Quality Culture at Tesla

[cappy1]

I am a new Tesla customer with a MYP on order. So far, I have been surprised at the poor service quality with a complete lack of contact, excepting no reply emails. The order confirmation was via an email instead of text message, so I have not been able to reach a human being.

There are no phone numbers or links on the app, so at last resort yesterday I tried calling the closest Tesla service center in Savanna. I was put was on hold by about an hour and I finally gave up. There was no offer to call back or to leave a message. This is far worse than dealing with the government!

Given the numerous posts on fit and finish problems, it makes me wonder if quality issues extend across the company? If this is the case it suggests a problem with its culture. It can take about five years to change a company driven by “numbers” to one driven by customer satisfaction throughout the organization.

 

[afadeev]

I am a new Tesla customer with a MYP on order. So far, I have been surprised at the poor service quality with a complete lack of contact, excepting no reply emails. The order confirmation was via an email instead of text message, so I have not been able to reach a human being.

Sorry, but you need to get used to this.
Tesla is infamous of hands-off customer relations attitude. There are no numbers to call for placing orders, services, or complaints. If you want something, you need to go to a Service Center and hope that someone will talk to you.

On the other hand, your concerns about getting order confirmation via email vs. text seams a bit spurious. Both methods achieve the same result - confirming that your order has been received. What else were you hoping to hear?

There are no phone numbers or links on the app, so at last resort yesterday I tried calling the closest Tesla service center in Savanna. I was put was on hold by about an hour and I finally gave up. There was no offer to call back or to leave a message. This is far worse than dealing with the government!

Perhaps, but that's how Elon likes it. Have you tried calling customer support at Twitter, Boring, or SpaceX? Same thing.
If hands-off customer (non-)support is a show stopper for you, consider canceling your order now. It wont get any better once you get the car and they take your money, that much I can promise you.

Given the numerous posts on fit and finish problems, it makes me wonder if quality issues extend across the company? If this is the case it suggests a problem with its culture. It can take about five years to change a company driven by “numbers” to one driven by customer satisfaction throughout the organization.

No such changes are on the horizon, or should be expected to come about, until supply exceeds demand.
It is what it is.

HTH,
a

 

[Unclepaul]

Not sure why fit and finish is such an problem. The goodness of Tesla is in the engineering of the propulsion system and electronics.

A car can still be a great car, even though the gaps between panels are not absolutely precise.

A car with large panel gaps can be just as good as a car with small panel gaps.

 

[Big Earl]

During normal business hours, try calling 877-79-TESLA, option 2.

 

[afadeev]

A car with large panel gaps can be just as good as a car with small panel gaps.

Not if you care about road noise and wind buffeting.
Most of us prefer to keep highway wind noise to the minimum, which is impossible to achieve with irregular and poorly fitted roof glass and body panel junctions.

The goodness of Tesla is in the engineering of the propulsion system and electronics.

Agree on the value proposition behind EV motors and batteries.
Tesla software and electronics are, sadly, delivery second rate results.

a

 

[archae86]

Some US customers have extremely high expectations for in-person handholding for matters for which the handholding produces no value. Fulfilling those expectations is extremely expensive. So companies try various methods of holding down the resources they spend this way, hoping not to give too grave offense while still providing the actual needed capability.

I don't agree that a system designed to hold down on that particular cost has a strong implication on the overall quality culture of a company. On the other hand, it probably does say something about the overall cost-efficiency determination of a company.

 

[Rowman]

Sorry, but you need to get used to this.
Tesla is infamous of hands-off customer relations attitude. There are no numbers to call for placing orders, services, or complaints. If you want something, you need to go to a Service Center and hope that someone will talk to you.

On the other hand, your concerns about getting order confirmation via email vs. text seams a bit spurious. Both methods achieve the same result - confirming that your order has been received. What else were you hoping to hear?



Perhaps, but that's how Elon likes it. Have you tried calling customer support at Twitter, Boring, or SpaceX? Same thing.
If hands-off customer (non-)support is a show stopper for you, consider canceling your order now. It wont get any better once you get the car and they take your money, that much I can promise you.



No such changes are on the horizon, or should be expected to come about, until supply exceeds demand.
It is what it is.

HTH,
a

I had good service on my first Tesla in 2017 since it is a disaster, this is why so many people don't buy a second Tesla...Elon is tired with Tesla now focusing more on tweeter and SpaceX, he did his run, now bored with cars....

 

[cappy1]

Sorry, but you need to get used to this.
Tesla is infamous of hands-off customer relations attitude. There are no numbers to call for placing orders, services, or complaints. If you want something, you need to go to a Service Center and hope that someone will talk to you.

On the other hand, your concerns about getting order confirmation via email vs. text seams a bit spurious. Both methods achieve the same result - confirming that your order has been received. What else were you hoping to hear?



Perhaps, but that's how Elon likes it. Have you tried calling customer support at Twitter, Boring, or SpaceX? Same thing.
If hands-off customer (non-)support is a show stopper for you, consider canceling your order now. It wont get any better once you get the car and they take your money, that much I can promise you.



No such changes are on the horizon, or should be expected to come about, until supply exceeds demand.
It is what it is.

HTH,
a

Without any real competition, Tesla has been able to set its own rules and make a ton of profits, but most likely this won’t last forever. The industry will mature and competitors will develop comparable products. But if Tesla doesn’t change, competition will see an opportunity to differentiate itself by delivering exceptional reliability, quality and service. This could knock the Tesla business model off its perch, possibly for good.

There are some important financial issues as well. I suspect Tesla has an alarming cost of poor quality (aka the cost of doing things wrong). Warranty, lawsuits, loss of current and potential customers due to reputation /quality issues, factory rework, redesign and wasteful processes, etc. These issues can cost 20% or more of sales, yet many of them require little or no capital expenditure, just time and hands-on leadership by senior management.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Without any real competition, Tesla has been able to set its own rules and make a ton of profits, but most likely this won’t last forever. The industry will mature and competitors will develop comparable products. But if Tesla doesn’t change, competition will see an opportunity to differentiate itself by delivering exceptional reliability, quality and service. This could knock the Tesla business model off its perch, possibly for good.

There are some important financial issues as well. I suspect Tesla has an alarming cost of poor quality (aka the cost of doing things wrong). Warranty, lawsuits, loss of current and potential customers due to reputation /quality issues, factory rework, redesign and wasteful processes, etc. These issues can cost 20% or more of sales, yet many of them require little or no capital expenditure, just time and hands-on leadership by senior management.

Exactly - in January 2023 - roughly 87k EVs were sold. 57% of those were Tesla EVs, but 43% were non-Tesla EVs. When Tesla was the only game in town, they could freely treat people like crap, as they were the only choice, but with new EVs entering the market on an almost weekly basis now in 2023, the game is changing. Musk's shortsighted and myopic views on customer experience are going to become a real problem as competition continues to eat away at Tesla market share. The very dealer network that Tesla rails against and touts as an advantage over the competition - is likely going to leave Tesla in the dust from a customer experience standpoint over the next couple of years. Tesla needs to wake the hell up and focus on customer experience NOW - because as we all learned way back when watching the war between Apple and Microsoft - the better product doesn't always win out. Jobs had to learn this fact the hard way - Apple always had better products - but Microsoft trounced them due to better business practices and a marked focus on the customer experience overall. Jobs eventually learned this lesson the hard way - and reinvented his business approach when introducing the iPhone ecosystem - and look what happened. Tesla is evidently going to have to learn the hard way here. That's a shame - because with a limited investment they could really turn this miserable customer experience issue around relatively quickly.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Some US customers have extremely high expectations for in-person handholding for matters for which the handholding produces no value. Fulfilling those expectations is extremely expensive. So companies try various methods of holding down the resources they spend this way, hoping not to give too grave offense while still providing the actual needed capability.

I don't agree that a system designed to hold down on that particular cost has a strong implication on the overall quality culture of a company. On the other hand, it probably does say something about the overall cost-efficiency determination of a company.

The problem that Tesla has is they have literally almost no focus on providing a good customer experience. For example, the FAQs for the app - don't have a single screenshot of any of the app screens with any online documentation describing what the buttons in the app actually do. This isn't rocket science and would take one person a day to document and provide guidance. Given Tesla manages the entire pre-sales process through the app - how about some context sensitive help built into the app? Amazon blows Tesla out of the water in this department - and Amazon is selling trinkets compared to Tesla mind you. Want people to feel comfortable buying high dollar products through an app? Well then for crying out loud provide some basic guidance. The fact that people make excuses for a multi-billion dollar organization not delivering on these 101 level business practices doesn't help solve the problem in my view. I have been blasting Tesla right and left on these issues since ordering on 3/14. I've worked in software development and software pre-sales for 25 years now - and what I'm seeing isn't even remotely impressive, quite the contrary. Tesla likes to tout that they are nextgen - and they have decent products without a doubt - but they are going to continue to lose market share to other BEV manufacturers moving forward if they don't solve these 101 level problems.

 

[KBF]

The problem that Tesla has is they have literally almost no focus on providing a good customer experience. For example, the FAQs for the app - don't have a single screenshot of any of the app screens with any online documentation describing what the buttons in the app actually do. This isn't rocket science and would take one person a day to document and provide guidance. Given Tesla manages the entire pre-sales process through the app - how about some context sensitive help built into the app? Amazon blows Tesla out of the water in this department - and Amazon is selling trinkets compared to Tesla mind you. Want people to feel comfortable buying high dollar products through an app? Well then for crying out loud provide some basic guidance. The fact that people make excuses for a multi-billion dollar organization not delivering on these 101 level business practices doesn't help solve the problem in my view. I have been blasting Tesla right and left on these issues since ordering on 3/14. I've worked in software development and software pre-sales for 25 years now - and what I'm seeing isn't even remotely impressive, quite the contrary. Tesla likes to tout that they are nextgen - and they have decent products without a doubt - but they are going to continue to lose market share to other BEV manufacturers moving forward if they don't solve these 101 level problems.

Maybe they think that adults are capable of figuring out what a button on an app is by themselves. My 78 year old mom can... Like you said, this isn't rocket science. It would take a customer 1 tap to figure out what a button does. Is there really anything on the app that you can't figure out by reading the label or tapping on it?? It's pretty hard to believe someone can't figure out that "climate" is a button you press to monitor and change climate controls...

 

[HitchHiker71]

Maybe they think that adults are capable of figuring out what a button on an app is by themselves. My 78 year old mom can... Like you said, this isn't rocket science. It would take a customer 1 tap to figure out what a button does. Is there really anything on the app that you can't figure out by reading the label or tapping on it?? It's pretty hard to believe someone can't figure out that "climate" is a button you press to monitor and change climate controls...

Let me give you a real example. This has nothing to do with being an adult - it has to do with providing a good user experience. When you submit the financing app - you have two options once the financing is approved. Review or Change. In my specific case - I chose Review - and then realized I could not change the numbers around and slightly increase the loan amount for example - because Tesla doesn't support pre-approvals - they only support hard credit pull loan approvals - which seems like a pretty big gap when selling products that are tens of thousands of dollars for example. Pre-approvals are the gold standard when purchasing large items like homes or luxury vehicles. But I digress. So my app died on my phone when I was trying to modify the financing numbers - as apps sometimes do on mobile devices. I relaunched the app - and the Review and Change were gone - and Start was the only option. I had to then go on a wild goose chase and call US Bank - attempt to call Tesla with a phone number US Bank provided me - waited on hold for over an hour twice before Tesla's line literally said "we're too busy right now - call back later" and hung up. Two days later after multiple texts back and forth - I finally got the financing app restored. I then asked a simple question in text - what happens if I click the Change button? Do I lose access to the Review option? No one could answer my question. Given I had already wasted two days of trying to get the finance approval back in the app - I was a bit gun shy given the problems previously experienced - and certainly didn't want to lose another day or two if I chose "Change" and then lost the ability to Review. This all could be easily documented in Tesla FAQs - would literally take someone a day to take some screenshots and do this, but it doesn't exist. I work in software pre-sales and release management. If we change our apps or introduce a new feature - even something as simple as a new button - and we haven't updated our documentation online or provided an "I" icon with brief instructions - we get lambasted by our customers. Why should Tesla be held to a much lower standard, especially given the app is the ONLY place to order and track your vehicle purchase? It cannot be done on the website - and texting is now the only supported method to interact with anyone. There's a plethora of posts on this forum about the miserable customer experiences - particularly during the post order delivery process - that Tesla needs to deal with proactively - and stop making excuses about quite frankly.

 

[Yelobird]

The problem that Tesla has is they have literally almost no focus on providing a good customer experience. For example, the FAQs for the app - don't have a single screenshot of any of the app screens with any online documentation describing what the buttons in the app actually do. This isn't rocket science and would take one person a day to document and provide guidance. Given Tesla manages the entire pre-sales process through the app - how about some context sensitive help built into the app? Amazon blows Tesla out of the water in this department - and Amazon is selling trinkets compared to Tesla mind you. Want people to feel comfortable buying high dollar products through an app? Well then for crying out loud provide some basic guidance. The fact that people make excuses for a multi-billion dollar organization not delivering on these 101 level business practices doesn't help solve the problem in my view. I have been blasting Tesla right and left on these issues since ordering on 3/14. I've worked in software development and software pre-sales for 25 years now - and what I'm seeing isn't even remotely impressive, quite the contrary. Tesla likes to tout that they are nextgen - and they have decent products without a doubt - but they are going to continue to lose market share to other BEV manufacturers moving forward if they don't solve these 101 level problems.

Completely confused on the Amazon comparison. They make no products and the feedback, tutorial content is provided by consumers. Yes Amazon does try harder on a seamless buying experience but they Have to as their only function is a middle man distribution service company. Threads like this would add more value if they started by sharing the Reason they need to contact the OEM? If it’s an order issue understandable but if you just want a buddy to chat with about micro details of your order this is not the spoon feed hand hold type company. In my years of ICE car buying I never once went back to a dealer or contacted them. Their up charge value had No value to me nor did I want a dealer buddy to answer something I could have answered by reading the manual or searching online. Tesla buying is Absolutely a different experience. Some simply are not prepared for the different experience nor lack of getting a car pal to chat with. JMO

 

[afadeev]

Without any real competition, Tesla has been able to set its own rules and make a ton of profits

There is plenty of competition to Tesla now.
If high-quality of service (pre- or post-sales) is important to you - go order from the others.
If it isn't, then why are you complaining?

I suspect Tesla has an alarming cost of poor quality (aka the cost of doing things wrong). Warranty, lawsuits, loss of current and potential customers due to reputation /quality issues, factory rework, redesign and wasteful processes, etc. These issues can cost 20% or more of sales

You said you are new to Tesla, and have just ordered a MY.
Yet you are also an expert on Tesla's "alarming cost of poor quality" that "can cost 20% or more of sales"?
And you are deducing all of that from ... what exactly?

 

[Electroman]

Not sure why fit and finish is such an problem. The goodness of Tesla is in the engineering of the propulsion system and electronics.

A car can still be a great car, even though the gaps between panels are not absolutely precise.

A car with large panel gaps can be just as good as a car with small panel gaps.

Exactly Why is a cosmetic feature like panel alignment precision a better measure of quality than how the car rides and how all the other non-cosmetic features work?

In the scheme of things I will give it 5% weightage. That is just me.

 

[archae86]

Exactly Why is a cosmetic feature like panel alignment precision a better measure of quality than how the car rides and how all the other non-cosmetic features work?

In the scheme of things I will give it 5% weightage. That is just me.

My personal take on the folk history of the panel gap thing.

Step one. By the 1950s the American manufacturers had engineered their cars for maximum producibility with their existing methods of forming and installing panels so that they would have near-zero fit reject loss by including large enough gaps to handle the maximum likely errors. Most Americans did not notice, nor mind this much. Not only were the gaps large, but they were inconsistent--as you'd expect for something which was handling random variation.

Step two. Decades went by, and Japanese manufacturers began shipping more and more cars to sell in the US which were produced from manufacturing sites which expressly and diligently worked unceasingly to chase down and reduce sources of manufacturing variation (no, the whole Deming thing in Japan was not a myth). They naturally found that smaller gaps would satisfy their yield needs, and their smaller variation meant the remaining gaps were less noticeably inconsistent.

People eventually noticed, and started doing things like logging gap sizes and variations as defects in J.D. Power surveys and such.

Step three. Meanwhile, the Japanese cars, which, in my opinion were no great shakes in their low-end 1975 versions, really did start arriving in considerably higher overall quality levels than competing American cars. The panel gap thing was easy to see, and became a symbol of what was actually an overall major quality difference. The American manufacturers caught on, and at great expense eventually greatly improved in this particular, highly visible respect.

I doubt that in today's market panel gap comparisons give much insight into overall real quality differences among world auto manufacturers.

 

[Silicon Desert]

Given the numerous posts on fit and finish problems, it makes me wonder if quality issues extend across the company? If this is the case it suggests a problem with its culture.

"Quality Culture at Tesla" Sometimes I wonder if it is more of a "cult" than "culture"

 

[cwerdna]

I started automotive reliability and durability testing in 2015 and that thread is crickets. From that, it seems like most here don't care much about it.

 

[cappy1]

There is plenty of competition to Tesla now.
If high-quality of service (pre- or post-sales) is important to you - go order from the others.
If it isn't, then why are you complaining?



You said you are new to Tesla, and have just ordered a MY.
Yet you are also an expert on Tesla's "alarming cost of poor quality" that "can cost 20% or more of sales"?
And you are deducing all of that from ... what exactly?

There is plenty of competition to Tesla now.
If high-quality of service (pre- or post-sales) is important to you - go order from the others.
If it isn't, then why are you complaining?



You said you are new to Tesla, and have just ordered a MY.
Yet you are also an expert on Tesla's "alarming cost of poor quality" that "can cost 20% or more of sales"?
And you are deducing all of that from ... what exactly?

There are lots of customers on this Forum that complain about problems and some have bought several models over the years. Should they all go away as well?

Also, it would be more helpful if you debated the message rather than attacking the messenger. What exactly do you not understand? My point is that high quality does nor mean high cost, in fact it is the opposite. Try reading Juran .

 

[Andrew85]

Exactly Why is a cosmetic feature like panel alignment precision a better measure of quality than how the car rides and how all the other non-cosmetic features work?

In the scheme of things I will give it 5% weightage. That is just me.

Well cosmetic gaps you have a point. The problem is alignment issues are not always just cosmetic. I had many service issues with latch problems, rattles, etc. all stemming from alignment issues. Some of the alignment issues were so bad it was scrapping off paint.

Granted it is much better now than when I had my M3.

Tesla is so far ahead on some aspects of a vehicle it's crazy. On other aspects they below average or worse

You brought brought up how a car rides as a better measure of quality... I like MY's but it is a pretty bad riding car...