[Kosfactor]

He was merely giving sound consumer advice , buy something else. Even Zac if he is in the market for a sedan would be looking at something else other than VW Skoda.

Verna and City for instance is giving 6 Airbags, all kinds of features including safety tech, ventilated seats and vehicles themselves that are a size bigger for a bit more money.

And if you want to look at the crossover segment you have even more competition with 6 & 7 airbags, safety tech all kinds of creature comfort features and you pay less as well.

Thank you Zac, just remember to read the sales report of TBHP 10 years back how the sales numbers were when your VW Skoda was a bit more in tune with the times.

[naj]

Hello,
It takes courage to apologize and Zac should be lauded for this.
However all this could have been easily avoided if he had used better choice of words and just acknowledged the critic . There is a fine line between rebuttal and arrogance. This looks like arrogance.

Its but natural for a car reviewer to give his/her subjective /objective opinion although objective is better and FK just did that.

Also FK was not in the market to buy a car.

Looking from a professional point of view , Zac looked pretty defensive and weak as he took it personally . That's not a good trait actually for public display from a business leader.
Thanks

[reppy]

The customer is always right. Anyone with a sane head and a business mind will understand this and keep egos aside. All the people in this forum backing Zac's comments need to think deeply about this.

Zac needs to prove that Skoda is improving and such tweets are not helping, despite the apology later.

The A.S.S. horror stories are enough and intense to make one shudder at the thought of owning a Skoda. Zac had brought in a breath of fresh air with his positive and customer centric attitude as seen in many earlier good tweets and timely launches of good products.

He unnecessarily doesn't need to take on what he thinks is bad reporting/reviewing publicly. Faisal Khan is a respectable bloke too.

[krishnakarthik1]

I did the same to my customer once. Sometimes you just loose it. It could be because of a long day or too many decisions to make or anything but you lose control. Only if you were ever in those shoes would you understand otherwise it looks really rude asking the customer to take him business elsewhere.

[AutoConsultant]

No matter how bad or biased this reviewer is, he still runs a couple of YouTube channels with around a million subscribers each and he was making a valid point as well. It's great that Zac and is so active on social media but it's safe to say that he is not running through his comments by the PR team before posting

He should have highlighted the positives of the vehicle and in fact engaged more with Faisal Khan asking about his opinions in a positive manner. Also, saying that we have waiting time for a car which sells a max of 1000 units a month (in comparison City sold more than 4k last month) isn't even a brag!

In this day and age, the brand image (sadly) depends a lot on these social media influencers and a successful engagement could have much more impact for the brand than a lame-ass Manpreet ad.

[shibujp]

American and European companies have traditionally treated third world countries as dumping yards where technology and variants that have run there course in the developed world are bought here to extract more profits. The Indian consumer is sensitive to this and this is why none of they have done well while the Japs and Koreans are laughing all the way to the bank.

The VW GTI, the Skoda vRS 245 are all examples of this, brought to India to sell off excess stock at insane prices.

The first to try this was Mercedes, selling models a couple of generations old to Indians. Unfortunately the customers who were paying a premium did not take to kindly to this and it was not soon before they found themselves staring at bankruptcy. At this point light bulbs went off on some with a bit more intelligence than the rest of the morons in Germany and the rest is history.

The moral is very simple, Zac Hollis and VAG for all their twitter blitzkrieg should start by bringing their current generation products to India rather than giving lame excuses. Pricing you say? It's not like the 11 year body of the Polo is being sold for peanuts!! If Hyundai can find a way to price it's i20 properly there is no reason to see why VW cannot do the same.

Drive on,
Shibu

[voldemort]

I think it's just European directness in full display. Hollis should have been more sensitive though.

Sure it's long in the tooth, but the Rapid is among the cheaper sedans in its segment, and I believe it has solid underpinnings and outruns nearly every other car in the segment (at least when NOT going in a straight line)

Have they fixed the reliability problems?

[Vid6639]

Honestly this is being made into a mountain from a mole hill.

Yes what he posted was not right as marketing head. But mistakes happen and he apologized.

Many CEO's and VP's have lost their cool at times but its rare to see them apologize as well.

He should have an assistant though to help him reply. He is super active and sometimes with the pressure and heat of the moment reading negative replies can flare you up into posting you will regret later.

The amount of good replies he has made on Twitter vs one he let slip should give him benefit of doubt.

HE had once as an enthusiast walked into a Kia and MG showroom and did get flak for giving an impression about the competitor.

[charanreddy]

One mistake is enough to wipe out a lot of good will gained on social media. Zac has huge problems to deal with , perception , rogue dealers, sub par customer experiences and finally a product that is OLD regardless of the competence. I fail to understand what he is so defensive about. What the reviewer said is TRUE and is on customers minds.

As a marketing / business head , keep your ego in your back pocket. Your ego doesn’t sell cars. It makes people look away from your showrooms. And atleast do something about a brand that is known for service incompetence and downright dishonesty, taking customers to courts where they should be apologising and making it right. You gained No respect from me Zac!

[akash_v12]

Honestly, I've always thought about Zac Hollis being a man of wisdom. He has always seemingly brought Skoda India towards the right direction. But this response makes me think otherwise. The Rapid is as it is a slow seller. But, just like our Vento, everyone buys it for the solid engine and build. I respect Faisal Khan for what he said, because this is the truth. Although, Mr.Hollis did apologise for it, it's time SVAG be a bit more transparent with the Indian people.

[landcruiser123]

While I'm not a fan of Faisal Khan and his antics (we can discuss that later), he is merely doing his job by pointing out the downsides of the car: 1. The missing features in the car which are now taken for granted; 2. The old platform.

What I didn't like is the answer from Zac Hollins: More demand than production capacity? Seriously? From an executive working in the 2nd largest car maker in the world? Such a statement just shows Skoda's (and VWs) commitment (or lack of) to the Indian market - they just don't seem to care about their cars or their customers.

Warren Buffett once said:

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

The problem is, Skoda India doesn't have a good reputation to protect.

[Thilak29]

I have been following Zac on twitter since taking charge of current role. He is quite active in the platform, solving service issues and boosting confidence of potential customers in the brand - Skoda. Many have stayed in Skoda family fold and invested their hard earned money seeing the assurances given by this gentleman.

In this case, while it seems heat of the moment kind of response - sounds much like a shopper who asks hard bargaining customer to buy from his competitor offering better deal. As a customer, you are still left with a choice!

Spend your money as it suits you. If brand or its offering is not to your liking - don't let them have your money.

[yd_gli]

Originally Posted by landcruiser123

Warren Buffett once said:

The problem is, Skoda India doesn't have a good reputation to protect.

Reputation has no value in the Indian ecosystem. There is a long list of organizations/brands across industries in India that have screwed over customers, given them unsafe products, sold fake products etc and customers have all but forgotten these digressions in a few weeks/months. Heck, there are even companies that have sold used products as new and people still buy from them years later.
You can abuse someones mother but he/she will still buy from you if you're cheaper than the competitor.

To make Zac's response even more irrelevant, the reach of such a tweet is only limited to the educated few who follow him or read on such forums. The others don't know and don't care so long as they are getting an European brand at a good price.

I don't see much wrong with Zac's response. It is fairly common in the West to be told by one brand to consider a competitor product. Mountain out of a mole hill basically.

[Kosfactor]

Originally Posted by Thilak29

I have been following Zac on twitter since taking charge of current role. He is quite active in the platform, solving service issues and boosting confidence of potential customers in the brand - Skoda. Many have stayed in Skoda family fold and invested their hard earned money seeing the assurances given by this gentleman.

I agree that the customer can decide what to to with his or her money, the spotlight is clearly on how the man has responded to a critic/reviewer.

Skoda performed poorly in India sales since Zac took over in 2018, it's only after Rapid rider released recently that sales has picked up for that model. Their current line up is just Rapid, VRS(sold out?!), Superb and Karoq (sold out?!).

Their vision was to achieve 5% market share by 2025, with this line up I doubt it, in 2019 they had around 0.5 % market share. JD Power for instance does not even mention Skoda due to small sample size in their Customer service Index survey and rankings.

[R_Gowardhan]

I feel the issue is being blown out of proportion. Some of us may or may not agree that the sharp reply was warranted but all of us will agree that it could have worded smarter in the first place. Would have saved all the discussion and the apology.