Evaluation of the After-Sale Services of Car Companies During the Last Year

Khodrocar – Nowadays, after-sale services are one of the important factors for maintaining customer satisfaction and companies’ success, not only in Iran but also in global market. According to researches, attracting a customer cost 5 times more than maintaining one and the auto companies know that.

In every country, there are one or few organizations exist that evaluate after-sale services and publishes the results annually.

In Iran, Iran Standard & Quality Inspection Co. (ISQI) is one of credible companies that evaluates after-sale services. Contrary to popular imagination, this company belongs to private sector and the government just observes its actions.

This company evaluated 24 car importers and manufacturers in 2017 and have 5 steps: Evaluation of the after sales service management system, customer surveys, field assessment of authorized repair shop, evaluation of the satisfaction of authorized dealers from the performance of car company companies and the number of technical personnel in all authorized repair shops.

According to the latest evaluation in the year 2017, after-sale services raised to 69.2 percent and had a 3.5 growth compared to the last year and experienced an increasing trend during the last two years.

However, it is worth noting that none of the 24 car manufacturers and manufacturers was able to reach first rank. All of the are ranked between second to forth. 4.7 are forth.

Meanwhile, last year, the average customer satisfaction rating of after-sale services was 71.9%, which grew 3.2% compared to the year 2016. The statistics are based on interviews and surveys from about 1 million and 200 thousand customers. The main reason for the discontent of these customers was the lack absence of spare parts, poor quality of services and repairs, as well as high fees.

Customer satisfaction is the important part because it has direct effects on companies’ benefits, amount of referral to authorized repair shops and finally reduction of part and vehicle sales.

The charts below shows the status of car companies in after-sales services in 2016 (1396):

All suppliers are classified according to four ratings. First rank belongs to the companies with scores between 85 to 100 percent and no company was able to reach this level. Second rank belongs to the companies with scores between 70 to 85 percent, third rank is for companies with 55 to 70 and fourth belongs to the companies with scores lower than 55 percent.

43 percent of companies were ranked second, 48 percent were ranked third and other 9 percent ranked fourth.

Year 2018 Outlook
In the beginning of this year, United States left Iran’s nuclear deal and said that it will implement sanctions against Iran once again. Therefore, some companies reduced their activity and some other want leave Iran. Considering the challenges of car companies with exchange rate fluctuations, this can effect companies’ after-sale services specially importers.

Now we should wait and see if after-sale services continues this increasing trend during the year 2018 or not.

Khodrocar Reporter and Translator: Maziyar Jafarieh