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Of airbags, brakes, gas pedals and recalls...

22.02.2010 01:45:05

The big news this time of the year has got all the ingredients of a soap opera

The title may be a bit misleading, for frankly I am not going to be writing about any of the automotive components listed above. The only topic of any interest at all seems to be the size, fallout and repercussions of the largest recalls in automotive history.

Before I even start putting pen to paper on this, may I offer one piece of advice to expert, generalist and the interested onlooker to this subject – stop getting carried away by the media and our overwhelming interest in it. As an industry this is the stuff that makes our mouth’s collectively salivate. Perhaps it can be only matched by a bankruptcy or two in its ability to get people to notice the car industry on our pages.

You may gasp. “but what about the risks attached to the failure of parts?” Before you manage to put your brows together in tune with that question mark may I remind you that companies like Toyota, Honda and the like are the very companies that have brought automotive quality standards to where they are today. Perhaps ironically, you are measuring their deemed failure against the massive success of the Japanese system that bred this excellence. I am sure that there are many drivers, atleast of my generation, who have learnt in theory and sometimes by hard experience that systems do fail. So what do we do? Brakes fail, we use gears, throttle control and finally the parking brake to stop. Door latches fail, we tie the door handle to the seat or B-pillar with rope and drive to the repair station.

What we don’t do is make such a huge noise about a quality-control failure that seems to have become so ‘safety-related’.

Ask yourself, “what are the chances?” What are the chances of you getting a car with a defective component? What are the chances that the component will fail while you own the car? What are the chances that it will fail at a crucial time, as you are driving up to a junction or through heavy traffic?

Then compare that with the chances you take by not wearing a seatbelt, buying a car without a full complement of safety systems because it has saved you some money, speaking or texting on your mobile while driving or even buying a ‘seemingly’ perfect car from a complete stranger because the used car is just so right for your budget. Or even the chances that you take when running across a road. I would take a brand new car from any of the affected manufacturers, especially Toyota any day over those chances.

One lesson we need to learn that a man’s and an organisation’s word is only as good as the lengths they will go to stand by it. Even if genuine mistakes are made, one needs the strength to admit them and then rectify them. Toyota on a global basis has done just that. So have the other brands affected. Full marks to them. I would still recommend them over other brands that ignore problems, or choose to quietly address them in the silence of the dealers workshops.

Perhaps now, more than ever, we as car buyers need to realise that there is no such thing as a perfect machine. All cars are the outcome of the work of designers, planners, engineers, vendors and so on, who have to integrate supply, production and quality control. The aim for a zero failure rate is laudable but hardly realistic. A more pragmatic aim would be that any failure is safe, with no loss of limb or death resulting therewith.

I have never been a fan of big business and usually stand with the underdog on most issues, but in this case folks, you’ve got to stop worrying. As long as remedial action is put in place there will be no long-term fallout of the whole recall issue. And to the gentlemen from the not-affected brands who are sniggering at the embarrassment, remember next time around it could be you.

In tough times, companies need to pay more attention to retaining paying customers...

You don’t believe that something bad will happen to you until it actually does. At least if you are an eternal optimist, which I am not, you’ll live in that level of self-denial. Regular followers of this column would have noted that more often than not, I choose to use the platform to air out problems that most of us face as consumers. Now, can I help it that all these problems have happened to me? Before you wonder when I’ll get down to brass tacks, forsooth...

I have had a pretty normal relationship with my mobile phone service till date. Paid a large deposit, used my phone on international roaming and always paid my bills in time. Like any normal customer should and would. But the last month has been pretty bad – the only two occasions I was near a payment facility, the lines were huge and the only notes I had to feed the machine were fifty Rial ones. Not quite the amount I wanted to put in there for a bill of only thirty.

Cut to a week later and I find myself listening to the recorded voice that tells you you cannot make a call. So now I have a choice... cancel meetings and rush out to pay the bill or ask customer service to intercede. I needn’t have bothered, for the much-vaunted customer service only serves to state the obvious, yes my calls are blocked because one bill of thirty Rials has not been paid on time and yes they know that I have five times that on deposit with them and yes the choice is mine if I want to change my mobile phone service.

Now, it isn’t as if the root of the problem doesn’t start with me – I can’t claim being busy as an excuse for not paying my bills on time. I should have delegated, but there again I hit a blank wall because I don’t want to use company resources to handle personal stuff.

But in this rather mundane description of a non-issue, let’s not lose sight of a very pertinent part of the story – that of valuing the customers you have, understanding what it costs a service organisation to gain new customers and then realising that it is very easy for the customer to walk.

A quick back-of-envelope calculation tells me that I have spent more than 1500 Rials with my provider, always paid on time and would still walk away because of one instance of not being valued.

Some things are pretty evident in this. Obviously training isn’t as effective as it is made out to be, billing operates in a vacuum as do the operations and there is a human element lacking. Would it cost too much to have someone call up and tell you before the line is cut? Or push the case to a senior line manager to put on hold any action till the next bill is due?

I am sure most readers have faced the irritation of being treated shabbily as customers. Is it our lot that we have to bear this in silence or can we really do as suggested by our friend the customer rep and choose to take our business elsewhere? That wouldn’t be a problem in a large market where you have more than two mobile service providers. Here, the change would be till such time as the other player doesn’t add another nail into your wall of discontent.

At least in the case of my bank, I think things are different. I switched banks because I had tired of the dreary faces, long lines, empty counters and poor service of one bank in Qurum. The staff at my new bank in Qurum City Centre are completely the antithesis of that and they make every visit memorable with a friendly smile, prompt service, name recognition and a personal touch to everything, including taking care of the paperwork of depositing a cheque.

I recommend them to friends and would suggest that other companies benchmark levels of customer service to their’s. Do I choose to stay with them? You can bet your last customer I do.

Tags: Customer service

Gain a split personality and follow the example of mega corporations to avoid being answerable for your actions

Let us postulate a scenario that could happen to anyone of us sometime in our adult lives. Or as one of my lecturers was wont to say, “let us hypothise this proposition”...

You get a job, start working and earn a regular monthly salary. You scrimp and save and as some years go by you find that you have built a little nest egg that allows you to put up the cash for a down payment on a house. You enter a loan contract with a bank, mortgage a significant part of your salary for the next couple of decades and buy the house.

A few months later you lose your job, you are unable to meet your obligations on the house and the house is repossessed. If you come out of the other end with any money at all, you are fortunate. The chances are that you will lose your shirt along with your house. It’s something that should never happen to anyone, but does nonetheless.

Tags: Chicane | bankruptcy | alternate

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The big news this time of the year has got all the ingredients of a soap opera

In tough times, companies need to pay more attention to retaining paying customers...

Gain a split personality and follow the example of mega corporations to avoid being answerable for your actions