Story & photos by Randy S. Peregrino
FORD Philippines recently implemented its improved and reduced cost of Scheduled Service Maintenance for its three best-selling vehicles—the Everest, Ranger and Ecosport. “We’ve made a significant move. It’s still a work in progress but we made some serious progress. Because we’ve constantly listened to feedback from our customers and we take that into account,” said Ford Philippines Managing Director Bertrand Lessard.
Starting April this year, owners of these vehicles (2012 model and up) will enjoy guaranteed savings of as much as 17 percent based on the five-year scheduled maintenance cost. In detail, this value translates to as much as 20 percent for the Ecosport, 18 percent for the Everest and 15 percent for the Ranger. If you further convert that in peso, that’s around P20,000 or more total reduction from the previous value. In fact, there’s another 15-percent average savings, should customers avail themselves the pre-paid Scheduled Service Plan (SSP) upon acquiring a brand-new Ford vehicle. “There are a lot of customers saying that Ford vehicles are expensive to maintain. So now, what we did was to improve our cost of ownership,” said Director of Customer Service Division Erroll Dueñas.
Ford took customer feedback seriously and worked with its dealers to improve the cost of scheduled service maintenance. Because it is the manufacturer’s aim to realign its competitive position in the market in order to give its customers a more compelling offer when it comes to their vehicle’s scheduled service maintenance. Hence, lowering the cost of ownership is a standardized approach in collecting and analyzing data to assess the price competitiveness of Ford’s products and services.
The entire scope of the Scheduled Service Maintenance covers the service interval of twice a year (every six months or 10,000 kilometers) including basic scheduled maintenance components, such as fully synthetic motor oil, oil filter, engine air filter, pollen filter, fuel filter, brake fluid, sparkplugs and gasket drain plug.
“It is extremely important to us [Ford Philippines] because it’s in the heart of our customers. It is so important to us that we bring it back to as competitive as we get and dealers worked with us. The good news is, it’s available anywhere in the country for the same price,” Lessard added.
One of the SSP’s benefits is that it protects the customer from any price inflation on spare parts. Aside from the service plan being accepted anywhere in the country, what’s interesting is that it’s also transferable in the event the owners decided to sell their vehicles. Incorporating the SSP in the vehicle’s financing plan is also highly possible in the future as it’s already in the works. Ford also made prices of the said plans available at their web site for the interested customers’ reference.
Image credits: Randy S. Peregrino