After-sales service helps sales
After-sales service helps sales
To maintain optimum customer satisfaction, a car manufacturer
needs to provide after-sales service by employing skilled
mechanics as well as carrying a complete stock of spare parts.
These convenient facilities have been maintained by PT
DaimlerChrysler Distribution Indonesia over the past 24 years.
The company's after-sales deputy director, Ivo A. Kapitzki,
told journalists visiting the company's dealer development and
customer care department in Ciputat, Tangerang, on Sept. 5 that
after-sales service would generate further sales of a certain
product, particularly in the automotive industry.
Each new owner of a Mercedes Benz -- one of the three makes of
car from DaimlerChrysler apart from Jeep and Chrysler -- will be
given an Integrated Service Package (ISP) for three years. Each
customer will be given a chipped card, which can be used for 150
transactions.
If the car breaks down, mechanics at authorized after-sales
service departments will use a Star Diagnostic system to repair
it and, if necessary, fix the fault with the necessary spare
parts.
"With satisfactory after-sales service, our customers are sure
to buy other products from us. Imagine if a dealership only sold
cars without satisfying their customers with an after-sales
service, they would go to another manufacturer," Kapitzki said.
The German-based company set up its central training
department in 1978, and offers three years of vocational training
at a standard similar to that in its country of origin to ensure
skilled mechanics who are able to download any program linked to
headquarters in Stuttgart.
The vocational program also includes four-month upgrading in
automobile mechanics, automobile electronics and industrial
mechanics.
"So far, 700 mechanics have graduated from this program. This
year we are receiving the 27th batch of 16 mechanics," Kapitzki
said.
Next year, DaimlerChrysler plans to invite all the graduates
back to celebrate the silver jubilee of the vocational program.
A 6,000-square-meter warehouse on a 6.4-hectare lot houses the
33,000 spare parts. Mercedes Benz has a policy of continuing to
produce a spare part for 15 years. Even spare parts for cars
manufactured in the 1960s, called kentang (potato) by locals due
to their chubby look, are still available here.
"If we don't have the part, we can contact the Global
Logistics Center in Gemersheim, Germany, to order it online,"
said Satya Saptaputra, the department manager at the parts
logistics center.
To support the three departments at the workshop, a huge
satellite dish is also available to download programs.
-- Primastuti Handayani