The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki announced that it has launched a unique ‘Quick Response Team on Bikes’ (QRT) for 24x7 road-side assistance service. Under the initiative a fleet of 350 motorcycles will offer emergency assistance in 251 cities, which it says is backed by robust IT back-end.

The carmaker says this is a first-of-its-kind integrated initiative in India and the initiative will be progressively expanded to reach 500 cities by the end of 2020.

Kenichi Ayukawa, managing director and CEO, Maruti Suzuki India, said, “Customer obsession being a core value of Maruti Suzuki, it drives us every time to come up with innovations to delight our customers. Started over two decades back, Maruti Suzuki is the pioneer of road side assistance programme in India. The launch of Quick Response Team on Bikes is a strategic decision to rapidly help attend customer cars that may have broken-down on the road. We are confident that this initiative will take Maruti Suzuki’s service for customer care to the next level of convenience.”

Each QRT biker will be equipped with essential tools and critical spares needed to quickly restore the vehicle in distress. Based on the company’s comprehensive training, the QRT technicians can handle around 90 percent of the problems typically faced by customers in case of a vehicle break down. When a Maruti Suzuki customer reports a vehicle breakdown, a web-based system identifies the GPS location of the nearby technician and assigns him for the complaint.

The customer and technician can connect over phone and see each other’s location and estimated time of arrival, through the Maruti Care App. The QRT on 350 bikes will join the fleet of over 415 Maruti Suzuki on-Road Service (MoS) vehicles to attend to customer cars across the country. Maruti says that its customers can avail the ‘QRT service/MoS service’ on a complimentary basis under the extended warranty offered on Maruti Suzuki cars. For vehicles not covered under the Maruti Suzuki warranty/extended warranty, the QRT service is available on a per-call basis with visiting charges ranging between Rs 420 to Rs 575, depending on location of customer’s car.