JD Power: 2022 China Automotive After-Sales Service Satisfaction Study

Consumer insight and market research organization JD Power officially released the 2022 China After-Sales Service Satisfaction StudySM (CSI), which showed that the average score of mainstream automobile brands in 2022 was 755 points, while that of luxury cars was 768 points. The gap between the two has narrowed to 13 points.

It should be noted that the study was conducted from January to June 2022, based on 37,176 car owners who purchased new cars from 47 brands with a car ownership period of 13 to 48 months (i.e. between 2017 and May 2021), and evaluated their satisfaction with the service experiences of brand dealerships in the past 12 months.

This includes examination of six major aspects, including service team, service facilities, reception and diagnosis, service value, service quality and service appointment , with weights of 21%, 18%, 17%, 16%, 16% and 13% respectively, and the scoring system is based on a 1,000-point system.

The latest research shows that the overall after-sales service satisfaction of the Chinese auto industry in 2022 is 757 points, down 2 points from 2021. Among them, the most noteworthy is that the gap in after-sales service satisfaction between mainstream brands and luxury brands has narrowed again, from 18 points in 2020 and 14 points in 2021 to 13 points.

This can be confirmed in the scores of the top brands in each segment. For example, the champion of the luxury brand scored 786 points, and GAC Honda, which won the first place among mainstream brands, scored 783 points. GAC Trumpchi ranked second among mainstream brands with 773 points and won the championship in the independent camp. Geely and Chery followed closely behind GAC Trumpchi with 770 points and 762 points respectively.

In terms of various factors examined, service team has become the factor with the highest weight this year, reflecting that consumers are more concerned about the soft power of personnel services in the after-sales link.

In addition to the service team, there have been some new changes in other aspects of the evaluation.

For example, thanks to dealers' more accurate cost estimates, more thorough cost explanations and more precise and successful service promotions, domestic brand car owners have increased their recognition of the reasonableness of charges, and their satisfaction with service value has increased significantly compared with the same period last year.

In addition, dealers also demonstrated a higher level of professionalism than in previous years in service aspects such as explaining faults, repairing vehicle problems in one go, and giving advice. Therefore, the average after-sales service satisfaction score of domestic brands in 2022 reached 753 points, and GAC Trumpchi, Geely and Chery in the camp became leaders among mainstream brands.

At the same time, the study also found that in 2022, young car owners (under 29 years old) were more satisfied with after-sales service overall, with scores of all factors higher than the industry average. Among them, the satisfaction with reception and diagnosis (777 points) increased the most, 20.4 points higher than the industry average; service quality (781 points) was the factor with the highest satisfaction score. In the reception link, young car owners pay more attention to the efficiency of the car pick-up process, while in terms of quality, they care more about the one-time repair rate and the maintenance of personal vehicle settings.

Of course, in 2022, not only did the after-sales service see the above-mentioned obvious improvements, but some services also need to be further improved.

For example, in the two cases of appointment and no appointment, the satisfaction of mainstream car owners in 2022 was 753 points and 758 points respectively. The difference between the two is small, which means that the act of appointment did not increase the satisfaction score. Specifically, the loss rate of people who make appointments by phone is the highest among mainstream brands, and the failure to get through the appointment phone is the reason for abandoning appointments that has increased the most compared with last year. For mainstream car owners who have made appointments, the need to wait to enter the store is almost the most complained problem among all appointment methods, so the benefits of appointments for car owners are not obvious.

In addition, in recent years, major brands have launched the "door-to-door car pickup and delivery service", but only some car owners have begun to try and experience this benefit. Among luxury brands, 67% of car owners know about the "door-to-door car pickup and delivery service", but only 35% of car owners have actually used it. There is still a lot of room for promotion of this service. Among all brands, German brand car owners have the highest usage rate.

Therefore, as Xie Juan, general manager of JD Power China's automotive digital retail consulting division, said, with the rise of intelligence and digitalization, the connection between automakers and consumers has extended from car purchase and after-sales to the entire life cycle. In the future, customer experience will be further upgraded from single-point service experience to scenario-based continuous experience.

She also said that the increasing number of experience touchpoints and the ever-lengthening experience paths have put forward higher requirements for the experience design capabilities and service execution capabilities of enterprises, and the "single-handed" model of enterprises or dealers will face greater challenges in the future. Car companies need to step out from behind the scenes to face users directly, establish systematic "customer experience management", and form service synergy with dealers, which will become the key to breaking through in future competition.