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