Toyota Dealership Foolery

[Altitude]

Interesting...appreciate the response. I'm willing to bet that Toyota already has a robust CRM

I’d take that bet. Toyota doesn’t really run a B2C operation right now. All of their customer-facing activity runs through a dealership network consisting of hundreds of disparate companies.

Toyota probably does have a CRM system but I don’t guess it’s used for case management with end customers. With the potential exception of the finance arm. But Toyota Motor Credit is a different company than Toyota Motor Corporation.

What would make this hard is the complexity of the dealer network. Ownership of data, processes, willingness to support the change effort, and similar confounding factors are what makes these projects challenging.

A few people in this thread have reported that they’ve gotten feedback on service history across dealers - that might happen where there’s a large dealership group that owns lots of locations - Corwin, Penske, Sonic, Lithia, etc. They likely do have a service record that looks across their locations. Someone can prove me wrong, but I would be very surprised if Lithia and Sonic are sharing customer or vehicle data with each other.

Last point - this is a whole different conversation with Rivian, Tesla, or any other company that owns its entire distribution and sales network. I bet those companies do have a company wide vehicle record right now. Far less complex.

 

[HammerTheWall]

I’d take that bet. Toyota doesn’t really run a B2C operation right now. All of their customer-facing activity runs through a dealership network consisting of hundreds of disparate companies.

Toyota probably does have a CRM system but I don’t guess it’s used for case management with end customers. With the potential exception of the finance arm. But Toyota Motor Credit is a different company than Toyota Motor Corporation.

What would make this hard is the complexity of the dealer network. Ownership of data, processes, willingness to support the change effort, and similar confounding factors are what makes these projects challenging.

A few people in this thread have reported that they’ve gotten feedback on service history across dealers - that might happen where there’s a large dealership group that owns lots of locations - Corwin, Penske, Sonic, Lithia, etc. They likely do have a service record that looks across their locations. Someone can prove me wrong, but I would be very surprised if Lithia and Sonic are sharing customer or vehicle data with each other.

Last point - this is a whole different conversation with Rivian, Tesla, or any other company that owns its entire distribution and sales network. I bet those companies do have a company wide vehicle record right now. Far less complex.

Interesting. I've had Jeep, Toyota, Hyundai, and Ford have vehicle history for every dealership and vehicle I've had. And I'm in the middle of podunk, nowhere. Heck, I even had the same experience with motorcycles. Lucky across so many brands, dealerships, and locations? Doubtful.

 

[Altitude]

Interesting. I've had Jeep, Toyota, Hyundai, and Ford have vehicle history for every dealership and vehicle I've had. And I'm in the middle of podunk, nowhere. Heck, I even had the same experience with motorcycles. Lucky across so many brands, dealerships, and locations? Doubtful.

Straight from Toyota. They appear to have limited master vehicle record capability but it’s not widely used because dealer participation is inconsistent. And only service paid for by the customer (notably excluding warranty work) appears at all. Kludgy for sure.

https://support.toyota.com/s/article/Why-is-my-Toyota-deal-7559?language=en_US

 

[HammerTheWall]

Straight from Toyota. They appear to have limited master vehicle record capability but it’s not widely used because dealer participation is inconsistent. And only service paid for by the customer (notably excluding warranty work) appears at all. Kludgy for sure.

https://support.toyota.com/s/article/Why-is-my-Toyota-deal-7559?language=en_US

So they have it...just need to get the dealerships to all cooperate. I mean, if the dealerships can take the time to update CarFax they could do the same for their own brand.

 

[jnsplace]

For a lean company, Toyota seems to be the weirdest run at least with it's dealerships. I mean, I did my first car order through Saturn back in the day, and I felt I had more communication and customer service. In the path of getting my name latched onto a VIN, I've had conversations with 5 different dealerships.
They run similarly in that, they want you to put in your order with them to drive demand to main office, and they all shrug their shoulders at getting info FROM the main office.
Weird company.