After sales service is also very important

I started my career in an automobile industry, it was a Joint venture of MAN,german based company and FORCE motors ltd. and it was a new plant in Pithampur(M.P) and was at initial stage. I joined there as a G.E.T and allotted Engine Assembly and Testing department and it was mere 50 engines had been tested when I have joined.

I will share some of my experiences regarding sales of our HCV trucks, the engine was of high power and the trucks our company use to manufacture are of 16,24 and 49 tonner and it was sold in domestic as well as in abroad mainly in south-africa. We had monthly target of 270 engines and pull system was followed. So as it was initial stage there was lot of quality related problems such as low power, high smoke, overheating and many of them and I was the only G.E.T in engine department so I have to deal with the customer complaints from the field and have to discuss the issue with my manager.

As many of our customers use these trucks for mining and construction operations. I like to share one of my experience with a customer who had 10 of such trucks of our company and he had got in one of our vehicles problem of engine overheating. He was a valued cutomer of ours and had also he had our competitior’s trucks such as Tata novus and Mercedes benz. My manager discusses such problems in morning meeting and it was and serious issue and customer was very furious and asked us to immediately change the engine. But I it will incur lot of expense as one engine cost is around 2 lacs. So we have decided to send one good diploma engineer from our team at field to trace the problem and it was not figured out and than we have to brought the engine to our company and after some testing it was finally send again to the customer.

The point I got from it that Pre sale testing of product is must, Customer is king and also that not only sales matters but after sales service matters most in automobile industry. The product must be of good quality and would have competitive edge for generating sales and also maintaining it.