Maruti opens first of 30 Nexa service workshops to come up this year

Marking two years of its new Nexa premium vehicle retail and in line with its quest to improve customer satisfaction Maruti Suzuki India today commenced aftersales operations under the new brand, christened ‘Nexa Service’.

Maruti Suzuki has worked upon three basic foundation pillars – Technology, Design and Experience – on the new initiative which envisions to transform the way vehicle servicing has been experienced by an average Indian car owner in the small to mid-segment car space in the country until now.

The new outlets under Nexa Service will witness a strong integration of technology and workshop layout, in order to meet the expectations of new-age customers, who according to Maruti, are looking for proper diagnosis, repair and timely delivery of their cars.

Being built on the lines of the retail brand’s ‘Monochrome’ design theme, the average Nexa workshop floor space will range between 12,500-15,000 square feet,  along with a minimum of five servicing bays, including one express bay. The new facility of Prem Motors, located in the Industrial Development Area of Sector-14, in Gurgaon, Haryana is one such unit and has nine working bays.

The carmaker has started off by leveraging the potential of a smartphone and with its MyNexa application and has created the first interface for a Nexa car owner to start with the vehicle servicing process. The average servicing time is kept between 160-180 minutes, with customers getting a direct link on their smart devices, to have a live web-feed of the work in progress. Reverse time counters have been installed at each service bay to keep track of the servicing time.

For owners on a time crunch, the option of an express service has been kept open, which will be available for a vehicle’s first, until its 20,000km scheduled service, and will considerably reduce the job time. While the Nexa service outlets are meant for the range of premium cars from the company’s stable, including the Ignis, Baleno, S-Cross and the Ciaz, it will also cater to owners of regular line-up of Maruti cars.

The servicing price at Nexa workshops though would come at a slight premium over the charge at any regular Maruti service outlet. This premium over the regular Maruti outlet is estimated at 10-15 percent.

The garage equipment in place sees around 25 percent automation, with equipment like automatic underbody washing station, automatic mat cleaners, an advanced tester line which replaces the outdoor road test, a zero-spillage oil management system and hi-end exhaust extraction systems, to ensure high levels of cleanliness and a healthy work environment. Vendors including LG Heavy Industries, OSL and MCO are a few of the vendors involved in the supplies.

MSIL claims to have upped the servicing bay efficiency by up to 50 percent, by appointing small automations at various levels, improving productivity, and at the same time reducing human fatigue. To put things in perspective, while a regular MSIL workshop can handle 30 cars a day, at Nexa, the number will be forty-five.

According to Partho Banerjee, executive vice-president, Service, Maruti Suzuki India, “ While in terms of investment , there is 15-20 percent more capital expense in setting up a Nexa service centre, when compared to the regular Maruti workshop, but, at the same time, since productivity has gone up by 50 percent, so the revenue realisation has also gone up substantially.”

Banking on tech and automation

Technology and automation will be seen playing a major role at every Nexa workshop, right from the entry gate, where the boom barrier will automatically allow entry to the service centre by scanning the RFID tag on the windshield of every approaching customer car.

According to RS Kalsi, executive director (Marketing & Sales), “Technology plays a key role at Nexa and all the processes have been seamlessly digitally integrated with the MyNexa app. It has allowed us to improve work efficiency, with best time utilisation, right from when the car enters, and also ensure that a customer enjoys a completely transparent relationship.”

The layout of a Nexa workshop will see everything built around a customer, with a centrally located plush customer lounge, aimed at pampering owners while they wait, with amenities like WiFi, F&B and Know It Yourself (KIY) car tutorial videos on iPads. The lounge design with a glass wall at one end will allow customers to keep a clear track of vehicle movement from bay-to-bay inside the shop floor.

According to Kalsi, “The new lounge is a different orbit altogether. While a customer will remain isolated from the shopfloor, at the same time he would very much be a part of it. This is the delightful experience.”

Maruti Suzuki India, which has sold over 300,000 cars from the 260-odd outlets of the Nexa channel till now, aims to open 60-70 Nexa workshops by the end of FY2018, starting with top 30 cities in the country including the main Metros. The company aims to leverage Nexa Service to pull more customers to its brand and achieve its mission of selling two million cars annually by the year 2020.