You must have heard about Toyota's quality travails in the US over defective interiors. In fact I was a little intrigued why this purdafaash took so long.
I must admit I feel this way solely from personal experience - I used to drive a Toyota Camry in the US and had all sorts of niggling problems. Yes, something about the accelerator pedal would make me worry that the it would stick under the floor mat (I used to pull back the floor mat before driving); the sticky accelerator was the problem that finally did Toyota in. But there were also other issues with the interiors. The center console storage had a cover whose hinges gave way. The sun visor on the driver's side had a plastic flip cover over the vanity mirror whose hinges grew, er, plasticky and then gave way - twice!
The core of the car was simply perfect, but the plastics seemed very badly put together. I never had such problems even with my Santro in India.
The state of the Camry's interior seemed so much at variance with the mantra we learned in our manufacturing classes about Toyota quality. I thought it may have been a result of the Americanization of the production for the US market. But it now seems it was at least a little because of a slightly pompous "we know best" mindset back at Toyota's Japan HQ.
Perhaps they were out driving Lexuses! (http://manasblog.proton.in/2009/09/eat-your-own-dog-food.html )
Quality translates directly into repeat business. I had - at another time - a VW New Beetle, which had the recurring problem of fused headlamps, and I knew a friend who had to return his VW Jetta under the US's "Lemon Law". So I would not easily buy a VW in India. And my sisters and I each had Honda Civics at some point or other which never gave us any trouble at all, so I bought a Civic in India as well. Also, when I had to trust my safety to a motorcycle on relatively fast US highways, I felt most confident on a machine made by Honda.
Just for the record, my latest Civic has given me considerable trouble - a knocking engine sound from the first day that their engineers just could not fix for two years, and some odd electronic whirring connected with the aircon. Let's see what happens to their quality reputation in India a few years hence.
3 comments:
Dear Manas,
we had long discussions in Global Vision sessions on the problems Toyota faced. It was interesting to see the story from a user perspective (yours) and correlate it with the articles published in The Economist.
With "quality" getting democratised rapidly (all players make almost similar quality stuff, thanks to harmonisation and diffusion of common standards globally), the way a company can distinguish itself is through "soft stuff" like styling, emotional connect and service. Unfortunately, in the ongoing fracas, Toyota has surely lost this one magical touch it had developed over decades.
How could they get it sooooo wrong!
Respected Sir,
This article shows that big giants like Toyota can also make mistakes & none is perfect;but more interesting to see that how they will deal with this puzzle.I think it is more difficult to regain customers belief.
It would be acid test for Toyota.
Respected sir,
As we all now that the core marketing strategy of Toyota is quality & perfection. But due to "intended accelerator" in US, more than 2000 incident & 19 deaths scenic about there core competence. As a loyal customer worried of this problem could not be ignored & this is not a game of loyalty but of life.
As my learning from your blog is that :
1)Take feedback from existing customer time to time
2) Implement feedback, as soon as possible, if once the faith of any one's be deteriorated it's impossible to regain it.
"By some mistakes big becomes small"
Thank you
Satyawan Malhan
Fall-09
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