General Motors Follows Volkswagen’s Customer Experience Lead

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Customer experience is indeed the hot topic within the major automakers—just a short while after Volkswagen introduced a new customer experience organization comes news that General Motors has named its first-ever Vice President of Customer Experience.

The promotion thrusts Paul Copses, the current executive director of customer care and aftersales, into the executive ranks.  The newly-crowned VP will report to GM’s North American president and “regularly provide updates” to the company’s chairman and CEO.

Like the Volkswagen initiative, it thus appears that a key takeaway of GM’s announcement is the effort to give the voice of the customer a seat at the executive table.  In both cases, the automakers stressed that their customer experience leads will actively engage with the C-level, creating the link needed to assure customer care reverberates through the entire organization.

"We're offering customers what we believe to be the best range of cars, trucks and crossovers in our history," said Mark Reuss, president of GM North America. "We're equally serious about giving them world-class customer service. Paul will be the voice of our customers and will work to remove barriers that prevent our company and our dealers from achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction."

GM stresses that Copses’ organization team will coordinate customer relations at every point of interaction, from call center support, to post-sale policies, to dealer customer care.  This notion of improving the organization-wide customer experience effectively echoes the sentiment put forth in Volkswagen’s mid-summer announcement.

Most intriguing about the customer experience push from automakers like Volkswagen and GM is the fact that the auto industry, when compared to many other sectors, actually maintains an impressive overall customer satisfaction level.

In the ACSI’s August survey, the auto industry delivered an average customer satisfaction score of 83 (on a 100-point scale).  Other recently-measured sectors include major appliances (81), personal computers (78), electronics (85), internet news & information (73), search engines (80), social media (70), hotels (77), airlines (65) and limited-service restaurants (79).

Based on that data, the auto industry appears to be one of the last in need of a major customer experience overhaul.

And even within the auto industry, GM and Volkswagen are not bottom-of-the-barrel companies.

GM, in fact, operates the Cadillac brand, which tied Lexus (Toyota-owned) and Toyota at the top of the customer satisfaction heap.  GM brands Buick and GMC performed at an above-average level and an average level, respectively, while its Chevrolet was slightly below  average but still very satisfactory at an 82.

At an 84, Volkswagen is better at satisfying customers than popular brands like Ford, BMW, Nissan and Hyundai.

In renewing their commitments to the customer experience, General Motors and Volkswagen underscore the extent to which something that may not be “broke” can still need “fixing.”  Both do not see their current level of satisfaction, which would be extraordinary in most industries, as ceilings on their ability to improve.  They believe there is more value to derive from improving customer service, and they have gotten the balance of their organizations behind the push to attain that value.

Whether or not an organization ranks favorably or unfavorably for customer satisfaction, its customer management leaders need to assure that the entirety of the organization—from front-line reps to the C-suite—views value as an asset that can continually be acquired.

Is this relevant?  Are you working to get your C-level on board with a unified, multi-channel customer experience?  Discuss and benchmark with the best at the 7th Call Center Summit!

Contributor:   Brian Cantor

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