Hino South Africa made history when it won a Platinum Award in the Commercial Vehicle category of the Dealer Satisfaction Index organised by the National Automobile Dealers’ Association (NADA) as it marked the fourth Platinum in five years for this Japanese truck brand that has now been in South Africa for 50 years.
“We are delighted that we have been able to continue our run or success in this important national survey where NADA polls dealers in the various networks as to their relationships with the various truck brands and their management teams,” said Pieter Klerck, General Manager of Hino SA.
“We are particularly grateful for achieving the Platinum accolade once again in a year when we have had to face many challenges. The biggest of these was the devastating flooding of our factory in Prospecton which put us out of production for 40 days. We have also had to deal with the global shortage of microprocessors as well as various logistical hold-ups, including the cyber-attack, at the port of Durban, which was also hit by the flooding.
“Hino has always been very close to its dealers and this year we have made a special effort to communicate with them regularly and timeously when we have faced delays in production. The Hino dealers have, from their side, kept their customers and potential customers aware of the challenges and how we were overcoming them in terms of meeting outstanding orders for trucks.
“These actions have also resulted in us maintaining our high standings in the quarterly DataTrack customer care survey among 37 500 fleet owners in South Africa. This is a survey that has been undertaken since 1989 and is an industry benchmark,” added Klerck.
The NADA DSI survey, conducted by Lightstone Auto, stretches back 26 years to 1996 and a Commercial Vehicle category has been included since 2008 when the highest overall average score by one of the local truck brands was 78%. Lightstone received responses from 179 commercial vehicle dealerships this year, which equated to an 80% response rate, making it very credible research.
The Platinum Award for those brands with a score of 85% or higher was introduced in 2017 and both Hino and another European brand achieved Platinum, with Hino having a slightly higher score at 85.4%. Hino collected a Gold Award in 2018 with a score of 83.8% and then attained Platinum status again in 2019 with a score of 86.1%. The DSI survey did not take place in 2020 due to Covid-19.
Hino was back again with Platinum in 2021 with a score of 86,8%. Hino SA then took it to new heights in 2022, collecting its fourth Platinum despite all the challenges it faced, while scoring an all-time high of 89.9% and was the only truck brand to collect Platinum.
