Earlier this year, reports from abroad emerged of the new Ford Ranger experiencing problems such as software glitches, leading to nine units being replaced in the Australian market in the first six months it was on sale.
More recently, a local Ranger driver also gained traction on social media when his bakkie exhibited similar issues.
To reassure its customers that it’s here for them, Ford South Africa invited TopAuto for a one-on-one meeting to explain more about what it has done on both a domestic and global scale to address these complications, as well as customer support in total.
Uncooperative screens
Ford said without diagnosing the particular bakkie that appeared faulty it has no sure-fire way of telling what caused the issue, however, it said previous fixes involved relatively minor things.
One of the culprits was a slightly disconnected pin in one of the many connectors on the wiring harness, which was solved by plugging it back in correctly, or in cases where damages were apparent, replacing the entire harness.
Another cause for unresponsive screens in models built in Thailand and exported to other countries such as South Africa, including the Everest and Raptor, was battery drain.
This was only apparent in early units and Ford said it found the reason for the leak and fixed it at the source, i.e. the production line, and no other vehicles have suffered from it since.
The imported models are now also put in a special low-power mode while they’re being shipped to avoid unnecessary drain.
Related to this, it’s not uncommon for these vehicles to be out at sea for months and for the operating systems to be upgraded in the meantime. As such, when they’re started up again in their home market, they may be running old software with bugs that were patched while they were on the water.
Ford now requires all its dealers to perform pre-delivery updates, ensuring all its customers’ cars are running the latest tech the moment they are handed the keys.
The last source Ford has found for glitchy programmes is out-of-sync modules.
When initially starting the Ranger or Everest its assistance systems ping each other to ensure they are all working, and sometimes one of them may be out of sync by a few milliseconds and a warning will appear on the driver screen stating that function is temporarily unavailable.
This warning will only stay for six seconds as that’s how long it takes for the systems to ping each other again as a failsafe, making sure they are 100% operational. If it doesn’t go away, it could be something a technician might have to look at, but thus far there have been no cases of this, said Ford.
All these problems, however unlikely they may be to occur, were closely scrutinised to find the root cause, which was then addressed to guarantee that no car anywhere in the world is built with that defect going forward.
If was a “systemic issue”, Ford determined when that particular unit was built using VIN data and notified all the owners of bakkies made before it that they may need to go to a dealer to get it taken care of if an over-the-air software update won’t do the trick.
Before, Ford subsidiaries across the globe also didn’t share very much data with each other, leaving many to solve problems on their own. Now, the entities are in contact “every day” discussing the issues they found and how they solved them.
This turns out to be a big advantage for the customer, as the majority of operational adjustments that the Thai plant had to make to bring down issues in the Ranger were implemented in the South African factory before it started production, leading to but a handful of warranty claims from the 4,000-plus Rangers sold in the country over the past few months.
Additionally, Ford South Africa is now in much more frequent contact with its dealers and suppliers, with the shared knowledge drastically cutting down on repair time.
If the owner has activated FordPass in their new Ranger or Everest, the company can now enter the VIN number and within three minutes identify the fault code and alert the dealer of the required fix before the car even arrives.
This leads us to the domestic arm’s new innovation called “Rapid Hubs”.
Ford’s big drive to improve customer service
Ford has taken a more hands-on approach to customer service with its next-generation products with the brunt of the support coming from so-called Rapid Hubs.
There are 10 of these hubs in Southern Africa, which includes Namibia, each taking care of around 13 dealers in their closest proximity.
The company likens the idea to a “spider web” as all new Rangers and Everests that are booked in at any of the Ford-accredited dealerships are visible to Ford South Africa within four hours after they are logged in the workshop.
The headquarters in Pretoria is updated daily, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, on the developments that happened regarding the issue the customer had, and if the vehicle is there for longer than 24 hours, or if the dealer requests, the company dispatches the seven trained members of the nearest Rapid Hub to assist with getting the unit out of the door as soon as possible.
At the end of every day, the team of around 70 hub members sits down and discusses all the problems they encountered since the previous meeting, and if a significant corrective measure must be implemented somewhere at the factory it is done with haste.
This is because if the complication was something serious, the entire production line will cease to run until it is sorted out and with an output of over 700 bakkies a day, halting assembly is quite the costly exercise.
The head of the Rapid Hubs department says his teams, at least for the moment, have run out of problems to solve on the new Ranger and Everest and have started tackling issues on older cars, even ones that have since disappeared from the shelves.
Taking not only the customer but also the dealer into account, Ford has visited, and is still busy visiting, all its dealerships across the Southern African region to find out which corporate rules are redundant and are actually working against efficiency.
The company said this has streamlined many of the processes that were previously bureaucratic messes, and the dealers and customers are reaping the benefits.
Regarding the Ranger’s sister bakkie, the new VW Amarok, Ford said it exchanges feedback with VW on the issues its owners encounter and since the bakkies are produced in the same factory they are, naturally, treated to the same reparations if one must be taken.
But once the Amarok is on that truck on its way to the VW dealer, Ford has little to no input on things such as maintenance, repairs, or customer service.
A challenge to Ford owners
At the end of our meeting, Ford extended a challenge to its customers which it put all its weight behind.
The blue oval wants all Ford owners to bring in any of their vehicles with any problem or complaint they might have, and the company vows to fix it.
The manufacturer admitted to pulling parts from the assembly line before if that component wasn’t readily in supply to get a customer’s car repaired and back on the road faster, and it will go to more extreme measures than that.
Just recently, Ford redid a Ranger’s full interior carpeting because the owner didn’t like the smell. The automaker first tested the material to find the source of the smell and it turned out to be a chemical of unknown origins that didn’t come from the factory, but it went ahead and replaced the carpets anyway.
In a different case, a customer’s car needed a new exhaust, the dealer was out of stock, and the delivery time was a while away, so Ford took an exhaust from one of the vehicles earmarked for the media as a part-time fix until the new one arrived to avoid the owner sitting idly by for days without a car.
It has also brought a customer to the factory to witness their Ranger being repaired and subjected to stress tests again after they complained about a small rattle.
Ford is adamant about its claim that it will “sort out any problem” a customer might have and ensures that the customer now comes first.
Keyword: New Ford Ranger problems – Ford South Africa responds