Lexus Luxury Lifestyle Training

Ground-breaking Lexus Customer Relations Management programme to raise

aftersales service quality

KEY POINTS

• Lexus aftersales consultants learn to identify with customers’ expectations through luxury lifestyle experiences Lexus Customer Relationship Management programme launched across UK New central call centre established for efficient organisation of customer servicing and MoT appointments New procedure enables service to be tailored to each customer’s requirements Programme will build on Lexus’s industry leading customer satisfaction performance, honoured by five successive J.D. Power Gold Awards
• Thousands of Lexus owners to be invited to give their opinions on Lexus service first-hand at a series of spa hotel days

Lexus aftersales consultants are being given a taste of the luxury living enjoyed by their customers. All in the name of good business development, staff from Lexus centres across the country are being pampered at top class hotels as part of a programme to raise customer care to an even higher level: experiencing for themselves the kind of quality and service their clients enjoy and expect, will help them hone their own customer care skills.

The hotel visits are not just about the high-life, however, as the training sessions include “trust” scenarios, for example where one person is talked through the procedure for shaving a blindfolded colleague with what they believe to be a cutthroat razor. This relates to the way in which new customers need to be introduced step-by-step to the aftersales procedure, without, of course, any risk of blood-letting.

Lexus’s industry-leading performance in customer satisfaction is witnessed by an unprecedented five successive J.D. Power and Associates Gold Awards. But true to its core principle of the “relentless pursuit of perfection”, Lexus GB has launched the Lexus Customer Relations Management programme, designed to deliver an even better ownership experience.

A series of innovative measures is being phased in across the national network of 53 Lexus centres to establish a system for booking service appointments that is more time-efficient and better tailored to each motorist’s personal preferences. Central to this programme is the setting up of a national call centre.

And to obtain feedback direct from the Lexus customers themselves, thousands of owners are being invited to spend the day at luxury spa hotels around the country to enjoy the facilities and share their opinions on where Lexus is succeeding and where it could do better.

The customer relations management programme was initiated in response to customers’ expressed desire for Lexus to be more closely involved in the aftersales process. To achieve this, Lexus is setting up a central call centre that has access to a comprehensive database for each Lexus centre, including the booking diary, the technicians available and the courtesy car fleet. It also has the customer database for each centre, which will be ‘cleansed’ to ensure it includes only current Lexus owners.

Working from the updated database, the centre will call each customer to offer a service or MoT appointment, provide a quotation for the work, make an online booking on their behalf with the appropriate Lexus centre, allocate a technician to the job and organise a courtesy car if required. When the booking date arrives, the customer receives a reminder call or text message.

The programme is now in operation at 22 centres, with 30 expected to be covered by the end of year. The concept has been pioneered by Lexus GB and has been demonstrated to the company’s colleagues in the USA.

Steve Penson, Lexus GB National Aftersales Manager, said: “We believe the programme is the only one of its kind to be offered by a prestige manufacturer and that it will yield important benefits in helping us develop even better and more efficient service to our customers.

“Using the call centre lets us obtain direct feedback from our customers about what we are doing well and what we could do better and we can also use the system to develop an individual aftersales requirements profile for each Lexus owner.”

ENDS