Hino South Africa has kicked off 2017 in style by setting the pace for the ninth consecutive quarter in the Scott Byers Competitive Customer Satisfaction Monitor. The latest rankings cover customer satisfaction performances between January and March 2017.

The benchmark survey has been conducted quarterly since 1986 by Scott Byers, which has more than 30 000 trucks and fleet operators on its database.

The company’s Comparative Truck Study is an independent survey of customers’ views of how well their truck supplier measures up to expectations in the three principal areas of interaction – Sales, Service, and Parts. Scott Byers says competition in South Africa’s truck market is fierce. It currently reports on the customer satisfaction performances of 15 OEMs.

Besides being the top-rated truck brand in the combined section, Hino once again came out top in the Service and Parts categories and was runner-up in the Sales category for the first quarter of 2017.

All Hino’s scores, including overall and category, were over 95%. The various scores were: Overall – 96,88%, Sales 98,15%, Service 97,18%, and Parts 95,31%. Hino is the only one of the 15 truck brands surveyed to have all its scores above 95%.

The respective industry averages in the four categories in the first quarter of 2017 were: Overall – 91,95%, Sales – 94,42%, Service – 91,31% and Parts – 90,12%.

“Hino South Africa takes the results of these quarterly customer satisfaction studies by Scott Byers very seriously, because ensuring customers get excellent service is a very important strategy in retaining present customers and attracting new ones,” explains Ernie Trautmann, vice president of Hino SA.

“We have made significant progress in improving our customer satisfaction ratings in recent years and our customers are enjoying the benefits. We have found that increasing benefits are flowing from our ongoing implementation of the international Hino Total Support philosophy. This involves building and maintaining strong relationships between Hino Japan, Hino South Africa, suppliers and the Hino dealer network to ensure our customers have a truck partner they can trust,” he says.