Land Rover is top car maker in customer service survey

Only Amazon and Wilko managed to beat Land Rover in the UKCSI Survey, as M&S and Waitrose take joint third overall with the SUV brand
Jimi Beckwith
27 July 2016

Land Rover has come out at the top of the list of automotive brands in the July 2016 UKCSI (UK Customer Satisfaction Index) survey.

The brand placed third overall, below Amazon and Wilko, and tied with M&S and Waitrose. The next most successful car maker was Kia, which placed 17th in the survey.

Land Rover was one of the most improved brands, with a 5.5-point improvement over its score in the same survey in 2015, although an even bigger winner in this respect was Suzuki, which garnered a 9.1-point increase in customer satisfaction. This was the largest increase of any brand, automotive or otherwise, in the survey. 

Suzuki put out a statement in response to the accolade, in which its aftersales director Denis Houston said: “We are delighted with the results shown, and this clearly reflects our ongoing investment and the great lengths that Suzuki goes to in order to ensure that every motorist receives the very highest level of service.

“We are extremely pleased that the efforts of our dealer network have paid off, and we will continue to strive for even better scores in 2017.” Suzuki also put some of its success down to a new service scheme, aimed at improving customer service in aftersales.

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Land Rover also responded, with Jaguar Land Rover UK Managing Director Jeremy Hicks commenting: "We're obviously delighted with the result. We continue to strive to deliver an excellent product and ownership experience for all our customers."

The outlook was positive for the majority of the motor industry: a 0.6-point increase in overall satisfaction and a 0.2-point improvement in trust betrayed one of the most tumultuous 12 months in automotive history, with the ongoing emissions scandal seemingly leaving the public’s satisfaction with their car brands uninjured.

In spite of this overall positivity, Skoda and Audi, two Volkswagen Group brands that featured in last year’s top 50, dropped out of their respective 11th and 35th places this year. The individual scores for non-top 50 organisations were not published, however, so it’s not yet known to what extent the two brands' reputations might have fallen.

Volvo, which placed 34th on last year’s top 50, was also absent from the rankings this year; a surprising result given its increasing wave of success. Volvo remained upbeat in spite of the results, and issued the following statement: 

"Volvo’s results in the 2016 UK Customer Satisfaction Survey 2016 are  disappointing as all measures of progress against the key focus area of customer satisfaction are important. However with so many different assessments available of our customers’ experience, often with significantly different results, we focus on a small number of surveys which we consistently follow over time. The International Aftersales Customer Satisfaction (IACS) survey, as a syndicated survey across most automotive brands represented in the UK and internationally is a key benchmark, as is our own internal measure which includes more than 40,000 Volvo specific surveys per year. Both show improvement year on year so while not complacent, we see steady progress in the experience Volvo customers receive."

The other car brands that made it into the top 50 were Mini (20th place), Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz (joint 29th place) - the latter being new to the top 50 this year - making a total of six car brands in this year’s top 50 compared with last year’s seven; BMW and Mini both featured last year, albeit as one entity (“BMW/Mini”). 

Audi and Skoda have yet to respond to a request for a comment on the results.

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Comments
12

289

27 July 2016
Well, given that they came lucky last in the reliability survey, its a good thing that Land Rover customer service are doing a good job. After all it sounds as if their customers are going to be spending quite a bit of time there...probably on first name terms.
Hope they have plenty of RR's and RR Sports as courtesy cars!

Ruperts Trooper

27 July 2016
JLR get so much more experience of customers needing their expertise and efforts.

TStag

27 July 2016
Best way to look at reliability it to compare companies who make similarly complex cars to one another. Comparing the Micra to the Range Rover is daft. Better to compare something like the Evoque to the BMW X3 and then weigh the results. If you did that then I think reliability surveys might look very different. Suddenly a car maker like Ford or Nissan may not look so clever.

paddyb

27 July 2016
The secret of good service - plenty of practice [fixing endless faults].

fatboyfat

27 July 2016
If you have really good customer service then people tend to forget about the niggles and issues. JLR could have 10 issues per vehicle and deal with them all really well. Audi could have one and deal with it badly.
Guess which one gets filed away for future reference.

I am probably like many consumers of goods now - I dont care if it goes wrong I care how quick it can be fixed or how little disruption to me it causes.

If my car has an issue it gets taken away on a flatbed and a hire car is driven to my location - no real hassle so does it matter its been on the back of a truck twice in 2 years. not really, however, if I had to spend half a day sorting it then its a real issue.

Ruperts Trooper

28 July 2016
fatboyfat wrote:

If you have really good customer service then people tend to forget about the niggles and issues. JLR could have 10 issues per vehicle and deal with them all really well. Audi could have one and deal with it badly.
Guess which one gets filed away for future reference.

I am probably like many consumers of goods now - I dont care if it goes wrong I care how quick it can be fixed or how little disruption to me it causes.

If my car has an issue it gets taken away on a flatbed and a hire car is driven to my location - no real hassle so does it matter its been on the back of a truck twice in 2 years. not really, however, if I had to spend half a day sorting it then its a real issue.

I remember the "bad" old days when my Fords and Vauxhalls needed extra repairs every time they went in for servicing - BUT never in between - now it seems acceptable for more expensive brands to need your car for weeks, not hours, several times during your ownership - and as long as they provide a courtesy car, everything is ok? Bring back the bad old days!

jonrbloom

28 July 2016
Yeah. I checked the latest survey (autoexpress - the-most-and-least-reliable-car-manufacturers-2016), and LR are 3rd from last.

But you need to put all those scores into perspective. If you read 289's post in isolation you would think that every other LR bought breaks down every 5 minutes. According to that survey, the reliability score is 88%, and half the table are around 90%, so LR really are not that far behind (an extra 2 or 3 cars in 100).

And there's no mention of severity of fault. I'd wager the majority are silly niggles that get fixed in no time. Technology occasionally fails, it's a fact of modern life.

And while having a window stop working on a new car would be gutting, if you are treated well by the dealer and given a representative loan car while it's fixed, you'd forget the problem ever existed a week after you got your car back. So service really is everything.

tlb

28 July 2016
This is completely right - the difference in reliability from the top to the bottom of these surveys is just a few %age points and so you'd have to own hundreds of cars, and drive millions of miles to ever notice the difference.

In reality everyone's view on reliability is based on their own, statistically irrelevant experience - i.e. that they've owned LRs/Audis/BMWs for years and not had a problem - or had one brand, had it break down and never bought it again.

The good news is that it means you can buy pretty much any brand you like and not worry about reliability (at least relative to other options), but that won't stop the brand bores crowing at the next (pointless) JD Power survey.

jonrbloom wrote:

Yeah. I checked the latest survey (autoexpress - the-most-and-least-reliable-car-manufacturers-2016), and LR are 3rd from last.

But you need to put all those scores into perspective. If you read 289's post in isolation you would think that every other LR bought breaks down every 5 minutes. According to that survey, the reliability score is 88%, and half the table are around 90%, so LR really are not that far behind (an extra 2 or 3 cars in 100).

And there's no mention of severity of fault. I'd wager the majority are silly niggles that get fixed in no time. Technology occasionally fails, it's a fact of modern life.

And while having a window stop working on a new car would be gutting, if you are treated well by the dealer and given a representative loan car while it's fixed, you'd forget the problem ever existed a week after you got your car back. So service really is everything.

289

28 July 2016
But it is a hassle isn't it?
It means that you either have to remove all personal items in case the repair takes a long time or suffer the frustration of not having your personal items when you need them.
And that is not mentioning the hassle of failing to make a meeting or being stuck on the hard shoulder of a motorway with wife and children possibly at night waiting for a truck to come and get you all....then having to get home , until the garage opens the next day, and hopefully has a spare vehicle to loan you....probably not of equal quality.
So don't try to sell me the idea that this isn't an issue, it damn well is!

kcrally

28 July 2016
The british public think Oxfam, and the British Broadcasting Charity, are brands. Amazon is a neo facist company, damaging the environment.

www.KOOOLcr.com

 

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Our Verdict

Land Rover Discovery Sport

The Land Rover Discovery Sport
The new Land Rover Discovery Sport is the successor to the Freelander

The Freelander's replacement goes big on prettiness and packaging, and as a result becomes the class leader

Find an Autocar car review

Driven this week