Philippe Fayd’herbe De Maudave is Toyota’s corporate manager, body and paint and responsible for the relatively new Toyota accredited bodyshop network. Sam Street caught up with him in Toyota’s Sydney HQ.
”Really, Toyota’s core business to date has been about selling, servicing, undertaking mechanical repairs for, and of course accessorising the vehicle. However, we want for our guests (the term for Toyota customers) to experience a genuine, high quality ’One Stop Shop’.
Fayd’herbe is very open about Toyota’s strategy in the repair sphere. The company’s preference is for its dealers to be the face of Toyota when it comes to the repair of guests’ vehicles. Toyota is actively encouraging dealers to either build their own shops or buy a controlling stake in an existing one.
“We want our guests to have their vehicles repaired to the same quality standards we use when designing, building and servicing their vehicle. We currently have 14 Dealers who are ’Authorised’ repairers and another five in the pipeline,” he said.
There are 71 ’recognised’ repairers in the Toyota Insurance network, which Fayd’herbe and his team began to certify to these standards at the end of last year.
Over 40 shops have been certified so far and the team expects to finish the process around March 2016.
Kodawari
"To achieve certification we have a set of criteria made up of mandatory and discretionary requirements. A shop must achieve 100 percent of the mandatory criteria and at least 80 percent of the discretionary. We will then certify the repairer as long as they have an action plan in place to address the other 20 percent," said Fayd’herbe.
He explained that the standards – called Kodawari – were created by Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan to establish a minimum global standard and then further enhanced by the Australian team to suit local market conditions.
“When we started this process there were no national standards that people have to work to - it’s pretty much what the individual body shop manager thinks. It was a real eye-opener for me,” he said.
Fayd’herbe admits it has been a task to change the mindset of the Toyota Dealer network to embrace crash repairs instead of just servicing and sales. “When any one of our guests has an accident, it’s an emotional time and we want them to come to our Dealers so they can experience first-hand Toyota’s ’Oh what a feeling’ peace of mind attention.
Toyota has approximately 1.8 million existing customers who own vehicles up to eight years old on Australian roads.
"We have many of our guests come twice a year to our dealerships for a vehicle service. We can touch those guests more than anyone else out there. There are a lot of potential positives if we can educate our guests to get in touch with the dealer when they have an accident.”
The terminology for the programme is ’authorised’ for the dealer network of repair shops and ’preferred’ for the independents. Nationally it will be called a ’certified’ network. The criteria and KPIs are identical for both authorised and preferred, and everyone has access to SARIS, the technical information website that in the past was only available to dealers.
The new certified repair network is also a way of Toyota ensuring it has a source of good quality used cars for the future. Guests bringing the cars in for repair present themselves as a sales opportunity for the dealership. “We know statistically every 7.8 years a guest will replace their vehicle. So if they have an accident and we know they are a Corolla driver and about ready for a new one, we give them the latest Corolla as a courtesy vehicle. When they pick up their repaired vehicle there is an opportunity to offer a deal for them to keep the new car in part exchange for the one that has just been repaired.”
By March next year the team plans to have 80 percent of its guests in the metro area covered in terms of being able to access an accredited Toyota repairer and that will in turn trigger a marketing campaign to raise awareness.
Fayd’herbe is approached by one or two repairers a month asking to be considered as a Toyota badged repairer. However the team won’t consider looking outside its existing network until it has finished the certification process. “At that time we can look at the demographics of where we don’t have a repairer. Research has highlighted to us that our guests won’t drive more than 10 kilometres for a repair. So there may be some opportunities down the track to add to the accredited networkto plug those gaps,” he said.
This article was first published in November 2015 Paint & Panel magazine.