Toyota Motor Europe awards 45 top performing retailers in Europe for customer satisfaction

Toyota Motor Europe (TME) announced the winners of the 2014 ‘Ichiban’ European Customer Satisfaction Award during an event held in Madrid, Spain.

Customer First philosophy has always been a focus of Toyota and is part of the company’s DNA. With this principle in mind a total of 45 awards were presented to retailers from 34 markets, in recognition of their exceptional performance in Customer Satisfaction both in Sales and After Sales areas.

‘Ichiban’ is the Japanese word borrowed from ‘Okyakusama Ichiban’ which means ‘Customer First’, with ‘Ichiban’ meaning ‘first’ or ‘number one’. Since the beginning of the TME’s annual Ichiban Awards in 2007, Customer Satisfaction performance of the Toyota retailers has improved by some 52.4% in Sales and 47.4% in After Sales, according to an internal Toyota customer satisfaction survey performed in Europe.

Approximately 2,300 European retailers were evaluated on their performance to create exceptional customer satisfaction.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Dr. van Zyl, President and CEO of TME said: ‘We are in the people business. We need to understand our customers, have the right systems and tools in place, but most importantly have the right mindset throughout the organization. Competitors can copy the product, they can copy processes but they cannot copy the Customer 1st mindset so easily.’

<List of Winners>