The Sale is Only the Beginning

Last quarter, the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines or CAMPI reported a 37 percent increase in vehicle sales. That’s certainly good news given the years of lagging behind our ASEAN neighbors. At least now, we’re starting to close the gap. Things have gone a long way and I attribute this to several factors: one, the increased number of choices in any vehicle segment, second, the relative ease of getting an affordable car loan and lastly, the improved showroom experience.

Walk into any showroom nowadays and sales personnel will treat you like a serious buyer no matter how you look or dress. More than just being well-informed about their products and competitors, they’ll treat you like kings, “Sir, would you like some coffee or iced tea?” Oh, just make sure it’s freshly brewed or I’ll just walk to the dealership across. But seriously, besides the complimentary drinks, the competitive nature of car sales has driven brands to be creative and/or smart in luring prospective buyers.

However, the happy experience shouldn’t end right then and there. Buying a new car isn’t like picking an anti-dandruff shampoo at the grocery. You can’t switch cars every other week just because your scalp continues to snow. Automobiles are huge purchases – they’re investments where you put blood, sweat and tears into. In that respect, dealerships should also perfect the art of excellent after sales service and support. After all, you may buy a new car every five years or so, but you do have to change its oil every six months. And in that respect, I understand why Filipinos go for certain brands say, Toyota.

Aside from building utterly reliable cars, Toyota has by far one of the most consistent and affordable after sales service out there. Though they may not necessarily be the best, at least you always know what you’re getting yourself into. Walk into any Toyota service center, and the procedure’s the same and the results are practically the same as well. It’s this fast food level of predictability and speed that makes Toyota the first brand everyone thinks of when buying a new car. After all, I didn’t lust over my Yaris for how it looks or drives. It takes me to work and takes me back home; but when it comes to servicing, it’s cheap and quick. There’s almost no downtime.

Of course, consistency can be a bad thing too, and this brings me to the point of why I won’t consider some car brands ever again. It stems from the experience I’ve had with two of their executive sedans a generation apart: one which is 1988 model and the other, a 1998 model, both of which were considered cutting-edge at the time. Without going too much into the details, our dealer was consistently either dumbstruck with our complaint and couldn’t fix the problem or hastily fixed the problem and ended up with repeat trips to dealership. Suffice to say, we weren’t happy with the overall experience and ended up selling both cars soon afterward. And that’s a real shame since this brand is coming up with two new cars which I’m sure will tickle the fancy of new car buyers. But not me.

It’s experience such as these that really cause headaches among car buyers. Having your customers swear, “Ayoko na” on their mother’s grave is something car companies should never hear. Of course, car companies and their dealers can simply wave criticism aside and continue on with business as usual or they can accept their own faults and slowly build up on customer trust once again. For instance, General Motors’s Philippine operations once housed multiple brands from Chevrolet to Opel to Subaru, all with one thing in common: a lack of spare parts. And it didn’t help when GM would simply kill a brand after two years if it didn’t perform to their expectations. This is what Chevrolet’s new distributor, The Covenant Car Company inherited and one that they’re changing one customer at a time. TCCCI went back to basics, retrained their personnel from top to bottom and engraved the value of customer satisfaction into their minds and hearts. TCCCI even delayed the launch of their Cruze last March just to assure they had enough spare parts in their inventory. It’s hard being the market challenger, but so far they’ve shown gusty forward planning.

The very same customer satisfaction ethos helped another former GM Philippines brand, Subaru, to climb out of automotive purgatory. There was a time when Subaru was tossed from distributor to distributor and it even died. It took a lean, back-to-basics approach to resurrect the brand to what it is today. Now, Motor Image Pilipinas has successfully transformed Subaru into a brand renowned not only for enthusiast-centric cars, but also for highly personalized, highly skilled after sales service akin to a German luxury brand. Personally, I took a leap of faith and got an Impreza two years ago after driving one and reading positive feedback about their excellent after sales service. Since then, my ownership experience has been nothing short of amazing, that we got a Forester XT a year later. Nowadays, if someone asks for my recommendation for a new car, I say “get a Subaru,” without flinching.

Now, I’m sure everyone has their own personal stories of car ownership and some will vehemently disagree with my personal experiences here. Nonetheless, I have two main points which I’d like to put forward: first, when you buy a car don’t settle for something that looks fancy. Always research on how it is to own one of these cars every single day, since you’ll be living with it day in and day out. Second, this serves as a call and a challenge to car manufacturers to not only offer great deals to new car buyers, but to also give better service to its existing customers as well. It just seems fair since car buyers are paying a lot, so it’s about right they get a lot in return as well.

Here are a couple of your Backseat Driver reactions to last week’s “Is it time to junk the Coding Scheme” by Kap Agulia...

If the UVVRP is lifted soon, then one can, and should, expect chaos to reign in the streets. As the author himself has pointed out, more affluent members of society have found ways to go around the rule, so much so that it is expected that there would be a lot more vehicles on the road after the scheme is lifted. When this happens, our already capacity-challenged roads and intellectually-challenged traffic enforcers will not be able to cope, thus resulting in much worse traffic snarls, resulting to more road rage incidents, longer travel times, higher fuel costs, etc. – jbespiritu

UVVRP is not the answer to the traffic problem, the first is we need to educate drivers and traffic enforcers, then improve roads, use computerized traffic lights that will change the traffic light sequence timing depending on the time. Then of course clear the road ng mga sagabal. Kasi naman kung bawal mag park sa road ay nilalagay ang sasakyan sa bangketa, eh saan naman dadaan ang pedestrian – syempre sa kalye. – phawaii

Here in Las Piñas, men in orange uniform (must be from city hall) post themselves along Daang Hari near TS Cruz gate to flag down UVVRP violators. What is interesting is that the area is close to the Cavite boundary. The way I understand it, color coding is in effect along the Alabang-Zapote road. People from city hall even issued a press release regarding the scheme’s area of coverage. Daang Hari, though a national road, was built to make Cavite more accessible to residents from the south. Thus, we can safely assume majority of violators there are bound for Cavite and other Tagalog provinces where there is no color coding. I understand a traffic aide earns a commission for every traffic citation he issues. – Jojo Roxas

EDITOR’S NOTE: Those among you who keenly observe our section may have noticed a familiar face significantly missing from our list of regular Backseat Drivers. After almost a decade of contributing to The Philippine STAR’s Business Motoring pages, erstwhile contributor Lester Dizon has decided to concentrate on his core business, which is the hugely popular Motorcycle Magazine. Motorcycle Magazine comes out every other month. But you don’t have to wait that long to catch up on what Lester is up to. He has also accepted the Editor-At-Large position for a soon-to-be-launched after market car magazine which will come out on the months that Motorcycle Magazine does not. We thank Lester for his invaluable contribution to the growth of the section and wish him the best of luck in his new endeavor. Via Con Dios, Lester!