Over seven decades of distributing Toyota vehicles in Saudi Arabia, Abdul Latif Jameel Motors has had to answer the same question in every era: what does an exceptional ownership experience actually feel like, and how do you deliver it consistently across hundreds of thousands of transactions a year?

The company’s answer has been institutional. Service quality is not treated as a function of individual effort or motivation — it is embedded in processes, measured against explicit standards, and improved through a continuous feedback loop that runs from the customer back through every layer of the operation.

Toyota Motor Corporation has recognized that approach with the Gold Award in its Distributor Award Program for 13 consecutive years, most recently for performance in 2023. The award evaluates results across sales, aftersales and joint priority themes. Akitoshi Takemura, regional CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation, described the streak as a tribute to the commitment of Hassan Jameel and the Abdul Latif Jameel Motors team.

Hassan Jameel, chairman of the board of managers of Abdul Latif Jameel Motors, has said the award is not a destination but a prompt. “Winning the prestigious 2023 Distributor Award for the 13th year in a row is yet another milestone that reflects the team’s outstanding efforts and passion for understanding the guests’ needs while meeting and exceeding their expectations,” he said. “This achievement inspires us to push the boundaries.”

The guest-first philosophy is most visible in the aftersales operation, which is where the relationship with a vehicle owner either deepens or breaks down. Abdul Latif Jameel Motors trains staff to treat aftersales not as a back-of-house function but as the primary arena for loyalty building. Customers who bring a car in for a service and feel heard are more likely to return when they buy their next vehicle.

That same attention to the guest experience surfaces in how the company handles frontline employee ideas. When a driver at the Madinah Road branch identified that his team was losing hours each day due to poorly placed stock yard lanes, he brought it to his manager. The change was made. Hassan Jameel met the employee personally. That sequence — listen, act, recognize — is the same loop the company applies to customer feedback.

Kaizen underlies all of it. Abdul Latif Jameel adopted the continuous improvement philosophy from Toyota when the two companies began their partnership in the 1950s, and it has since built an internal program called Best in Town to spread the approach across its operations worldwide. The goal, as Jameel has described it, is a culture where continuous improvement is the default mindset — not a project that gets launched and then fades.

At its peak, Abdul Latif Jameel Motors sold close to half a million new Toyota vehicles annually across global markets. The Saudi Arabia operation has been at the core of that output for 70 years. Sustaining that volume while also sustaining a service reputation that earns Gold recognition 13 times consecutively requires something more than good intentions. It requires systems, and people willing to improve them.