Improving Customer Service: A Report on Toyota Motor Corporation

This customer service report focuses on Toyota Motor Corporation, examining its organizational products and services, customer segmentation, and promotional strategies. It identifies gaps in meeting customer needs, particularly in the luxury and sports car segments, and suggests alternative products and strategies to address these gaps. The report also outlines customer rights regarding faulty products and proposes procedures to ensure product relevancy and customer satisfaction, including staff training, customer education events, and improved data management practices. It concludes with recommendations for distributing the report and gathering feedback to enhance Toyota's customer service and overall consumer experience. Desklib provides access to similar reports and solved assignments for students.

Running head: CUSTOMER SERVICE REPORT
Customer service report
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Introduction
This report has taken Toyota Motor Corporation as the organization of choice and will
analyse the overall organizational products and services along with the gaps in the
organizational products. The basic requirement of the report is to develop a customer service
report which could be presented to authorities along with the gaps and ways to mitigate those
in terms of customer service quality and relevancy.
Body (900)
Company Name, vision & mission, location and customer services and products
The name of the organization is Toyota Motor Corporation. The vision of the
organization is to become the most respected and successful automobile company in the
global market. The mission of the company is to gain and attract consumers by developing
high valued products and quality services. Toyota provides best quality automobiles to their
consumers and is located in Port Melbourne in Australia (Toyota-global.com, 2018). The
organization provides cars of different ranges to different consumers according to their needs.
Target customers and customer segments
Toyota uses geographic, psychographic and demographic segmentation for profiling
their consumers and analysing the different segments of their consumers. Toyota uses
differentiated target marketing and develops products based on the needs of the different
consumer segments (Toyota-global.com, 2018). Toyota mainly targets consumers between
the age group of 30-50 and middle income group population and provides vehicles which
have value for money for the consumers.
Description of specific words and phrases used for research in online medium
The information about the consumer segments have been taken from the annual report
of the organization over the past years which is the most reliable source of information
regarding the organization. The key word used are “Toyota Motor Corporation annual
report”.
Methods used to determine customer’s needs
The organization conduct continuous market analysis by using business intelligence
and analytics tools for identifying the current industry and needs of the consumers (Salehan

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& Kim, 2016). The analysis of the consumer purchases of automobiles provides insights on
the frequency of purchase of the different products in the market.
Role of promotional strategies in targeting customers’ needs
Promotional strategies play a crucial role in branding which means that the
promotional strategies increases the brand awareness and image of the organization. It will
help to interact with the clients and get relevant feedbacks which provides knowledge about
their needs (Leeflang et al., 2014). The promotional strategy helps in identifying the gaps
within the market so the organization can develop products to mitigate that need.
Procedures to ensure that promotional strategies are up to date and relevant to the
customers’ needs (numerical data such as sales figures)
Toyota use continuous innovation in developing effective marketing strategies which
can be seen from their annual spending on promotion. The sales figures and spending shows
that the promotional strategies are up to date and relevant to the present needs of the
consumers.
Figure 1: Promotional data
(Source: Newton, 2018)

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Figure 2: Promotional data
(Source: Newton, 2018)
Products or services are offered to each segment and the measure
The figure and the table below shows the offerings to the different segment where
material handling equipment and automobile generate majority of the revenue. Therefore, the
organization is more focused on the segments that are providing majority of the revenue. The
organization has been innovation and investigating in research and development to provide
consumers both in B2C and B2B with higher quality products.

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Figure 3: Segments
(Source: Corporation, 2018)
JGAAP IFRS
FY 2014 FY
2015
FY
2016
FY
2017
FY
2018
Automobile 1,006.6 1,050.7 556.5 562.6 595.0
Materials Handling
Equipment 809.2 924.9 1,019.4 988.1 1,283.
0
Logistics 95.3 98.0 - - -
Textile Machinery 73.1 68.1 65.6 66.2 65.5

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Others 23.4 24.7 55.2 58.0 60.3
Table 1: Segments
(Source: Corporation, 2018)
Gap in customer’s need not met by this product
Toyota deals with mid-range consumers so all the automobiles belong to those
segment and lack in the luxury segment and development of sports cars (Zokaei et al., 2016).
Therefore, there is huge market and demand which the organization has been able to address
to.
Alternative products in the same market
Volkswagen, Honda and Mazda are the different companies offering luxury and
sports car. This sports car has high profit margin, it is a niche market and has a high value in
terms of brand. Toyota being a people ‘s brand entering in the luxury and sports segment may
increase their revenue generation streams due to their string supply chain which will enable
them to gain cost leadership in this segment (Newton, 2018). On the other hand, this strategy
may back fire as the organization as it will increase the overall cost of operation, may affect
the current sales and difficult to align with the current goals and objectives of the
organization.
Assisting customer in product determination and relevant alternatives in the product
range, prioritising customer’s needs
In order to assist the consumers in making their purchase decisions, the staffs will
have to interact with the consumers to identify their needs and offer them products that will
best suit their needs. Suppose a consumer wants a low price car with good mileage and space
capacity. The representative will have to know all the specifications of the consumer and
suggests car such as sedans and SUV’s in that range. There are certain consumers that are
more focused on the look of the car so the organization will have to suggest cars that will fit
in to the requirement of the consumer.
Customers’ rights in regards to faulty products
The consumer right acts are as follows:

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 Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA)
 SA Fair Trading Act 1987
This acts protect the interest of the consumers by providing them opportunities with
dealing with fraudulent activities and faulty products (Business.gov.au., 2018).
Procedures to ensure relevancy of product or services
The staffs will be provided with adequate training to address to the needs of the
consumers.
Events and networks to ensure an ongoing pipeline of referrals
In order to do so the organization should take initiatives to educate their clients and
making the consumers feel like they are the partners of the organization. Therefore, the
organization should host car exhibitions to educate the clients and interact with them and
increase their chances of referral.
Process documentation of customer satisfaction, customer confidentiality and
customers’ security
 Develop a single master for storing consumer data
 Use third party validation
 Data governance to control data
 Purge strategies, de-dupe and match merge for data cleansing
Comparing recommendations with current practices
The organization current practices are quite similar to the recommended practices but
certain changes have to be made to the data management within the organization. The
consumer data will have to be kept in a more secure environment to protect their interest.
Distribution of report and feedback
The customer service report will have to send to the board and the higher level of
management and the representative will take feedback from the mid-level managers to make
improvements to the report.
Conclusion
The report has developed an effective customer service report for the organization
named Toyota which consist of the present strategies and the new strategies that will have to
be implemented to improve the consumer experience.

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References
Business.gov.au. (2018). Fair trading laws. Retrieved from
https://www.business.gov.au/info/run/fair-trading/fair-trading-laws
Corporation, T. (2018). Sales by Segment | Toyota Industries Corporation. Retrieved from
https://www.toyota-industries.com/investors/earnings/divisions/
Leeflang, P. S., Verhoef, P. C., Dahlström, P., & Freundt, T. (2014). Challenges and solutions
for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), 1-12.
Newton, B. (2018). VFACTS 2017: Toyota and HiLux top sales again - motoring.com.au.
Retrieved from https://www.motoring.com.au/vfacts-2018-toyota-and-hilux-top-sales-
again-110428/
Salehan, M., & Kim, D. J. (2016). Predicting the performance of online consumer reviews: A
sentiment mining approach to big data analytics. Decision Support Systems, 81, 30-
40.
Toyota-global.com. (2018). Retrieved from
http://www.toyota-global.com/pages/contents/investors/ir_library/annual/pdf/2017/
annual_report_2017_fie.pdf
Zokaei, K., Lovins, H., Wood, A., & Hines, P. (2016). Creating a lean and green business
system: techniques for improving profits and sustainability. Productivity Press.