation, because we are a stable with a lot of brands.

“So we have a lot of people who wear a lot of different hats, and I think more of a focus going forward will help.

“You can compartmentalise with one person responsible for one or two things rather than five or six things.”

He also highlighted the need for FCAA to become a more significant player in the fleet market.

“Right now if you exclude dealer demos the fleet industry in Australia is 30 per cent of the business and we don’t really play in any of it.

“I know to some [people] fleet could be a dirty word when you have got some manufacturers that push to drive market share. I am talking more about the profitable fleet; the contract hires, the business to business.”