Toyota GB

Business Challenge

Toyota’s customer experience mission is to take a “One Toyota” approach. They’re working to increase alignment across internal teams and develop a shared understanding of the end-to-end customer experience. 

“We're trying to track all the touch points our customers experience and make sure we're talking to the customer as 'One Toyota,' whether they’ve bought an insurance policy with us, financed their vehicle with us, as well as purchased the actual product,” explains Suse Radcliffe.

Solution

Toyota’s consumer community, powered by Alida, has become a central hub for gathering customer insights, bringing together the Data and Insights function as well as the Toyota’s Academy training program, CX, and Innovation teams.

Through research activities conducted with members of their communities, Toyota identifies common themes and uses these to help shape the customer’s experience, whether this is somebody considering purchasing a vehicle/product or already has ownership, making their experience seamless. Insights are then used to inform new projects and ongoing optimization across multiple functions, including product, marketing, digital, social media, customer service and more. 

Products and service innovation

Feedback from the community has helped Toyota’s product team understand the appetite for new ancillary services such as connected apps and different multi-media system options.  In addition, teams have tested hypotheses regarding preferences and expectations on services such as car servicing, hybrid insurance, minor damage protection, and total loss asset production.

In-Centre Experience

Feedback from the consumer community has identified training needs within Toyota’s Centres, enabling Toyota to work alongside the Academy and different business entities to remedy the situation. The community validates pain points and business decisions.

“Now, we can go directly to the Academy team with that information, and they write content to plug any of those gaps in the customer experience that we're tracking through our metrics,” adds Jessie Gore, Customer Experience Programmes Specialist.

Results

Working with the consumer community has increased Toyota’s understanding of the customer experience and helped multiple teams get on the same page. “We're pretty lined up. We know where the touch points are, the pain points, and the high points in the customer journey,” says Suse.

Toyota has saved significant research time. In the last year the team has implemented an ROI tracking system to map their research to key organizational pillars and ensure insights are as effective as possible. The team can now quantify how much their program is saving the business in external research costs due to extremely fast feedback turnaround times. Survey response rates are continually improving, which means insights arrive faster, to the point where Suse reports, “we can action things in real time.” 

Interest in and perceived value for the community has grown throughout Toyota GB over the years, says Suse. “We get a seat at the table each month to talk through what we’ve learned and what actions we're taking to drive this ‘One Toyota’ customer experience approach.”

Jessie Gore interacts with customers via the Community’s Hub page, and says members love when Toyota shares the actions that they’ve taken based on their feedback. “They know they’re doing surveys for a serious purpose and we’re going to action the findings.”