India Kawasaki Motors clears the air
In an exclusive interaction with Thrill of Driving, IKM confirms that they will be delivering bikes to aggrieved customers today
After months of waiting for motorcycles, bounced cheques and uncertainty, over a dozen Kawasaki customers are finally getting their vehicles, courtesy India Kawasaki Motors, who have stepped in to make good where their dealer was unable to.
Tarun Khanna, Manager, India Kawasaki Motors Pvt. Ltd (IKM) answered a detailed questionnaire for us prior to their official announcement and press briefing. The answers are presented verbatim.
1. Your last public communication was the announcement of the closing of the SNK Palm Beach dealership, which was responsible for the delivery of many bikes. Some 11 customers continue to wait for a resolution. What has changed?
The last public announcement was made by IKM on September 2, 2016 by issuance of a public caution notice in four leading newspapers in order to protect the interests of its valued customers. They were categorically informed that IKM had terminated its dealership agreement with SNK Palm Beach due to the gross failure on part of SNK to serve its customers and the general public was cautioned to not deal with SNK Palm Beach for this purpose. IKM expressed its values clearly by stating, “IKM is fully committed to its valued customers and regrets their poor experience…IKM shall take possible steps and actions as may be necessary for maintaining customer satisfaction in the Mumbai and Navi Mumbai region.” Thus, the announcement did not only relate to the closing of the dealership but cautioning the public and promising the customers of IKM’s intent to cooperate with them in this regard.
On October 4, 2016, IKM assured its customers and undertook to resolve and diffuse the pending matter and re-build the bridge between the company and the customers by making the delivery of the motorcycles booked by them with the dealer on October 18, 2016 in Pune along with getting the said motorcycles registered and paying compensation to each of the customers.
Thus, what has changed between then and now is that the customers are all assembling at Pune on October 18, 2016 and eagerly looking forward to taking delivery of their respective motorcycles and happily withdrawing their complaints against the company.
2. It appears that the dealer took orders for Kawasaki motorcycles from customers for a long period of time without delivering, and continued to take orders despite irregularities surfacing. Can you explain how this happened?
IKM was informed that SNK had been collecting money from its customers for motorcycles without placing orders with IKM for the same and without delivering motorcycles to the customers. Several meetings were held with SNK Palm Beach to rectify the situation but SNK Palm Beach failed to honor its commitments to the customers. That’s when IKM decided to step in and terminated the dealership with SNK and took it upon itself, as a gesture of goodwill, to deliver the motorcycles to the customers through its dealer network.
3. What specifically went wrong with this dealership, and what action do you intend to take against them? Will there be legal proceedings? How will this affect your relationships with dealers?
SNK committed several breaches of the dealership agreement with IKM. Although, it is a fairly common practice in the Indian automobile industry for the dealers to fail to perform their obligations towards the customers due to many reasons, yet, SNK was facing major financial difficulties and cheating its customers and IKM. IKM is in the process of initiating legal actions against SNK. Dealers understand this situation better than anybody else and IKM has stable dealerships across India.
4. Are you making any changes to your oversight process to have more control over dealerships in future and avoid such incidents?
We have no issues with the rest of our dealers. Our business is secure.
5. Is there a timeframe for a new Mumbai dealer?
We are in discussions with some proposed dealers for Mumbai region and Kawasaki shall have a new dealer very soon.
6. What are the critical learning’s from this issue for Kawasaki? Will there be any changes in the operating model to avoid such problems and ensure customers are not inconvenienced?
There is no issue with our operating model. Dealers’ do experience problems from time to time. As a manufacturer, we try and help the dealers’ as much as possible. With SNK there were several issues that affected the business.
7. Kawasaki’s reputation has taken a beating over the past few months. Has this affected sales? What steps will you take to regain customer confidence?
Sales in Mumbai have been affected to some extent, but we have dealers in Pune and Surat that are able to cater to our customers in Mumbai for now.
