Partnership for Excellence

Volvo Penta is a part of the Volvo Group and Europe's leading manufacturer and distributor of marine and industrial engines.

Customer service and parts sales are distributed through a network of independent dealers. These are often small specialist engineering companies typically located at port or harbour sites around the UK and without the sophistication of their cousins within Volvo's automotive division.

A campaign was developed to promote the concept of service excellence within the network. What was needed was agreed standards of customer care rather than leaving it to an individual dealer's interpretation. The Volvo brand stands for quality, value, safety and reliability and demands a uniform approach at the point of customer contact.

Rather than impose a set of instructions on the dealers, a programme of involvement and self-motivation was implemented.

After extensive research involving customer focus groups, dealer workshops were set up to review owner feedback with the dealers. Through their own direct involvement, the dealers were able to buy into a common Code of Practice that they themselves helped draw up.

This Code and its associated messages was then promoted within the boating media and enhanced with point of sale material within each dealership - a physical reminder to all visiting owners of each dealer's personal commitment to service excellence.