Maruti-Nexa's cumbersome digital car-service process

BHPian neil.jericho recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

The 4 year service of my Mom's Ignis AMT was pending for a couple of months. In April, Popular Motors called me up to say that there was a service camp for the festival of Vishu (14th April) with a 30% discount on labour. Below is a short summary of that disaster.

• I booked an appointment for the 14th and confirmed that I want pick and drop from my residence.
• On the 14th, I received the confirmation SMS from Popular Motors with the details of the service advisor and time of appointment.
• No driver turned up.
• I called up Popular Motors numbers and the calls were automatically disconnected.
• I called the service advisor whose details were on the SMS and he told me that it is a holiday for them.
• On the 15th, Popular Motors helpdesk team calls me up to ask how come no job card was raised on the 14th ! Then they tell me that the SVC was open and took cars in.
• The Popular Motors SVC calls later and tells me that they had a holiday on the 14th.

I sent a mail to the Nexa customer care and the relationship manager from Popular Motors who had dealt with me earlier, said that they had only given a few service slots on the 14th, that too only for customers to come in and drop their own cars. No pick up facility was available on the 14th since it was a partial holiday. God knows what goes on in Popular Motors and who to believe. Anyways, they said that they would offer the same 30% discount whenever the car came for the next service.

Last week I took the Ignis out and found that the wonky steering was very unpredictable. While taking low speed full right lock turns under the Cochin Metro, the Ignis would either

• do its usual mild return to center action, which I have gotten adjusted to by now, or
• it would refuse to do any return to center which meant that if I took my hands off the steering wheel, it would go round in a circle infinitely, until it ran out of petrol!

Sometimes it would do 'A' and sometimes it would do 'B', I could not figure out in which circumstances it would behave in what manner. I found this unpredictability to be quite dangerous. Has anyone else faced this issue with their Ignis

My Mom's car is 4 years old and has not even done 9000 km. So it's not wear and tear induced for sure.

Since the service was pending, I booked a service appointment with Popular Motors. The complaints that I mentioned while handing over to the car were

1. Driver seat is squeaking. This was there in the last service and the staff at Popular Motors obviously didn't test drive the car before or after the service at that time. Or else they would have heard it immediately and done something about it.
2. Unpredictable steering behaviour while taking slow speed u turns.
3. Left power window not always working properly.

The number of interactions that Maruti / Nexa expects you to have, especially with their new (1.5 month old digital) processes is over the top. This is change for the sake of change.

Step 1: 07:50 am: I hand over car to the driver before 08:00 AM.

Step 2: 08:10 am: I get a call from someone at the SVC as soon as it reaches there. "Saar, calling to update you that the car has reached the SVC. There are lots of scratches. Shall we go ahead and claim insurance etc?" I flatly denied all this. We just want the car to be serviced and returned on the same day.

Step 3: 08:40 am: I get a second call from someone at the SVC to inform me that the car has reached the SVC.

Step 4: 11:00 am: I finally get a call from the service advisor. I tell him all the issues which I have already told the driver. I clearly tell him that the steering is an issue and needs to be identified by their team and resolved. We go through all the work that has to happen in detail, and the SA patiently explains all the line items. I say that I won't pay for any additional work that they might pile on. Since this is the 4 year / 40 k km service, a lot of things have to be replaced. I get a tentative bill amount of Rs 8,000, which was fine by me.

The SA tells me that now, I am going to get an SMS from Maruti and then I have to log onto their page and enter the problems myself. Only then can the work start and the job card be opened! Now there are good and bad elements to this. The good is obviously that all customer complaints get recorded to Maruti / Nexa. The SAs cannot overlook, ignore, brush-off customer complaints. The bad is that this is time consuming and it has created a process dependency that is ridiculous.

Personally, I don't think that a majority of customers are going to sit and waste time in entering this manually, after they have already explained all the issues to the SA. Especially if they are working professionals.

Anyways, it's a Maurti / Nexa mandated process that has made double work for the SA and the customers. For the average customer, this is likely to be a completely useless decision by Maruti / Nexa. The only good news is that going forward, there will likely be the option to have live feed of your car being serviced, visible to customers.

I logged onto the page and wasn't sure if it was a one step process or a two-step process. Also, I saw some option for voice notes, which the SA didn't tell me about. To test how useful the Maruti / Nexa system is, I entered dummy values to see if there was second step. It just accepts the submission from the first page.

I tried doing it a second time, with all the details entered but this time around, it didn't allow me to submit. So basically, it is one and done. Later, I found that the SA can enter the details himself, but the customer has to trigger the process. So if you are short on time, just enter ABC and click submit instead of going through the whole process. And if you have a litany of complaints and you think that the SA is not going to take care of the work, make it a point to enter everything in detail.

Step 5: I receive multiple SMS's from Maruti with links. One of them will ask you to install the Maruti Suzuki app.

Step 6: 03:30 pm: The SA wants me to look at the SMSs from Maruti but he doesn't know which one specifically. Finally we get the right one and I have to look at all the listed parts and labour. The list is comprehensive and matches what we discussed in the morning. There are pictures of the car as well. I have to approve these and only then can the work complete.

When I ask about the steering wheel issue, I am told that a technician and his manager are out driving the car. They couldn't find the unpredictable behaviour in the morning. They did a diagnostics check (paid) and would do some lubrication of the steering column IIRC. But this was all trial and error because they didn't even know what they were trying to fix.

First line was my dummy entry

2, 3, and 4 were entered by the SA after I triggered the process by submitting the dummy entry

I got them to apply the committed 30% discount on labour on the bill. The SA said he will update me on the findings regarding the steering.

Step 7: 04:00 pm onwards: I try calling the SA over the next 2 hours to get an update on the steering issue and to know when the car will be delivered. He didnt pick up my calls or he cut them. He didnt have the courtesy to call back either. This is the premium Nexa service experience in action!

Step 8: 06:00 pm: I call up the customer relationship manager to ask what is happening. The SA is put on the phone and he tells me some cock and bull story about his phone not having charge and how he has just kept it for charging. He admits that he saw my calls but didnt return them.

Step 8: 06:10 pm: I get an update that the car will be sent soon.

Step 9: 06:30 PM : I ask the driver to wait while I check the car for the steering issue. Immediately notice that the glass on the dials is not cleaned. There is dust inside the car. The glasses are washed but wiped with a wet dirty cloth and so the residual marks are clearly visible. The driver also finds all these issues. Disappointed, I inform the SA about this and he asks if we can give the car back to them tomorrow for cleaning. Anyways, I pay the bill and tip the driver.

Step 10 : 06:50 PM : I update the service manager about these issues, how the SA was not available on the phone, the cumbersome process, how dirty the car was etc. He wanted to send a team to my house immediately to clean the car but I had to step out. Anyways, at least he apologized for the oversight and has agreed to rectify it at a later date at my convenience.

I still never got an answer from the SA about the unpredictable steering. God knows if the Popular Motors team has the capability to identify problems that the customers are spelling out. I dont think they do. The second emoji was saved up for everything between the last one and this point in the post

But the driver potentially told me the answer to the unpredictable steering. As per what was told to him, the car needs to be turned at above 20 kmph for some return to center action to happen. Below that, it wont return to center. I need to test his theory, but at least what he said might have some truth to it, as compared to my SA who didnt have a clue and said that there is no issue with the car.

Overall, this was another disappointing experience with Popular Motors and Nexa. I have never found anything premium about the Nexa brand or service. That continues in 2021.

Now that the warranty is over, there is no incentive to continue giving the car to Popular Motors for service. And with this cumbersome new process of holding up work and the job cards until the customer enters details online, the push to get this Ignis serviced at FNGs is only stronger.

As for the Ignis itself, to me, this is the least favourite car that our family has owned (from Fiat / Ford / Maruti / Hyundai / Honda / Tata). I abhor the arcade game steering, the bottom of the barrel Ecopia tires and the AMT gearbox. But it serves its purpose of ferrying my Mom to work and back daily. So she is happy with it but even she completely dislikes the service experience.

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