Chrysler Corp. had a guardian angel supervising the conception of its customer satisfaction effort: Walter P. Chrysler.
That's Sales Vice President Thomas Pappert's version of the Customer One story. He says the company's founding father appeared to several executives one night on a flight from Los Angeles to Detroit as they wrestled with the dilemma of how to sell the LH cars to two generations that the company wasn't selling much to: baby boomers and busters.
'We were pretty sure we couldn't sell new cars to new customers using old methods,' Pappert told the Automotive News World Congress. 'We had a vehicle change coming, and we needed a culture change to go with it.'
Pappert showed a whimsical video of Walter P.'s 'appearance' in which the company father lamented the automaker's feast or famine past and told the executives: Figure out what you want the world to think of Chrysler, and be that kind of company.
So they did.
'The truth is that Customer One really was conceived on a plane ride, while we were grappling with this issue of consumer attitudes toward us and our dealers,' said Pappert.
He said the officials that night came to two conclusions that became the basis of Customer One:
The company needed to sell more than cars or trucks: Chrysler need to sell 'customer satisfaction with personal transportation,' Pappert said. 'That meant all of us - from the designers and engineers and production people to the dealer sales and service staffs - had to team up .|.|. to produce the cars people want, then market and service them without making people uncomfortable.'
Creating and administering a nationwide customer satisfaction process would require full support - from top management in Detroit to every dealer owner.
A training program started in July 1992. Three months later, more than 50,000 people from 4,900 dealerships were trained, along with the company's senior management.
Still, the company met with resistance from some dealers, and the company responded with a strong incentive - 'cold, hard cash.' Pappert said Chrysler has spent $200 million on The Drive for the Gold program. Dealers with higher-than-average CSI scores who achieve sales objectives receive from hundreds of dollars to $60,000 a month.
While Pappert admits the company has a long way to go, sales satisfaction scores are up, the median age of buyers has dropped from 52 to 45, and the number of college graduates buying Chrysler products has doubled. The median income also has risen $8,000 to $45,000, and the percent of female buyers has nearly tripled, from 11 to 30 percent.
Pappert sees the quality of the customer's experience as being the only differentiating factor in the next decade if parity in product quality is achieved.
'Any dealer that will not embrace the Customer One concept,' he added, 'will not see millennium.'
