Anke Koeckler, the new Volkswagen Australia Managing Director, has revealed some of her plans as she settles in to her new role. As well as a raft of new models Koeckler aims to keep Australia’s Volkswagen dealers on their toes.
In her previous role Anke Koeckler was responsible for 150 Volkswagen dealerships in northern Germany. During her time in that position she was known to spring surprise visits to dealerships under her command. This would allow her to get a hands on feel for how staff were treating Volkswagen’s most important assets—its customers.
“In Germany sometimes I put my cap on and went to a showroom just to figure out how I will be treated,” said Koeckler.
Ms Koeckler expects her mystery shopping habits to continue in Australia, “Why not? I have a lot of caps. Why should I change my habits.
“You get a feeling, all the processes, how the welcome is. How close the dealer prinicipal is to the staff. Everybody as a customer should be treated well, absolutely.”
Jutta Dierks, the previous MD, saw Volkswagen Australia grow from 10,000 annual sales in 2005, to a figure fast approaching 30,000 in 2009. By any measure, that’s a big jump. Anke Koeckler knows she’ll have a tough job matching such impressive growth, “We plan to have growth, then stabilisation, then growth again. We can make this happen,” she said.
Helping her, and Volkswagen, achieve those aims is an impressive line up of new products soon to be launched, including, the new Golf GTI (October 2009), a revised Transporter T5 (early 2010), new Golf Wagon (March 2010), new Polo (by June 2010), the eagerly awaited Golf R (June 2010) and in late 2010 there will be an updated Touareg and new Amarok SUV.
Interestingly, unconfirmed talk remains that the on-again-off-again Scirocco is still a possibility. It is also interesting to note that the Golf GTD is not listed among those new models, even though there does appear to be some evidence the car is planned for Australian shores.
[Source: carsales | Thanks to Jason for the tip]
14 replies on “Mystery shopper brings Volkswagen 7 new models”
I reckon they will drop the GTI and GTD at the same time, just to be tricky little bastards about it.
Probably try and drum up some more interest with the surprise factor especially most people in the driving public know what a GTI is but a GTD will do their heads in.
Especially when they love saying “Half of all VWs sold in Europe are diesel”
Unless they’ve taken drastic steps to improve their customer service in the last 12 months, I wonder what she’d think about a certain ACT VW dealer.
I recently had a chat with Anne and she’s totally on the bandwagon for the Scirocco.
God, I hope she tries to get the Scirocco down under! Get rid of the bloody 3 door GTI, and have the Scirocco!!!
Yeah I was hanging out at the country club with Anne the other day, telling her about how I think the Scirocco should include the auto tailgate option in Australia. She took notes furiously as I spoke.
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I hope you went into details of how cool flared guards would be.
Me to – just the other day I saw her mistery shoping at the Mazda dealer in Sydney. Just making sure they can better them with their service.
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Doubt the Sirocco R will get to Aus! Why? because it has to be one of the Ultimate two door sports cars under 100K, its sexy, looks well made with heaps of modern technology and potentially a great “Brand” leader. All the above would be too hard for the average VW Australia moron to comprehend and so there for we will not see it in Aus! Time to move to New Zealand!!!