Toyota NZ awarded

The call centre and the customer have long been each other’s nemesis. Whole companies’ reputations can be broken through repeated bad experiences on the end of a phone. Far from the case for Toyota New Zealand though, they’ve just been awarded for the quality of the customer service their 11-person Palmerston North based call centre provides. Judged by CRM Consulting, Toyota New Zealand scored the highest points when incoming calls were anonymously audited for a variety of criteria including; promptness and quality of reply, politeness, confident positive language, knowledge of products and services, providing further information and adding value to the customer’s experience. Toyota was also named New Zealand’s top Automotive Call Centre and was placed third in the email and website categories, while Aaron Wheeler received an award for one of the five top ‘favourite’ inbound customer service representatives receiving calls. “It’s a great vote of confidence in our 11 Palmerston North based team members who are a customer’s first point of contact for Toyota New Zealand” said Spencer Morris, Toyota New Zealand’s general manager of customer service. “The Customer Dialogue Centre possess a very strong customer focus which shows through their passion for creating long-lasting customer relationships.” “People are making more contact with us – the distributor – than they used to,” said Mr Morris. “Their expectations are continually changing and we have to be more aware of how to adapt to create a more personalised experience.” An after-hours 0800 number also links callers to assistance from dealers or other appropriate services on weekends and public holidays when the Dialogue Centre is closed. Toyota is proud it regularly exceeds its target of answering 90 per cent of calls within 10 seconds. Mr Morris said the whole company supported the Customer Dialogue Centre, which has been operating for 20 years, as it is the voice of Toyota for many New Zealand owners and drivers.