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Smart Shopper Customer Satisfaction Surveys
500 messages, Last post on Oct 27, 2008 at 12:50 PM
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That would be a definitive way of getting a perfect 10, so perhaps I didn't express myself correctly. To have a dealer show me the invoice and add $500 seems like a good deal to me. I just don't wanna pay more than $500 over invoice for a new car. What I dislike is the BS I get from dealers when negotiating. We both know the first offer and their counter-offer is BS - I wish the dealer would just say $XX.XXX is the invoice, add $500 and let's sign the papers. Everybody can go home earlier and happier this way. Most dealers here in Toronto like to "negotiate" for 2-3 hours before a reasonable deal can be made. They leave for 10 minutes, come back, bring the sales manager over, and on and on like this for a couple of hours, while they could just agree on inv+$500 and save everybody a few hours of walking across the floor. I have no problem giving 10/10, but the experience for a 10/10 MUST be extraordinary. More often than not, I would rate it 7-8/10. It's just that 10/10 means perfection to me and perfection would be invoice, 9/10 would be invoice + $300-$500. I guess it's how you interpret the scoring criteria... Dinu |
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Ok: Here's the invoice: $15,000. Let's add $500 -- that'll be $15,500. May I have the check, please? Good. Here are the keys to your brand new Chevy Cavalier! What you're suggesting is simply silly. "Invoice" don't mean a thing unless you know which car we're talking about. An Odyssey at sticker was a great deal from 1998 to about a year ago. I agree that negotiations can be drawn-out and ludicrous... but I never talk much. Bring a few hundred of green for show-and-tell, write reasonable numbers on the buyer's order, say please and thank you a lot... that does it for me. -Mathias East Lansing |
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If the buyer's really *only* gonna pay invoice and the dealer's *really* only gonna sell at invoice +, then the CSI doesn't come into play - because no sale will occur. Even so, I get your point; and, to some degree, I agree. The expectation issue comes into play, though. Some Honda's have sub-invoice TMV's at this very moment, and I'm not sure that any Honda has a TMV = MSRP. Given the uncertainty about what a 'reasonable price' is and the natural desire to maximize profit, it's a wonder that any customer is 'satisfied' after a car buy, much less 'perfectly' satisfied. Add the BS factor of 'negotiation', is it any surprise that a 'perfect' CSI might not be forthcoming? To think that a customer is gonna rate a sale as perfect while thinking he has overpaid and after a drawn out negotiation is sorta unrealistic, IMO. I appreciate that all of these issues impact a saleguy's performance and livelyhood. The salesguy is a pro and has the home court, however. |
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10's or 5's on a survey do not mean your salesperson and your experiences were "perfect". Nobody is perfect. It just means you were 80% or more satisfied. I don't like this system but this is what we have. I just don't think the price of the car should have any effect. If a shopper doesn't like the price they shouldn't buy the car. I dislike long drawn out negotiating sessions either. I try to get to the bottom line as quickly as possible and I think my customers appreciate this, |
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In the recent past, Odysseys and the 2000S have had TMVs over MSRP. Then, there are those buyers who are never satisfied with the price or the sales process. The major fault here is the manufacturer's grading anything other than a top score on the survey as a "failing" grade. |
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A dealer here is showing '03 S2000's with a MSRP of $38K+, with no optional equipment. He's got four of 'em, all with MSRP shown >$38K. What's unusual about skewed grading systems? A 'meets expectations' on a performance review won't even net a COLA raise in most organizations, and a 'C' in grad school is viewed as very little if any better than an 'F'. |
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"10's or 5's on a survey do not mean your salesperson and your experiences were "perfect". Nobody is perfect. It just means you were 80% or more satisfied." If I was 80% happy with the purchase, I would rate it 8/10. Unfortunately this system penalizes the seller/dealer, even though the buyer was satisfied with the purchase. Dinu |
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That wouldn't happen. First b/c I will only buy a car that's fun to drive and second b/c I always look at Mazda, Honda and Nissan first - it's also about being on a budget, otherwise, make mine in red - an S4. Dinu |
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If these surveys really are nothing more than pass/fail mechanisms then I am irate. I am the customer and the dealership and manufacturer exist to serve MY needs. I should not have to worry about how my responses impact them. That's not my problem; those business issues should be transparent to me and other customers. My responsibility is to provide a fair and thoughtful analysis of the dealership's performance when filling out the survey. I cannot indicate "10"s or "completely satisfied"s if such grades are not warranted. If a 9 is a failure then change the format. How on earth could anyone expect me to put down "completely satisfied" for every single survey question? We aren't talking about "satisfied" or even "very satisfied". "Completely" indicates perfection or the close equivalent. It is wholly asinine to say that "completely" is a pass but "very" is a failure. I am in an engineering field so perhaps I have too much quantitative/mathematical baggage to handle. I think of grading in terms of bell curves. Top marks correlate to points several standard deviations above the mean and they are intrinsically quite rare. If I received a survey from a customer that had a response of "10" or "0" for every single question, I would throw it out...such data is garbage. When I fill out surveys I almost always avoid the extrememost points on the scale, unless my experience relating to that question was exceptional (in either direction). I do this because such a format encourages it. If the survey creator is not interested in various shades of performance they could save everyone a lot of trouble by making it pass/fail. The Subaru survey has a section for freeform comments and I will use it to indicate how I generated my grades. This will at least put my figures into context.
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me included, dislikes the present system of CSI ratings. However, the looming question is that if you can't give a perfect survey, what can the dealer do to make it "right", in order for you to feel you were treated very well? As a manager, I've always asked that of my customers - if you can't give us all 10s, please let me know - I want to fix whatever problem(s) there is/are in order to help you, and future customers. |
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