Chrysler Names a Chief Customer Officer
Oct 29, 2007 at 1:43PMSince there had been a few questions in regards to quality efforts in past posts, this should be an interesting development for Dodge fans…a new “advocate for the customer” working inside the company for you. In case you haven’t seen, here’s the release:
PRESS RELEASE:
Chrysler LLC Names New Chief Customer Officer
* Douglas D. Betts to be ‘advocate for the customer’
* Veteran quality executive joins Chrysler team
Auburn Hills, Mich. - Chrysler LLC today named 21-year quality assurance veteran Douglas D. Betts Vice President and Chief Customer Officer (CCO). This newly created role assumes responsibility for corporate quality and will become a key element in Chrysler’s continued effort to become a truly customer-oriented company.
Betts will be guided by “the voice of the customer,” and will create the processes, culture, systems and organization to achieve the highest levels of quality in all of the Company’s products and customer touch points. Betts will be based in Auburn Hills, Mich., and report to Chrysler LLC Vice Chairman and President Jim Press.
“Now, the customer will define quality at Chrysler,” said Press. “We are aligning our resources to bring us to world-class benchmark levels in quality and customer satisfaction, and this is an important step.”
Press described the CCO — a first for the auto industry — as an “advocate for the customer.”
Betts joins Chrysler from Nissan Americas, where he was Senior Vice President - Total Customer Satisfaction, and before that he served as Vice President - Manufacturing Quality. He joined Nissan after holding quality assurance positions with Toyota, Michelin Tire Corp. and General Motors. Betts’ appointment is effective immediately.
Stephen M. Walukas, formerly Vice President - Corporate Quality, returns to the Procurement and Supply organization in a to-be-announced executive role.
Source: Chrysler media services
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6 Comments
Good luck Doug Betts, you have your work cut out….
Although this may be a move in the correct direction, I’m curious how exactly listening to ‘the customer’ can improve engineering and production quality of a product as complex as an automobile? I think the company’s engineers and production workers would have a clearer idea of how to improve quality than customers. Perhaps I’m missing the point, but isn’t the CCO position more about PR than quality?
However, if this is a sincere effort to improve vehicle quality and customer service, I applaud Chrysler and welcome Mr. Betts to the Mopar family. And with the Challenger (which is of utmost interest to me and all Mopar fans alike), let’s do it right. I sat in a colleague’s 2007 Mustang the other day, and was appalled at the cheapness of the interior. Please give the Challenger interior materials worthy of the excellent Castiglione/Barrington design. Thank you.
I agree. The best way for a customer advocate to find out what the customers (and potential customers) want is to get online and read these forums and other forums like the ones at allpar.com and other automotive sites.
I second that one man. CONVERTIBLE CONVERTIBLE CONVERTIBLE UNDER 40K UNDER 40K UNDER 40K
I hope he reads all of the blogs and all of the posts. That we posted to the blogs about the new Challenger. That we can get what we want on our Challengers. Welcome aboard sir.
I think that this is a great idea. Obviously, everybody cannot be satisfied, but I hope that many customers’ ideas can be integrated into production.
More importantly, I hope that corporate disseminates the information about any changes/improvements so we all know how things are going.
Thanks