On 24th of April 2007 at the ceremony in Venice, Italy, Toyota named the winners of the Toyota Ichiban European Customer Satisfaction Awards. From Baltic States the award was given to Elke Auto AS (Estonia).
The Elke Auto AS was chosen because of their excellent customer satisfaction results. The evaluation included dealer’s performance (customer service) in both car sales and aftersales. By achieving excellent results on every stage of the customer relations, these dealers provide important support to Toyota in increasing their sales in Baltic countries.“Our aim is to achieve the first place according to Complete Customer Satisfaction survey on every European market for 2010 said Andrea Formica, the Toyota Motor Europe vice-president of sales and marketing. With the “Toyota Ichiban European Customer Satisfaction Award we want to show our appreciation to those dealers who strongly support us in our aspirations. They listened to our customers requests and did everything from their part that the owners of a Toyota car can have a positive feelings on every step of the customer relations.”
Dealers were evaluated by the results of the customer satisfaction survey that Toyota has implemented in ten European countries that participated in this project in 2006. Dealers achieved very good results in car sales and aftersales services. For example, the customers showed very high satisfaction rate with reception when entering into sales room, with test drives and with the process of buying or car delivery. In aftersale services the clients valued highly how appointments are agreed and conducted, the accuracy and correctness, the aftersale relations and caring for the client.
This is the first time that Toyota has named a winner of the Toyota Ichiban customer satisfaction award. Tadashi Arashima, president and effective manager of Toyota Motor Europe and Thierry Dombreval, vice-president of Toyota Motor Europe, gave the awards to the winners in the presence of Toyota Europe branches and Toyota Baltic top managers.
In the future the Toyota Motor Europe is planning to extend this competition to other European markets, in order to guarantee the uniform implementation of “Toyota Way” principles in car resale.
There are 11 Toyota distributors in Baltic States. Elke Auto from Tallinn was first to achieve the Ichiban award. Founded in 1993 the Elke Auto is one of the oldest and biggest Toyota distributors in Baltic States. Chairman of the board Riho Sepp and manager of the client relations Veiko Karu said that the award is giving them a great pleasure: “We are very grateful to our customers who recognized the work of our team”. During the 16 years of our operations we have always distinguished ourselves from others by our special attitude towards the customers and have achieved in this maximum results. Our aim is and always will be to offer our clients the best experience in buying and owning a car. For this we have continuously trained the members of our team by creating the opportunities to modify and develop their way of thinking. Ichiban award is the greatest acknowledgement to all members in our team who have given their best to achieve the respect and esteem from our clients. After receiving this award we are not going do rest on laurels but it motivates us to do our job even better.“
