Peugeot’s first European award for excellence in customer care has been presented to four UK dealerships.

The awards have been presented to Robins & Day of Leeds, Wokingham Motors, Marshall of Peterborough and Telford Motors, marking a new focus on dealer quality within the franchised network.

Peugeot wants its dealers to improve quality of service and drive an increase in customer loyalty. It wants to be a top three brand for how dealers behave, how their staff meet deadlines and the attitude of workshop personnel. 

Peugeot UK managing director Pierre Louis Colin congratulated the award-winners for helping spread best practice across the 276-strong network. 

“The fact that our brand has moved to number three in the UK industry’s New Car Buyers’ Survey reflects the fact that we are doing extremely well,” he said.

Peugeot UK’s quality and service department has introduced a new ratings system to measure performance over a range of customer satisfaction points. 

Colin added: “This is funded by 1.4% of the dealer margin and rewards performance. The idea is not to deprive the network of funds – those who are successful are better off because the return is 2%.

“In practice, no-one is losing out, but while all our dealers have a quality policy in place, I accept there will always be some who find it difficult to improve. Having said that, we no longer have any weak points and we are transforming the culture of the company.”

Peugeot’s quarter one market share dipped to 4.5% compared with 5.57% in Q1 2008. Its sales are targeted at 100,000 units this year. 

Most of the drop is due to a reduction in national daily rental business. Colin said: “I am happy for other brands to compete in this area because the money we are saving is being used to protect our retail network. I want to protect the part of our business that will be difficult to restart if I don’t take care of it today.

“In January last year, the average profit level in our network was zero, but despite all the problems created by the credit crisis, that figure has now risen to 0.4%.”