Electric cars, WeChat public account icar123, focus on electric cars, focus on the future of cars
Tesla’s sales and service model is also innovative, epoch-making, and even adventurous. This seems to coincide with Apple’s philosophy again.
Independent responsibility for after-sales maintenance, unique “cloud service” method
Tesla has no dealer network, and all cars are shipped directly from the factory to customers. Instead, Tesla has set up smaller showrooms in the center of major cities across the country (in the United States, car dealers usually have store areas that can accommodate dozens to hundreds of cars). Since there is no dealer network, the after-sales service part is naturally completed by Tesla itself, and Tesla will be the first window for customers. Subsequent services will be performed by Tesla’s service/repair centers or authorized service partners.
Tesla’s technical service is more like “cloud service” in the computer industry. When the car has a problem, you don’t need to drive the car directly to the repair shop. You can call Tesla’s call center first. Service personnel will connect to the Model S through 3G network, check various error codes and logs, troubleshoot problems, and guide customers to perform some basic troubleshooting operations, such as restarting the computer, adjusting settings, etc., and even remotely perform some reset operations. If Tesla cannot help the customer solve the problem, Tesla will help the customer make an appointment to check and repair the car at the service center. Currently, Tesla has more than a dozen service centers in the United States.
Actual experience
However, I have experienced Tesla’s service several times in person, and some of them are unsatisfactory.
The first time was when I bought a car.
Tesla’s sales team has a very appealing name, called Delivery Experience, which raised my expectations for the service. I even thought that Tesla employees wearing suits and driving Model S with ribbons would come to my door, but what I got was only a large truck from a third-party delivery company. In Tesla’s forum, several users reflected that the car had paint damage during delivery, so I am considered lucky.
The second time was when I wrote a letter to my salesperson, wanting to return the child seat that had not been delivered yet.My issue was resolved, but the process did not earn full marks. The salesperson said that for post-purchase issues, please contact the Ownership Experience team, but they did not cc the team in the email. I had to contact them myself. As a customer, I cannot and do not need to figure out whether returning an undelivered child seat is a pre-sale or after-sale issue. What I want is a unified and simple window.
The third time was when I asked them to change my App account.
The Model S App account is bound to the email used when purchasing the car and cannot be changed on the App or on the Tesla website. They accepted my request, but the completion time they gave was two weeks, indicating either the lack of flexibility in the information system or a problem with internal work efficiency. What made me even angrier was that four weeks later, the problem still had not been resolved.
The fourth time was when the “Needs Service” warning appeared on my car.
At the time, I was in a hurry to leave, so I drove another car. I called Tesla’s service hotline, and the young man who answered the call had a very good attitude and sounded very experienced. He told me that my Model S had poor 3G signal (there is almost no 3G signal in my home), so remote connection was impossible, but I could call the 24×7 hotline at any time. He also told me that the next day was Easter, and although the 24×7 hotline was still available, there would be no one working at the service center. However, he told me that if I needed it urgently, I could contact them and they would try to arrange for urgent service.
So far, I was quite satisfied. But when I returned home in the evening and called again after driving the car to a place with signal, the young man on the night shift seemed to lack experience. He first nervously asked me to stop the car immediately, and then began to check the problem. He asked me to check the driving manual for any error indications other than “Needs Service”. I personally guessed that this was unnecessary because theoretically, if there was any error, he should be able to see it remotely. After confirming that there were no other errors, he apologized and said he needed to check the document and asked me to wait a moment. About 10 minutes later, he told me that there was no major problem with my car, and I could drive home with peace of mind, but I still needed to take it to the service center for an inspection. The people at the service center would call me to make an appointment. When I asked when the service center would call me, the young man said maybe tomorrow, and I asked if the service center was not closed tomorrow? He said he did not know.
A week has passed, and I have not received any calls.
There are also some details of this service that I would pick on:
- Tesla’s call center system did not associate customer identity with phone numbers, so every time I called, I had to confirm my identity with them.2. It seems that Tesla’s call center lacks a mechanism for incident management. Incident management means treating a customer’s issue as a whole event, keeping corresponding records at every contact. If the issue is still unresolved when the customer makes another call and a different service representative answers, they should be able to easily access the progress of the event and continue to handle it, saving the customer time.
Therefore, I feel that Tesla still has a long way to go in after-sales service.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.