Toyota dealers Harlech Toyota, RRG Rochdale and Listers Boston were awarded with the top honours at Toyota’s ‘Ichiban’ European Customer Satisfaction Award event in Budapest.

Harlech Toyota, RRG Rochdale and Listers Boston were recognised for their exceptional performance in customer satisfaction in both sales and aftersales areas.

The awards were presented to the winners Gerallt Evans, dealer principal at Harlech Toyota, Peter Smith dealer principal at RRG Rochdale and Nick Smiles brand director at Listers Toyota by Didier Leroy, president & CEO of Toyota Motor Europe (TME).

Approximately 2,600 European retailers were evaluated on their results during a continuous performance monitoring, which is included in the company’s standards. Based on a demanding set of selection criteria, 42 retailers achieved the recognition by Toyota in Europe.

Leroy said: “We need to exceed customer expectations through our products and at every point of customer contact. It is the customer’s choice to purchase a Toyota and we want to make sure that they remain happy with that decision.

“Ichiban is the Japanese word borrowed from ‘Okyakusama Ichiban’ which means ‘customer first’, with ‘Ichiban’ meaning ‘first’ or ‘number one’. Since the beginning of the TME’s annual Ichiban Awards in 2007, customer satisfaction performance of the Toyota retailers has improved by some 24% points in sales and 17% points in aftersales.”