Hyundai looks to IT to improve service

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<h3>Hyundai looks to IT to improve service</h3>


Gail Kachadourian
Automotive News / January 2, 2006 - 6:00 am


Don Dees is Hyundai Motor America's new vice president of service. He oversees Hyundai's service operations, technical training and support, warranties and service contracts, customer surveys and consumer affairs.

Before Dees, 46, joined Hyundai last month, he was a vice president of manufacturing for the Chrysler group. He spoke with Staff Reporter Gail Kachadourian about his goals for 2006.

What's good about Hyundai's service operations as you inherited them?

The strength right now is the quality of our cars. Our IQS (J.D. Power and Associates' Initial Quality Study) numbers are very good. Obviously, we want to keep getting better as we bring on more and more new products.

The parts business is very strong. We have very good performance on getting things to dealers in a timely manner. The five regional offices, with regional parts and service managers and small teams, do a great job.

How does Hyundai's growth affect the service business?

We're adding new products very quickly and also adding dealerships. We're getting more dealerships that are exclusive to Hyundai. We're adding dealers so fast it's mind-boggling, and it's great. We've got a great opportunity to train these dealers right the first time.

What would you like to improve?

We need to continue to improve customer satisfaction. In 2004, Hyundai ranked 34th (among brands) in the J.D. Power Customer Service Index with a score of 832, below the industry average of 862. In 2005, Hyundai ranked 26th with an index score of 855, below the industry average of 871. Long term, we want to be at the top.

What are your plans to improve Hyundai's service operations?

One of the opportunities I see is information technology. We can put in some simple computer systems and do some automation. That can be in the speed of how we do warranty claims or warranty communication. It can be the speed with which we do technical service bulletins, the speed of early identification of problems in the field, simply automating some of the things we currently do manually. We can make a huge improvement in quality and customer satisfaction with better IT systems.

It would be integrated within the whole company, from the national office to the regionals and to all the dealers, up and down the chain. It would free up more time to do value-added work.

What are the top things you'd like to achieve in 2006?

We want to continue product quality improvements as we launch new vehicles. We want to continue our CSI improvements, to move the needle quickly and get to the top of the ladder.

We need to improve dealer efficiency and effectiveness. A big part of that is new dealers. We need to support them with training and systems and IT and help. We want to grow the market share the dealers have in customer-pay (work) -- the retail, oil changes, accessories side of the business. We want to reduce warranty costs through improved quality.

Hopefully, we can continue to improve the brand image, which should promote greater consideration for our products.

How do you plan to help dealers increase their customer-pay work?

As customers come in, whether they buy a car or bring their car back for warranty (work), anytime they touch our company, we want them to have a great experience. We want them to pick us for retail work as well, whether it's putting on a trailer hitch or changing the oil.

We are doing some focused advertising to put that carrot out there.

One of the things we're going to do this April is send out mailers to people who bought our cars and offer them dollars off an oil change. That will come from the dealer, and my organization will coordinate that.

We need to continue to improve the retail work, the accessory work. We've got a real opportunity to grow that business. We're going to make a big, big effort this year.

You may e-mail Gail Kachadourian at gkachadourian@crain.com

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[body]We need to improve dealer efficiency and effectiveness. A big part of that is new dealers. We need to support them with training and systems and IT and help. We want to grow the market share the dealers have in customer-pay (work) -- the retail, oil changes, accessories side of the business. We want to reduce warranty costs through improved quality.
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^^^Thats really good news.