Benelux Local Car Maker to Solicit Customer Feedback

Case Type: operations strategy, marketing.
Consulting Firm: ZS Associates first round full time job interview.
Industry Coverage: automotive, motor vehicles.

Case Interview Question #00843: The Benelux Union is a politico economic union of three neighbouring states in central western Europe: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The name – Benelux – is formed from joining the first two or three letters of each country’s name. The word Benelux is now used more generally to refer to the geographic, economic and cultural grouping of the three countries.

Your client is the CEO of a medium-sized automobile manufacturer based in the Benelux region. This auto company produces a full range of family oriented cars. They only sell through dealers which they own. The CEO recently attended a seminar on customer loyalty in the U.S., which inspired him to retain your consulting team. He wants you to find a way to solicit customer feedback and identify how loyal his customers are. How would you go about this case?

Additional Information: to be provided to candidate after relevant questions

• The automobile company makes a full range of cars.
• Currently they are marginally profitable.
• The client company owns 10 dealerships across the Benelux region and has never solicited this sort of feedback before.
• The client company does have a customer complaint department and does have a list of all their existing customers.
• People buy from us because we have good cars and they like to buy a local car.
• The client company charges a slight premium over the big players.

Possible Solution:

1. Understand the scale and scope of the business.

2. Identify areas where customers come into contact with the client company (garages, forecourts, annual maintenance checks, customer complaint department).

3. Identify what sort of information you want to collect. Examples include: critical incident and switching path analysis and life time value of customers.

4. Identify how you are going to collect the information. Letters, phone calls, standing at garages, internet feedback forum, focus groups, etc.

The interviewer then asked me for some specific questions I would ask in my survey, e.g.

• What do you value more on our cars — 5 doors, or air conditioning?
• How do you compare our cars to a Volvo in terms of safety?
• What do you think is the number one quality of our cars?
• Would you buy a car from us again?”
• Can you give us an example of behavior at the forecourt which you can remember?