In a recent press release, Toyota Motors USA announced a way to rapidly investigate customer reports of ‘unintended acceleration’.
The Company now has in place a business process they coined SMART that takes advantage of the company’s ‘existing product engineers, field technical specialists, and specially trained technicians’ in a take no prisoners stance to pinpoint vehicles that need repair and do those repairs quickly and adequately.
The vehicle brands that are under the SMART umbrella are: Toyota, Lexus, the luxury vehicle division of Toyota and introduced in the US in 1989, and Scion, a Marque of Toyota which was founded in 2002 and selling in the US in 2003.
Toyota, a company normally with high sales volumes in the US is currently under fire for ‘runaway acceleration’ in some models of Toyota, Lexus, and Scion. In testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Akio Toyoda, grandson of Toyota founder and current president of Toyota said Toyota “lacked the customer perspective” when it came to doing recalls” [and instead relied] on technical information.”
In an attempt to rectify this problem SMART’s (Swift Market Analysis Response Team) goal is to have a 24-hour turnaround rapid response on customer reports of unintended acceleration. At that time specially trained Toyota staff will grant the customer an ‘on-site vehicle analysis’. According to the press release, the Team is made up of 200 technical personnel coming from the brands North American operations. SMART staff will work closely with Toyota and Lexus dealerships. The process of getting to the customer with a complaint of unintended acceleration as soon as possible is now laid out in a business plan and being distributed to these dealers.
The Toyota brand is now busily working to keep customers that fall under its umbrella up-to-date on any news relating to their vehicles and is actively striving to rectify any safety problems. For more answers, check out the following listings from Toyota’s press release:
Detailed information and answers to questions are available to customers at www.toyota.com or www.lexus.com and at the Toyota Customer Experience Center at 1-800-331-4331 or the Lexus Customer Assistance Center at 1-800-255-3987.
