Car sales surveys unfair?
Discussion
SteveSteveson said:
The problem is the s
tty scoring system and the inability of some managers to get that not everything will be perfect for everyone. It's not helped by the large number of people who give 0 or full marks for everything. It's a running point of annoyence within many customer service and sales groups. You get a kicking if any customer gives less than 100% satisfaction. You just need to go and look at a few of the 1 star reviews on Tripadvisor to realise some people are just mental. "Everything was perfect for the two weeks I was there, appart from it rained a 4am on the first wednesday and my rain coat I had left out on the balcony got wet. Therefore the whole thing time was ruined. 1*"
You get a similar thing with reviews on Autotrader. "I bought this 1.0 Corsa as a runabout for the missus. It's ok, but seats aren't as comfortable as the S Class I used to drive, and it feels a bit sluggish compared to the M5's and 911's I'm used to..." tty scoring system and the inability of some managers to get that not everything will be perfect for everyone. It's not helped by the large number of people who give 0 or full marks for everything. It's a running point of annoyence within many customer service and sales groups. You get a kicking if any customer gives less than 100% satisfaction. You just need to go and look at a few of the 1 star reviews on Tripadvisor to realise some people are just mental. "Everything was perfect for the two weeks I was there, appart from it rained a 4am on the first wednesday and my rain coat I had left out on the balcony got wet. Therefore the whole thing time was ruined. 1*"
CaptainCosworth said:
Bought a new car a few weeks back, we got on really well with the salesman (we bought the OH's car from him last year), and were happy with the service and deal we got. He gave us a heads up that we'd get a survey in the next few days, and was open and honest to say it would reflect on both him (not mentioned but implied bonus) and the dealership, and could we please give maximum ratings.
I think it makes surveys a bit pointless. I had the same from MB dealer. He mentioned a couple of time to remember to say that they showed me how everything works in a car, etc. I didn't want presentation, because I had the same car model before, so it would be a waste of time, but apparently they have to do this for every customer. No one called me or sent a link, so no problem. KTF said:
If I was buying a car and it needed a service in 4-6 months time I would hold off until it actually needed a service rather than pulling the interval in by 4-6 months and messing up the service interval dates.
Maybe thats just me though?
When I got my mini its first mot was due November, the dealer mot'd it prior to collection in August. 3 months earlier than it should have been. It still messes with my ocd 3 years later.Maybe thats just me though?
When I had a BMW eveytime you went for a service or any other work they went to great lengths to tell you that if you got a phonecall asking about the service they'd be in trouble if you didn't give them full marks and to speak to them first if you felt unable to do so.
Makes the whole process ridiculous as they'll not get any constructive criticism and wonder why everyone slags dealers off yet their surveys are coming in with a 99.9% satisfied score.
I did mark Nissan down on my last service survey for taking away the service reception desk meaning you had to stand about like a plum until catching someone's eye.
Makes the whole process ridiculous as they'll not get any constructive criticism and wonder why everyone slags dealers off yet their surveys are coming in with a 99.9% satisfied score.
I did mark Nissan down on my last service survey for taking away the service reception desk meaning you had to stand about like a plum until catching someone's eye.
CaptainCosworth said:
If there was anything else he could do then feel free to call, or if there was any reason why we wouldn't want to give maximum ratings then please let him know.
I've tried to do this twice fairly recently - once with a new car sales issue and once with a service issue - and neither time could I get hold of anyone and of course they never called back. The service issue involved Mercedes and even MB UK couldn't get hold of the dealer service manager (sorry, After Sales Director). So the survey can't be that important.
X5TUU said:
Mega mega unprofessional of her. I wouldn't think twice about forgetting about it all and moving on - plus how dare she ring you and question your personal opinion ... Did I mention how shockingly unprofessional she is?!?
I'd even actually consider writing a complaint about such practices to the DP
There's a story in the Merc forums where a DP rang a customer and asked why he shouldn't fire the salesman as the customer had just given them their worst feedback score ever!I'd even actually consider writing a complaint about such practices to the DP
There was no problem - the guy just had an average experience. So he marked all the scores as average!
These surveys achieve nothing. When my Jaguar was serviced I got emailed one so filled it in and sent it off. Next time I visited the dealership the service people were quite upset and said they'd been given a real dressing down because I'd given them a zero out of ten on one of the questions.
They asked why so I explained: the question asked how likely I was to recommend their dealership to friends and family for servicing, so I said that I wouldn't ever. You could also qualify your answer by writing your reasons in a box, which I did: all my family drove SEATs and my brother-in-law was DP of the local SEAT franchise so they always took their SEATs to SEAT for servicing at a discounted rate because they were family.
Apparently though the comments were ignored and only the score was looked at they said. So what's the f***ing point of a comment box I asked, before deciding never to complete an online survey for them again, or to bother rating them when presented with a tick box sheet on collecting my keys.
They asked why so I explained: the question asked how likely I was to recommend their dealership to friends and family for servicing, so I said that I wouldn't ever. You could also qualify your answer by writing your reasons in a box, which I did: all my family drove SEATs and my brother-in-law was DP of the local SEAT franchise so they always took their SEATs to SEAT for servicing at a discounted rate because they were family.
Apparently though the comments were ignored and only the score was looked at they said. So what's the f***ing point of a comment box I asked, before deciding never to complete an online survey for them again, or to bother rating them when presented with a tick box sheet on collecting my keys.
It's an unfortunate aspect of modern management techniques. Apparently, the old-fashioned targets of salespeople selling cars aren't good enough, their customers have to rate them 5/5 for the experience as well.
It's seems like the main function of the survey is to determine employees bonus entitlement, rather than actually identify any areas of concern that need to be addressed.
Of course, nobody wants to lose their bonus, so it gets fudged, one way or another. It's all a bit pointless really.
It's seems like the main function of the survey is to determine employees bonus entitlement, rather than actually identify any areas of concern that need to be addressed.
Of course, nobody wants to lose their bonus, so it gets fudged, one way or another. It's all a bit pointless really.
IanCress said:
Well actually, I agreed to bump it up to 5 stars but explain in the comments that the website appears to be deliberately misleading.
I make you right if she done her job well then I'd bump the rating but I'd also be giving someone a call, I mat be being sceptical here but it's a nice way for the dealership to hold back bonuses from their staff via a misleading survey I wonder how many times that's happened & the salesperson has lost out through no fault of their own.I work in a job where some of my bonus depends on customer satisfaction ratings for the work we do, and we do sometimes get completely unfair feedback where the customer is just generally pissed at something other than the service they got from us. I would never dream of calling a customer to ask them to amend the feedback, it would be grossly unprofessional.
I wonder if her boss' bonus is also dependent on the performance of the team so she's probably going to be on the end of a bking if her scores are below perfect. Schemes like this, properly implemented and supported, are good at driving the behavior that you want from an individual. All too often though they get completely derailed by retarded management. My manager has the authority to look at the feedback on a case by case basis and discard situations where the customer is just generally unhappy with the product, for example, but if I've fallen short then I rightly take the hit.
I wonder if her boss' bonus is also dependent on the performance of the team so she's probably going to be on the end of a b
king if her scores are below perfect. Schemes like this, properly implemented and supported, are good at driving the behavior that you want from an individual. All too often though they get completely derailed by retarded management. My manager has the authority to look at the feedback on a case by case basis and discard situations where the customer is just generally unhappy with the product, for example, but if I've fallen short then I rightly take the hit.One of my friends used to work at Audi, the satisfaction survey determined his commission on that individual sale, it struck me as a little pointless, see below.
Fairly satisfied? Commission cut by 50%.
Very satisfied? Commission paid at standard rate.
Extremely Satisfied? Commission increased 50%.
He's a good salesman and always went the extra so what annoyed him was that many customers would put either fairly satisfied or very satisfied on the survey thinking they were giving a good review, but in reality he was having his pay cut for no reason.
Regarding the 0-10 rating system, it's all based on the Net Promotor Score (NPS) system which is pretty standard across many businesses, and is a measure of how likely the customer is to promote the business to others, which obviously increases sales.
(Apparently) People who put 0-6 ("Detractors") would actively badmouth the company to their friends and family, obviously bad news for the company and thats why management jump on it.
7-8 score is a neutral score, these customers don't have an strong opinion either way won't go out of their way to detract or promote the business. Again 7-8 is an amber warning for management so the more proactive companies will also be unhappy with this.
9-10 are the promotors as you can probably guess, these people are the ones who promote your brand, customer service and product. Good news for sales in the future.
BUT
Unfortunately in real life it's all bks, NPS doesn't work in practice as for whatever reason people don't give 9's and 10's out of habit, even if they were very well looked after they will never give you the 100%.
As mentioned earlier you repeatadly find that customers often score 0/10 for the "Would you recommend" questions, upon reading the comments you'll see explanations like
"No, because I don't habitually recommend McDonalds to my family and friends" or
"0/10, because I'd hate someone else to have a bad experience after going there based on my recommendation"
There's a massive industry growing around customer surveys, technology which emails (annoys) Papa John's pizza customers 10 minutes after they order asking for their opinion, is unfortunately here to stay.
Fairly satisfied? Commission cut by 50%.
Very satisfied? Commission paid at standard rate.
Extremely Satisfied? Commission increased 50%.
He's a good salesman and always went the extra so what annoyed him was that many customers would put either fairly satisfied or very satisfied on the survey thinking they were giving a good review, but in reality he was having his pay cut for no reason.
Regarding the 0-10 rating system, it's all based on the Net Promotor Score (NPS) system which is pretty standard across many businesses, and is a measure of how likely the customer is to promote the business to others, which obviously increases sales.
(Apparently) People who put 0-6 ("Detractors") would actively badmouth the company to their friends and family, obviously bad news for the company and thats why management jump on it.
7-8 score is a neutral score, these customers don't have an strong opinion either way won't go out of their way to detract or promote the business. Again 7-8 is an amber warning for management so the more proactive companies will also be unhappy with this.
9-10 are the promotors as you can probably guess, these people are the ones who promote your brand, customer service and product. Good news for sales in the future.
BUT
Unfortunately in real life it's all b
ks, NPS doesn't work in practice as for whatever reason people don't give 9's and 10's out of habit, even if they were very well looked after they will never give you the 100%.As mentioned earlier you repeatadly find that customers often score 0/10 for the "Would you recommend" questions, upon reading the comments you'll see explanations like
"No, because I don't habitually recommend McDonalds to my family and friends" or
"0/10, because I'd hate someone else to have a bad experience after going there based on my recommendation"
There's a massive industry growing around customer surveys, technology which emails (annoys) Papa John's pizza customers 10 minutes after they order asking for their opinion, is unfortunately here to stay.
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