BMW nurtures quality professionals to serve customers

Premium automaker BMW Asia's largest training center has operated smoothly since it was founded on Sept 1 in Xi'an, the capital Shaanxi province.

Following Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the center is the automakers fourth in China and marks a new milestone in the company's commitment to training in the Chinese market.

The move indicates the company's strong emphasis on what it refers to as the BMW West Region, which includes the provinces of Henan, Sichuan, and Shaanxi as well as Chongqing municipality, where it aims to improve customer satisfaction and cement the company's presence.

Joachim Geissler, vice-president of qualification and retail HR at BMW AG, said: "With the rapid development of China, BMW has indeed realized the importance and urgency of talent training in our dealerships. We should not only have the most advanced and excellent products and the most efficient sales platforms in the future, but also the highest quality talents with outstanding professional and service skills in our dealer organization."

The company has long adhered to a win-win strategy of combining personal career and dealer development.

The training the automaker offers in China meets worldwide certification processes and qualification standards, which the company makes significant contribution to sustainable development and plays an important role in talent recruitment, training, development and employee retention. The company said its efforts in this field have so far boosted dealers' business performances.

Geissler said the company's training targets the challenging new normal economic situation in the country.

"In particular, in challenging times, each single employee in the dealer organization has a huge responsibility to fulfill the requirements of our customers," he said.

The new center has worldwide standard facilities and provides multi-function training that covers all aspects of the dealer's development, including product training for sales advisors and technical training for technicians.

The Xi'an training center also has added motorcycle stations specially designed for motorcycle training.

"BMW will continuously provide excellent sales and service talents for dealer partners with advanced training facilities and professional training teams to raise customer satisfaction and lay solid foundations for BMW's development in China," Geissler said.

The Xi'an training center is in China Electronic Xi'an Industrial Park, which is home to several international and science and technology enterprises that offer a good operational environment for the training center, said Xiao Yi, head of BMW China Training Academy.

The Xi'an center will support the automaker's penetration in fourth and fifth-tier cities and make after sales a stable pillar of the company's business, she said.

The center's design follows the sustainable development concept of BMW, with the use of natural lighting, low-e glass and shade championing BMW's energy-saving emission reduction and environmental protection efforts.

Boosting training capacity

Statistics indicate that the company's training courses have been held in 18 cities and cover 170 technical subjects and 60 non-technical subjects.

The automaker has teamed up with 15 partner institutes under its BMW Education of Service Technology projects, which are also known as BEST.

The BEST program has trained 3,300 students since it was established in 2006 with the help of 15 cooperation schools in13 provinces and 14 cities.

According to the company, the opening of the Xi'an training center will push the automaker's training capacity up to 270,000 man-day annual training days.

In the future, the company promises to optimize its training and certification system, customized training program and training resources integration and development.

It said it would carry out combination learning, such as mobile and online learning, using virtual classrooms and face-to-face training to improve quality and efficiency of training and reduce dealers' cost of travel.

BMW also vowed to proactively promote its BEST program and nurture internal trainers to better serve dealers.

The company is looking to continue strengthening dealers' basic training and certification and provide customized training courses for the region and the dealer group to better serve consumers and enhance consumer satisfaction.

BMW West Region growth

BMW said it attaches great importance to its West Region, and will continue to fulfill local commitments in product, service and experience.

The region has strategic importance to BMW in China.

In the first seven months of 2015, the region delivered 54,681 BMW and MINI cars, a rise of 3 percent compared with the previous year. The region now represents more than 20 percent of nationwide sales.

By July 2015, there were 76 dealerships in the region, including two BMW i dealerships operating in Chengdu. BMW i network expansion was one of the focus points of the year - five more BMW i dealerships are due to be up and running by the end of 2015.

The BMW 3 Series and X5 are currently the fastest growing models in the West Region.

yangcheng@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/16/2015 page19)