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Ford extends servicing hours and boosts Transit network

Date: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

 “We are a great car company and a great LCV company, but we’re like two great companies and I want us to be one,” Ford of Britain sales director Andy Barratt told What Van? “We’re making CVs more integral to marketing, sales and service to ensure the whole company and dealer body are focused on CVs.
Ford is has announced a new aftersales initiative, Transit 24, that includes new Transit specialist dealers offering servicing around the clock.
“We have about 100 specialist Transit dealers and a number of smaller dealers that sell a handful of CVs,” said Barratt. “We’ll end up with 80-100 Transit centres and it will be all about the quality and service promise – if dealers can’t deliver then they shouldn’t be a Transit centre.”
The centres will conform to a service charter regarding quality of facilities, sales experience and technical expertise: “They will have specialists to deal with customer needs and a truck-like mentality.”
Barratt said dealers will offer “overnight servicing, mobile, out of hours, whatever the customer demands to do the job”, as well as ensuring fleets that do their own servicing have the right access to training, tools and support. The move is in response to what Ford has identified as a changing sector.
“The market is so dynamic,” Barratt explained. “During the downturn people were running vehicles longer so low-cost servicing was important. Now people are moving to shorter running but fewer vehicles so they want no downtime.”

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