Split parts add muscle to Ford India service

 Automobile major Ford, which recently started manufacturing the Figo Aspire 4-door sedan from its spanking new, $1-bn plant at Sanand, Gujarat, is hoping that its focus on customer experience will give it an edge over competitors.

Ford India, which has four plants (two vehicle assembly and two engine assembly) across Chennai and Sanand with a combined capacity for 4,40,000 vehicles and 5,80,000 engines, has rolled out multiple initiatives on the customer service front, including ‘Sub-Assembly Levels for Repairs’, ‘Happy Pocket Service’, ‘Vehicle Personalisation Centre’ and ‘Aftermarket Distributorships’.

P K Umashankar, vice president, customer service operations, Ford India, told Deccan Herald that much thought has gone into their design and execution. “Let’s take car wing mirrors. It’s something which often gets broken. The customer had no choice than to replace a broken mirror with a new one at a cost of around Rs 1,500. That’s when we decided to split the mirror into four parts. Since it’s usually the scalp which gets broken, the customer can now just ask for that part and get the mirror fixed for under Rs 300.”
Umashankar said ideation for the programme, called Sub-Assembly Levels for Repairs, is done by the marketing or customer service team.

“The engineers then decide which parts can be made available after looking at structural integrity and safety of the car. Sometimes special tools have to be released to the dealers to accommodate the changes in repair workflow. At other times, component manufacturers have to be brought on board.” Umashankar said Ford convinces them that splitting the parts would bring more car owners to do repairs to make the most of lower costs, and lead to higher volumes.

Car door is another component which Ford split into two sheet metals and a reinforcement steel beam. “In 60-70 per cent cases of damaged doors, the steel beam inside, and the inner panel, are not damaged at all. But we end up replacing the entire panel. So we started releasing the outer skin panel separately, and we trained the technician to crimp-weld the door to the inner panel. For this, we had to first train technicians.

Repair costs came down almost 40-45 per cent for the customer. Labour earnings go up for the dealer since instead of just screwing something on, he’s now crimp-welding. But since parts are more costly than labour, this works well for customers,” Umashankar said. Piston and alternator are two other components which Ford broke down into parts under the initiative.

Under Happy Pocket Service, a Ford owner can have his vehicle serviced for Rs 2,199 at any dealer. This service includes an oil fill, an oil filter replacement, a sump gasket replacement, body wash, and a vehicle health check, Umashankar said. The Vehicle Personalisation Centre — currently available only in Chennai — provides Ford owners with customisation options usually associated with high-end cars.

Ford has also started making its genuine parts available beyond dealerships by setting up Aftermarket Distributorships. These have been set up at Delhi and Chennai, and would be expanded, Umashankar said.

The Ford India VP said the company now has 341 sales and service centres across 186 cities, and plans to grow them to 500. To probe further into tier-3 and tier-4 towns, Ford has deployed 30 mobile service vans across all its dealers in select geographies like Andhra Pradesh and North-east. Once a town generates the critical volume, Ford sets up an extended sales and service outlet there.

“These are scaled down small box formats run by the nearest big city dealer, which can display up to four new cars, and repair up to six cars simultaneously,” Umashankar said.