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Having gone through the glorious years of branding and sales, Jaguar Land Rover has also been lost and anxious during the transformation of the times. How to deepen the brand awareness is what Jaguar Land Rover must do first.

Therefore, Li Dalong returned to the Chinese market with three missions.

The first task is to continuously improve customer satisfaction, which is a persistent goal for any brand. The second task is to improve the overall capabilities of dealers. The third task is to let Chinese consumers understand the excellent historical heritage of the brand.

“We not only provide customers with their desired products, but also provide beloved services. This is our goal.” Li Dalong knew very well that the opponent is not someone else, but how brand awareness can be reshaped while adhering to traditional advantages.

The answer is to deepen the advantages while climbing up step by step.

“We must always look forward based on the historical heritage, not backward.”

In fact, Li Dalong, the President of the joint marketing, sales and service organization of Jaguar Land Rover China and Chery Jaguar Land Rover, also knows that in recent years, all contradictions, including brand, system, product, and channels, have been put on the table, waiting to be reinterpreted.

What is the path to reinterpreting? If only to be repaired in a rigid framework, it will not be able to build a new and clear development path for the future of Jaguar Land Rover.

The answer may be only one, to rebuild in a way.

In February of this year, Jaguar Land Rover released the “Reimagine” global strategy. One of the core of the strategy is the interpretation of the concept and strategy layout for the future development of new modern luxury based on technology empowerment and design empowerment on different platform architectures. It constantly strengthens the brand personality of Jaguar and Land Rover with distinct characteristics.

Under the “Reimagine” strategy, Land Rover Discovery, Range Rover Evoque, Jaguar F-PACE, and Defender 90 all welcomed annual upgrades in the first half of this year. The Range Rover Sport Tiger Dynamic Edition and Defender 90 Tiger Dynamic Edition were launched at the Guangzhou Auto Show, specially designed for the Chinese market.

“We launched so many important models this year, and will start a complete year of sales next year.” The upgrade and optimization of products are regarded by Li Dalong as an important driving factor for Jaguar Land Rover’s continuous sales growth.

It can be seen that from product positioning to marketing and service acceleration, in every link of the entire value chain, Li Dalong hopes to gradually build a more clear and competitive development method for Jaguar Land Rover in the era.

“We have laid a very solid foundation in 2021, but there are still many challenges in the future, such as Covid-19 pandemic, chip shortages, policy changes, and the rise of new forces in car-making.”

The foreseeable difficulties are all on the table.# How to Make Jaguar Land Rover Truly Reshape the Future

Li Dalong thinks and prepares for the full-scale transformation of Jaguar Land Rover under the trend of big changes. He knows it’s difficult, even more difficult than he imagined.

No matter how difficult it is, we must act. Just like what he said in his heroic Chinese sentence at the Guangzhou Auto Show before, “With the golden spear and iron horse, we can travel thousands of miles like a tiger.”

“Reshaping the future” is one of the central ideas of the global strategy, namely “simplifying complexity”. However, subtraction is very painful, which means that some things we relied on in the past, and some inherent pursuit goals, need to be removed. Breaking is necessary for standing.

This process requires good judgment of proportions, as well as certain courage and spirit.

Li Dalong believes that in all changes, the key point is to be true to the original aspiration and not to change just for the sake of change. In the reform of Jaguar Land Rover, on the one hand, the future should be reshaped, on the other hand, the tradition of history should be upheld. “We never copy others, you can spot a Jaguar or a Land Rover at a glance.”

With a more thorough localization posture, Li Dalong advocates that the strategy should be more refined and focused to continue to deepen the Chinese market.

“By adjusting the management, products, and new technologies in place, and scheduling the rhythm well,” Li Dalong puts improving customer satisfaction and dealer profitability in a higher position again.

“Next year’s strategy includes continuous improvement of customer satisfaction, dealer profitability, and sustainable development. Although it sounds like a cliché, our strategy has always maintained stability and consistency.”

Facing fierce competition, the space for mediocre brands in the future will become smaller and smaller. Brand accumulation, fast changes, technological advances, and top-notch user services will be the key to future competitiveness.

“The concept of strategy itself is not important, what is important is the implementation of the strategy and what measures have been taken.”

As an important part of the strategy for reshaping the future, customer satisfaction has always been Jaguar Land Rover’s emphasis. It has won the second place in the “J.D. Power After-Sales Service Satisfaction Study Luxury Car Market” for three consecutive years, with only two points behind the first place.

Li Dalong gave the credit to Wang Jun, the Executive Vice President of After-Sales Service.

“This credit belongs to Wang Jun. He has put a lot of effort into it. Globally, we are very proud of the achievements of the Chinese team.”

There are no shortcuts to customer satisfaction. Together with dealers, Jaguar Land Rover focuses on details, and with engineers and procurement teams, it takes a series of solid actions to implement the strategy.”As a part of the corporate DNA, ‘customer first’ has been integrated into every aspect of the company’s development,” said Wang Jun, emphasizing that enhancing customer satisfaction is an ongoing process. In 2021, Jaguar Land Rover made many detailed upgrades based on the after-sales service experience framework.

For example, the MCT intelligent service system, based on different vehicle ages, models, and regions, establishes models through big data in the background, which can accurately predict customer maintenance and repair needs and provide corresponding services in a personalized and timely manner.

Moreover, Jaguar Land Rover combined the entire pick-up and drop-off service business with the Jaguar APP+ and Land Rover APP+, allowing customers to complete maintenance and repair of their cars without leaving home or worrying about work, with functions such as online appointment scheduling, payments, service rating and evaluation.

At the same time, the after-sales service team, engineering team, and upstream department cooperate to quickly respond to customer inquiries. Within the Jaguar Land Rover system, there is a customer satisfaction survey called “Voice of the Customer,” which has a sample size of nearly 11,000 entries per month in China, close to 8% of total samples. Wang Jun’s daily work involves working with other teams to solve customer issues and provide high-end, fast, and considerate services.

“Providing customers with high-quality service that is fitting with the brand’s tone is what after-sales service is all about. It is a long-term job, with a complex business chain,” Wang Jun said. Despite this complexity, she has figured out a straightforward logic: after-sales service provides an excellent channel for listening to consumer needs, and dealerships are critical partners. Therefore, listening to dealers’ voices is also one of Wang Jun’s daily tasks. In addition to the dealership feedback, Wang Jun also conducts direct consumer surveys to obtain feedback.

The door-to-door pick-up and drop-off service, which was launched last year and comes at no charge to the customers, fulfilled 260,000 orders in 2021. Wang Jun revealed that the penetration rate of Jaguar Land Rover’s pick-up and drop-off service has reached 17%, with some dealerships in Xiamen reaching 40%-50%.

“Listening to their opinions and feedback and incorporating them into the product development process” is crucial, Wang Jun stated. China is Jaguar Land Rover’s core global market, and it is also the vanguard of the “Reshape the Future” global strategy. Therefore, the company’s commitment to China is not an empty slogan.

Next year, Jaguar Land Rover will call it “Land Rover Year” and pay tribute to the Chinese Year of the Tiger with the Range Rover Sport Tiger Edition, Defender 90 Tiger Edition, and the all-new generation of Range Rover. “These two new products are a response to the ‘voice of China,'” according to Wang Jun.

Jaguar Land Rover’s reform is moving forward at its own pace, with a focus on improving after-sales service on one hand and enhancing product quality on the other.In China, Jaguar Land Rover has leveraged upstream resources to quickly respond to customer issues, and has since expanded to other regional markets, including the UK, Europe, and the US.

“China has consistently ranked first in key indicators such as service net promoter score and the six service elements, far surpassing other markets,” said Wang Jun.

He’s also determined to regain the 2 points lost last year. “We were ranked second by J.D. Power this year. Da Long [Jaguar Land Rover China CEO] gave me a task, and that is to strive for first place next year.”

However, what they value is not the award itself, but what they can learn from the ranking to help improve and further narrow the gap.

As for the younger generation’s pursuit of digital applications, and their tendency to consume online, Wang Jun has a strategy: “Empower customer experience with digital tools and systems, bringing new value to customers.” But he knows that digitization is only a tool, and the essence of service is still “sincere service.”

Nevertheless, Jaguar Land Rover’s comprehensive transformation towards electrification in the future, with Land Rover planning to release six pure electric models within 5 years, is already testing Wang Jun in terms of 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.