Putting customers first: how Toyota service fulfills customers’ expectations

Implementing NPS: first observations

During the initial phase of the implementation of NPS, an important finding was the correlation between the NPS score and the answers to the questions “How would you rate our ability to respect the response time for your service request?” and “How would you rate the quality of the service job compared to your expectations?”. The key to a higher NPS score was thus to improve in these two areas: offering a faster response time, and offering a higher quality in repairs. According to Janusz Facon it’s not only important to improve in these areas, but also to fulfil the expectations of the customers created by the service market.

Putting the theory to practice

Based on the findings from the NPS surveys, a training was created for all technicians, service managers and call center teams as one of the first Kaizen activities. The training is very practical, filled with exercises, and is still applied to this day. The following step was putting this training to practice and allocating NPS as the main topic in all service meetings.

Going to the source

Next up was the implementation of a service management tool: Sharepoint was introduced 2 years ago to the Polish service managers to keep track of all service tasks. When low scores are received through NPS, the relevant service manager can then meet the customer face to face and discuss what can be done to improve. This is what we call Genchi Genbutsu, the TSC value that means “to go and see”, so the service team can understand the issue of the situation. Janusz Facon has experienced that customers are always open for discussion, so NPS has certainly led to a better cooperation in the case of Toyota Material Handling Poland. Kaizen activities in response to NPS can range from simply relocating a service technician to redesigning certain processes or even creating extra support teams.