Pretoria - Each year since 2004 market research company Ipsos has cold-called 25 000 new car and bakkie buyers in South Africa to ask them how satisfied they were.
Not with the vehicle itself, although that's bound to affect their answers, but with their purchasing experience in the showroom and, more importantly, with the dealer's workshop staff when it came to after-sales service.
Any motor company can participate, as long as it supplies names for interviewing and agrees to the syndication rules; the brands that took part last year covered 85 percent of new vehicles sold through franchised dealers.
Mazda was excluded for 2014, however, because the results would not have been representative due to the restructuring of its dealer network after its split from Ford.
The results offer a fascinating insight into the South African motor industry, as much from the players' point of view as from the customer's. The most frequently-heard comment from dealerships is that dissatisfied South African consumers don't complain - they vote with their feet, leaving the dealer in the dark as to why.
In the results of the 2014 Ipsos survey, released this week, major manufacturers continued to dominate the top rankings.
UPPER THIRD
Audi made it into the gold category (the upper third of the results) again in the passenger car sales survey, as well as the servicing experience, while sister company Volkswagen was ranked gold for sales and silver for servicing.
Volkswagen, along with Isuzu, took gold for sales in the bakkie segment, with Isuzu, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen qualifying in the gold category for bakkie servicing.
BMW, Chevrolet, Nissan, Opel and Toyota were ranked silver (the median third of the results) for the passenger car sales experience, with Ford, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Renault and Volvo collecting bronze, with satisfaction scores in the lower third of the results.
Chevrolet, Lexus and Nissan joined Volkswagen in the silver category for passenger car servicing, with BMW, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota down in the bronze category.
Chevrolet, Ford, Nissan and Toyota qualified for silver in the LCV purchasing experience, while Ford and Chevrolet rated silver for servicing.
The survey has shown an improvement in sales and service scores almost every year, despite growing technological complexity in motor vehicles, a shortage of skilled mechanics and more demanding customers.
Perceptions of the experience of buying a passenger car have crept up from 90 percent in 2004 to almost 95 percent last year, while bakkie buyers' satisfaction scores went up from 89 to 92 in the past decade.
The customer satisfaction scores have improved even more; for passenger cars it has risen from 78 to 88 percent, with service ratings by bakkie owners going from just over 78 to 88.5 percent over the same period.
FEEL-GOOD FACTORS
Believe it or not, that huge improvement in service satisfaction is attributed largely to one factor - the follow-up phone call. And the more professional, more involved and more courteous the call, the better the results.
Other important factors were looking after the car, being ready to book in the car at the appointed time and fixing problems the first time.
Bakkie customers, on the other hand, insisted that the most important factor was that it should be ready on time, although car drivers ranked this only fourth.
Communication also ranked high when buying new vehicles; top-rated attributes included listening to the customer, delivering the right vehicle, on time, and providing an enjoyable hand-over experience.
Based on the Ipsos results, the typical South African consumer has lower than average expectations of the car trade. Customers often don't trust or necessarily expect a very high level of service from the industry, due to a variety of factors - some real, some legacy and some imagined.
Nevertheless, it's easier for to satisfy a customer in the automotive market than one in the financial services or telecoms environments for instance, because their expectations are different.
Which says more about the trade than the customers.