The Jeep Compass launched to the media this week in Australia and the brand is excited, but is Jeep doing the right things in Australia to win back trust?
THE JEEP COMPASS was launched to the media this week, although it’s been on-sale since before Christmas. And while Jeep is excited by its all-new compact SUV, there’s still the lingering smell of consumer disappointment with poor servcing experience on other Jeep models and poor quality.
So, even before journalists got to turn a wheel on the new Compass, Guillaume Drelon, Head of Jeep Brand, Australia was in the firing line. Drelon has spoken in the past of Jeep’s efforts to improve the customer service experience and that he believes the quality of Jeep product has improved greatly… here’s how our quick Q&A went.
DM: How can you address customer dissatisfaction and poor public perception issues with the Jeep brand in Australia? It’s got to be more than just a five-year warranty and a There & Back guarantee?
GD: “You’re right. I think a five-year warranty is not enough. I mean that’s why we designed this package, not only a five-year warranty, we’ve got also the five-year capped-price servicing and the lifetime roadside assistance, which is a package that brings a lot of value and peace of mind.
“It’s still not enough; what we also do is work on the customer satisfaction. We’ve done massive actions to go back to our customers, fix the issues and make sure that we can properly take care of them, and that’s the strategy of the company.
“So it goes through how can we care properly for our customers, how can we provide the right product, the right price and the right service. It’s a journey, because we need to build that, we cannot build that overnight, so it’s something we are in the process of doing.
“We have done a lot of things, in terms of parts availability, in terms of customer training, aftersales training, and we’ve seen a big, big improvement in our customer satisfaction already, so I think it’s a very good sign, it’s very positive and that’s the trend we follow.”
DM: What about the vehicles themselves? Has there been a measurable quality improvement?
GD: “Yeah, totally. We see it through the number of recalls, the number of technical issues we might have and how quickly we can fix a car, so these are the metrics, more or less all the OEM stuff, and we are doing good, we are moving really in the right way.”