Anything less than an 'A' is an 'F': The Stupidity of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

"AkursedX" (akursedx) 12/03/2015 at 09:06 • Filed to: None

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I have purchased a few new cars. I have also helped others in the process of buying new cars. There are many commonalities in the new-car-buying process no matter what brand you are buying.

As you are near the end of the pruchase process, one thing you will eventually hear from the salesperson is this:

“In a few days, you will be getting a survey from (Brand of Car) by (Mail/E-mail/Carrier-Pigeon/Naked Deliverygirl). If you don’t mark everything as a (10/excellent/phenomenal), it is considered a failing grade for me. If you can’t give us the highest grade possible in any category, please let me know before you send it in so I don’t get hung up from the dealer floor by my big toe. PLEASE!!!!” (Ok, I added that last part)

Over the years, this whole survey process and pity-party has bothered me more and more.

First off, buying a new car falls somewhere between a root-canal, and cleaning up the diarrhea that your dog had after eating an entire container of baby formula (Don’t ask) on the enjoyment-index. I consider it a victory that when I leave, I, or the person I helped simply feels like they were treated to a fair deal and like a decent human being. It’s a shame that the car-buying process is so adversarial and convoluted.

(From my most recent survey. Just remember, 1-9 are all unacceptable.)

Does that sound like an experience that is worthy of a ‘10’? No, it doesn’t. And I’m sure most people reading this would feel the same.

To me, a ‘10’ rating would have to be an insane amount of money off the sticker price, not having to sit through the ‘finance-guy’ process of trying to be sold VIN-etching, paint-protection, hippo-attack-insurance, etc…., and getting a nice massage through the whole car-buying process, hopefully with a happy ending.

(Photo courtesy of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which apparently does offer massages. I don’t know about the happy-ending though)

So, when the salesman once again reiterates to me how important this survey is to him, I just smile and lie through my teeth telling him that I’ll send it in with perfect scores.

In reality, I’m not going to do the survey. I’m not going to pick up the phone for the 50-phone calls that they make trying to get me to do it. I’m not going to click on the 30 links to a survey that I have been e-mailed, and I’m not going to mail back the 5 paper surveys that I have received in the mail either.

So automakers and dealerships. If your survey is that important to your business model, here’s a couple things that you can do:

-Pay me.

If you tell me you’ll mail me a $100 Visa Gift Card for doing your survey, I will gladly do it. For $100, I might even throw in a ‘10’ here or there. If the gift card is for $20, I’ll do my best I can to mail it back without taco-sauce from dinner spilled all over it.

-Stop having your salespeople guilt-tripping me.

When I bought my STi this past summer, it was actually one of the better experiences that I’ve had buying a car. My salesguy was nice, knowledgeable, and helpful. I went in with reasonable requests, and they were met with minimal negotiation. That said, the experience was still anxiety-inducing and I didn’t leave feeling like I got a bargain (but I had realistic expectations about that as well). Even still I would probably rate the overall experience a ‘7’ or ‘8’ and individual parts of the survey would have some variance around that general range.

But because of the insinuation that I received from the salesman that he would actually be penalized if he didn’t get a perfect score, I’m really left with two three choices:

Send back a perfect survey, which I see as diminishing to my integrity

Opt-Out

Send back a blank survey with comments (Thanks NYYankee1927). This is probably the most reasonable/diplomatic solution to the process. You can recognize all the things/people you want to recognize, and you can also address the areas you think need to be improved but they don’t have their number data to feed into the stat-machine.

Considering that I liked my salesman and I don’t want to get him in trouble, and there is no way in hell I’m compromising my integrity over a car-purchase, opting-out becomes the only option.

(The ‘Please give me 10’s or I’ll be fired look. Photo courtesy of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) ·

And this type of survey-model is nothing new and in-fact seems to becoming the new normal in many different businesses. I think that being able to say:

‘We have a 100-percent Customer-Satisfaction rate based on our feedback.’

is more valuable to a business than truthful surveys that might be able to point out individual areas where a business could make improvements to make their product/experience better. Plus, as I found in an article on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! these surveys are held over the sales staff’s head in regards to bonuses, promotions, and firings.

In car dealerships, it’s common to hear a salesperson ask — even beg — for a customer who has just bought a car to give him top marks in the customer satisfaction survey that will soon arrive. Here’s why: The salesperson’s pay, and potentially, the job itself, may very well depend on getting perfect 10s in this survey.

So anyways, this is just something else to think about when buying a new car. And if anyone is or was a salesman, do you actually get in trouble if a customer sends back a less-than-perfect survey? I would really like to know what happens to you when someone sends in an ‘honest’, but positive survey.

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:31

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So much this. I work for a dealer, not in sales, but I am still beholden to CSI results.

When all ‘corporate’ wants is a 10, then they no longer actually value your input. CSI scores should be an honest, accurate reflection of the process being reviewed. Not something just to pad the service provider’s profile on social media or the Googletubes.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:32

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I can’t stand that 10 or death. There’s no point in having the survey then, the Dealership doesn’t learn from it, the sales people don’t learn from it and it pisses off your customers. There’s zero benefit to these surveys.

On a rare occasion of amazing service in a restaurant I’ll call over the manager to tell them how awesome a server was. I got the same speech when they asked us to fill out the online survey to review our experience there. They actually earns all 10’s so we filled it out that way, but she also said if it wasn’t a perfect score it was a negative. Same BS. No point in Surveys if the answer is so polarized.

Twinpowermeansoneturbo > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:32

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“To me, a ‘10’ rating would have to be an insane amount of money off the sticker price, not having to sit through the ‘finance-guy’ process of trying to be sold VIN-etching, paint-protection, hippo-attack-insurance, etc…., and getting a nice massage through the whole car-buying process, hopefully with a happy ending.”

What does your discount off of MSRP have to do with your experience? You could be treated like crap and get a good discount, and I would not consider that a good customer experience. And no, you can’t avoid sitting with F+I. They are there to help you complete the purchase paperwork, set up financing, and show you options to protect yourself. Sorry it is such a huge inconvenience. Oh and yes, the surveys do really effect pay for many manufacturers.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:33

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The service advisor at our local subaru dealer told me that 20% of his pay is based on survey results. My car has been in twice for an oil leak, and they have not sent me a survey.

I’m not giving 10 to anyone unless like you said: They actually bribe me with something like cash or product or take my car back and give me a new 2016 Outback Limited 3.5R LLBean with NOS.

450X_FTW > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:36

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Throw in the TruCoat for free and we got us a deal!

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:38

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I think the surveys have helped make car dealerships better, though it is through a level of coersion that I’m not comfortable with. The difference between being a new car buyer and a used car buyer at a dealer is stark. I’d never buy a used car at a dealer again after my experience with it, but I’d rate my experience with the dealer that sold my my FoST as the best/easiest I have ever had. In fact, I’d rate it a solid 8+, with the main failures on the manufacturer’s end, not my dealer’s end.

The only thing I could have skipped was the F&I game playing and hard sell bullshit. If they gave me a decent no-haggle price and a nice clean list of what you get for the money, I’d probably have bought some of it just to roll all the maintenance stuff together for the usual life of my car. One of the reasons I bought new was that I tend to own cars for ~8-10 years at a time, so I felt like buying a severely overpriced compromise of a used car with questionable history (and high mileage for the discount!) was a worse deal than just buying exactly what I wanted, especially with the nearly nonexistent depreciation in anything even marginally desirable these days...

PotbellyJoe and 42 others > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:40

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I was a sales guy for Toyota who, despite his best efforts, flirted with the 90% mark for Customer Sat.

It was easy to do, you see Maritz Research uses a 5-point scale. So I didn’t even have the benefit of a “neutral” score of 9. My customers rated me a 4 out of 5 and that was a fail in Toyota’s eyes.

So what happens at the dealer’s end? If you know the customer is going to slam you, you bury the survey. Maybe give a bad email address, or set a mailing address incorrectly in the system so that survey never arrives. After leaving the dealership, my old apartment address has been used countless times to ensure a customer doesn’t get a survey.

Getting back to the sales team.

The sales team, knowing the difference between a 4 and a 5 could be thousands of dollars in spiffs from Toyota, bonuses from the dealer, and ultimately your personal success, do whatever they can to coach the survey to the customer. Even letting them know how unfair the system is. We had a Customer Relations Manager, who had 40% of her job calling 2-days after the purchase to ensure that Mr and Mrs. Customer were “Completely Satisfied.”

So here is the funny side of this all. I was attending a very good college at the time of my sales days, studying marketing research. Even my basic knowledge of the field told me Toyota and Martiz were misapplying the data from a poorly designed survey built on a flawed concept of “completely satisfied” customers who just had to negotiate a deal and may never be “completely satisfied” with anything in life. They’re happy with their purchase, but it rarely makes them feel like a better person.

And let’s be honest here, people would rather spend 4 hours in the dentist’s chair than 2 in a dealership. So “completely satisfied” is just garbage in general thanks to the process, regardless of how well this one purchase went.

If you asked me, secret shoppers would lend far more credibility to the situation, but J.D. Power and their “Initial Quality” awards won’t happen unless customers are “Completely Satisfied.”

So do we get in trouble for honest surveys? Yes. We did, and more than a few times in my 5 years, I lost money because of a 4 out of 5. Funny thing is, the comments section is meaningless. You could say that the salesman was caught pleasuring himself on your daughter’s teddy bear, and as long as you said “completely satisfied” it didn’t mean a thing. Conversely, you could write a rave review of the salesman, how it was your best time buying a car ever, give a 4 and that salesman would be in jeopardy, and that CRM would walk over to his desk and berate him for not coaching the survey, because here was a customer who was happy, but clearly didn’t know what to do on the survey.

Have I done everything to answer your questions in a reasonable and informative manner? Can I count on you saying that you were completely satisfied with my post? Please remember to ‘Star’ this comment after reading it as it is the only way Corporate will know that I have been helpful.

iSureWilll > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:43

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Imagine if this was the format for tests in school. Get 100% on this calculus exam or you FAIL THE ENTIRE CLASS and have to redo the whole year! UGH!

NYankee1927 > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:47

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I decided to not compromise my morals and make good use of the other comments section. I said how it was actually an excellent experience with the salesman. He was a great guy and we struck a deal very quickly. I said he actually deserves to be doing more than sales. Then I addressed why there were so many 5’s (for the reasons you stated above). I also pointed out this was largely due to the manager being a complete dick and the he should be knocked down a few rungs. I said he should be the one penalized for what was coming.

Unlucky for me, I had to go back in there 3 weeks later because someone stole just the mirror portion (no attachments). Only the dealer had this part. So I walked in there and what do you know, the sales guy was very nice and remembered me and the manager was still a dick. Some people don't learn from survey's.

AkursedX > PotbellyJoe and 42 others 12/03/2015 at 09:50

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Awesome contribution. Thanks.

I am the type of person who thinks that a ‘10’ is ‘Perfect’, meaning nothing can be better. This applies to every aspect of my life and there are almost always ways that things can be made better.

I think an ‘8’ or a ‘9’ is a excellent score and I would gladly deal with a salesman who was rated an honest ‘8’ or ‘9’. But considering how flawed I see the entire car-buying process, I would never be able to give a perfect score on a survey.

And this just doesn’t happen in the sales field. My wife who is an RN can go on and on about how much their survey scores affect them as well.

highwaytoheaven > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 09:51

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It isn’t just the car industry. When I was in retail banking, we also had to strive for perfect 5’s or “top boxes”. Anything less didn’t count. There are people who do not ever under any circumstance give a perfect score, because we as a culture have been trained that there is always room for improvement. The best is when a customer confuses which number is best and you end up with all 1’s.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 10:04

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Service advisors and management pay plans depend on CSI also. Usually it works like this: each survey is worth 1000 and you’re expected to maintain an average of at least 940 for service and [I think] 960 for sales. If those numbers aren’t hit then no CSI bonus is paid, which is pretty substantial. This is typically monitored on a monthly basis, average score at the end of every month, but I don’t believe they get a clean slate every month. If goals aren’t hit repeatedly somebody will be out of a job.

I could be wrong on some of this because it doesn’t directly affect me nor do I agree with this system but I play a large role in keeping scores up. I do agree with you though. It gets even worse when you think about individual questions that have absolutely nothing to do with the person who depends on those 10’s. Such as “Ease of entering the dealership and service drivel/parking”, or “Waiting area amenities”, or “Overall condition of facility”.

Also, most manufacturers only send surveys to service customers with cars less than 6 years old.

PotbellyJoe and 42 others > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 10:08

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Yep, it’s a nightmare.

The other one that fouls-up a lot of corporations is this fascination with the “Net-Promoter Score” or NPS. It’s a 10-point scale with 7 as neutral and the number of people 1-6 is subtracted from the 8-10 and you have your score. Supposedly a positive score means people will promote through word of mouth. The problem is the application. It doesn’t work for things like long-term, infrequent purchases and it certainly doesn’t mean a whole lot when it comes to situation-specific items, but companies (Johnson & Johnson for example) will base their brand management team’s bonuses on it. I have worked with a company that used NPS tactics for customer satisfaction on standardized tests, that are required by the state. What test taker is happy with a test and would tell their friends to go and take it as well?

Like I said, poorly designed surveys based on flawed concepts of customer behavior. Market research and customer loyalty research needs to be custom for each application. The problem then is you have nothing to compare against except previous responses.

E92M3 > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 10:10

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They’ve made the surveys uterly useless by coaching customers to give “all 5’s”.

I also refuse to fill one out. It’s pointless since it’s no longer a tool to measure REAL satisfaction.

Rainbow > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 10:12

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At the theater I worked at, we had a sign in the break room with the OSAT (overall satisfaction) scores from customer surveys. It always hovered around 65%.... which is actually pretty great, as that’s not an average rating, but the percentage of people who gave us the highest possible score.

And for some reason, their goal was to get that up to 85%.

hike > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 10:36

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I was not a salesperson, but I previously worked in a dealer sales department for almost a year.

Surveys are such bs and provide horrible feedback to actually fixing issues in the sales process (service is no different actually). The dealer gets a bonus for having a survey score over a certain number. The salesperson gets a bonus for getting a perfect survey (which we know only happened because the salesperson begged). This defeats the real purpose of the survey finding actually process issues. The industry just uses the survey as another chance to market how great they are.

Dealers recently go as far as rewarding salespeople for good online reviews, yet another thing the salespeople must ask from a customer. I'm so glad to be out of that environment. While being around the cars every day was awesome, the car sales environment is just not for me.

TheRealBicycleBuck > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 10:45

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Ah, Subaru. I went through this survey process when I bought my WRX. When they called to ask why I didn’t give them straight tens, I asked if this was the Mercedes dealership calling. If my experience buying the Subaru wasn’t the same as buying a luxury vehicle, then how can I possibly rate them the same? If your dealership is perfect, where is the room to grow and improve?

The real world doesn’t work this way and neither should their surveys. In the engineering world, we call this managing the client’s expectations.

The Powershift in Steve's '12 Ford Focus killed it's TCM (under warranty!) > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 10:54

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This is good Kinja. This needs to be on the front page.

AkursedX > highwaytoheaven 12/03/2015 at 11:04

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I know. I just can’t wrap my head around how anything useful is gleaned from these surveys if people are being coerced into perfect scores and salespeople fear for their jobs because they recieved a ‘5’ on a survey in a question regarding to the facility lighting.

AkursedX > AMGtech - now with more recalls! 12/03/2015 at 11:06

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Thank you for your input. I really enjoy hearing from people who have worked on the dealer end.

AkursedX > ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) 12/03/2015 at 11:08

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Thank-you. This is what it seems like to me. Like i put at the end of the article, it seems that being able to say ‘we are awesome’ based on our surveys brings in more people/sales than utilizing more honest survey scores to address individual deficiencies.

AkursedX > NYankee1927 12/03/2015 at 11:10

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I have done surveys where I left everything blank and then just filled out the comments section as well. In fact, I think I am going to dig out my Subaru survey and see if it has one (I’m sure it does) and fill it out and send it in that way.

AkursedX > TheRealBicycleBuck 12/03/2015 at 11:11

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Exactly.

AkursedX > The Powershift in Steve's '12 Ford Focus killed it's TCM (under warranty!) 12/03/2015 at 11:13

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Thank-you!

NYankee1927 > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 11:17

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That is actually a really good and diplomatic solution. Then people who dont deserve it, dont get their pay docked and management still gets to know there is a fundamental problem.

AkursedX > NYankee1927 12/03/2015 at 11:33

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I agree. When I get back on a normal computer, I will edit my article and add it. It should have been there in the first place.

NYankee1927 > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 12:15

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On that note, I think this is def front page quality material. Nice job on the writing and article.

atomicalex > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 12:47

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I hate the survey thing.

I want to send them surveys back and ask about me customer behaviour. They will only get another sale from me if they agree that i am a perfect customer.

I fully sympathize with the staff who are held to these numbers, however, I would prefer that some reality would seep in and anything over 75% would be considered pretty damn good. And anyone caught begging for tens would be fined.

That One Kid in HS > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 13:10

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Ironically this is similar to how the employee evaluations at my old job went.

You could never get a perfect score however. My first eval was a 113 (140 is amazing and anything over 110 was pretty much a B+) I was told of a few mistakes I made here and there, no biggie.

Next evaluation I get a 111. And I ask what I did wrong. She said absolutely nothing. You are doing a great job now. Dont change anything. My score went down, but I got more praise and a raise.

Point is, most evals are pointless. The reason we can’t get perfect is because then we have no room for growth, similar to a hard sports coach on his players.

These dealers are being kinda dumb byrequiring 10s.

Khalbali > AkursedX 12/03/2015 at 14:55

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I was never one of those salespeople that made a big deal about the surveys, even though we were supposed to. I never called anybody or anything, and if I thought you’d give me a bad one, you just wouldn’t get one. I never really saw anybody get in trouble per se, but you did have a +-10% swing on your commissions for the month based on your average. And unfortunately, this system is so widespread that the district average were measured against is like 92% so less than a 10 really is “failing”

Slave2anMG > Rainbow 12/03/2015 at 15:43

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Because arbitrary goals are the best goals.

SOCdriver > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 12/14/2015 at 11:53

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I purchased a used Nissan Rouge “Select” that was CPO at a local dealer. The dealer gets money for a successful CPO program so I was given the good treatment when it came to the buying process. At the very end the sales manager came on over and said “Remember how great we were with you when the survey call comes.” “Of course Mr. Manager, it would be easier if I got some free GT-R and NISMO swag, like say a hat and keychain.” Guess who got some GT-R swag? Guess who got all 10’s on that CPO survey? My mother in law loves that Rouge as well.

Arrivederci > AkursedX 12/14/2015 at 13:19

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Subaru dealer told me the same when I bought my BRZ. I made it easy for them and they made it easy for me. Do they still deserve 10’s? No friggin’ way. I filled it out, but never told them I was giving all 10’s and answered honestly. I even added the fact they asked for 10’s in the comments. Telling them that the 7-9’s they received were not bad reviews and that I was pleased with the overall purchase.

Ben > AkursedX 12/14/2015 at 14:50

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I actually had an argument with my general manager over this. Being somewhat new in the business, I was still thinking through or doubting some of the processes being done. My fellow sales man thought I was on my way out that day, leaving with a bang.

My reasoning was that we’re skewing the stats and playing around with the numbers, we don’t learn or gain anything from telling the customers what to put on the survey. His reply was he doesn’t care, he’s had the top sales fired for not getting enough surveys.

So bottom line is, we do get assessed by the number of surveys and there is usually a small bonus of $25 for getting a completely satisfied survey.

Iguessillcomment > AkursedX 12/14/2015 at 14:51

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I go there! Just for the service.... not the massages... I swear!

They also have a barber shop. I scheduled my appointment yesterday.

Elhigh > AkursedX 12/14/2015 at 15:13

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Either you want honest answers or you want me to lie. Choose.

SilverBRADo totaled his beigeslushboxmatrix > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 12/15/2015 at 08:50

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Yeah... I bought a used Matrix at the local BMW dealership. The guys at the used lot were nice as fuck, but the F&I guy up at the big house was a douche.

gravit8 > AkursedX 12/16/2015 at 13:09

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So I’ve worked ... in just about every customer-facing support position you might imagine, from retail to phone-based tech to actual, IRL DSL support for AT&T customers at their home. I’ve done technical design work where the customer was a business, and my interactions were their engineers, etc.

And the CSS, or customer satisfaction survey, has to be the biggest, most blatant piece of lying propaganda a company can push. In almost all of my positions, if a customer returned anything but perfect 10’s across the board, it was time for some training, or some other bullshit meant to improve my blahblahwhatthefuckeverIneverlistenedblahblahblah. I’ve lost jobs because - even despite my overall metrics and sales in an ostensibly tech support role - I didn’t average 7.77% on CSS scores in a given month. Think about that for a second - I’ll come back to how that works in the real world shortly.

All one needs to do is check any given Yelp business page. In most markets not Portland/SanFrancisco, people only negative, 1-star reviews for places. Their single review pertains to the crappy experience they think they received at the business. They give zero credit to anything that was correct, blasting everything about a business because they weren’t happy about some tiny detail. Now, take this attitude and apply it to customer-facing positions, when the customer also knows they’ve got the power to give you a bad score.

Yeah, people suck, and they use that power to manipulate you and generally make customer service positions a living nightmare. I hate people for this single reason - everyone thinks they’ve got some special power over you, when in fact you absolutely cannot waive their $200 in late fees, etc. But of course the customer is always right. Right?

Well, the companies are screwing over their employees, because they ignore this reality and insist that the employee has ALL the control over the interaction and what happens with their CSS score (despite every indication to the contrary in a majority of those interactions). So if the customer calls in bitching b/c their website is down (worked at Godaddy for a spell), you can’t stick to your guns, and company policy, and tell them it’s down because they neglected to pay their bill, lest they turn around and get attitude about being a lazy motherfucker. No, you have to tred lightly, and pray that they don’t get all pissed about the late fees.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN LATE FEES, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TURN THE WEBSITE BACK ON!!”

And this is where it all goes to shit. Your supervisor just reamed you the other day about your sales metrics (gotta make them dollars) and the company has just changed the late-fee policy so you know it’s not going to get waived. The customer is pissed, pays the money because it’s their biz website, and gives you straight zeros across the board even though you were as sweet a molasses and walked them through every goddamn thing to get their account back in order.

So, you’ve got a 0.0% CSS. Now you’ve got to get 5 perfect ten CSS scores to make it about the 7.77% required to keep your job to make up for that one crappy customer/call. Anything less than perfect 10’s means you’ve got to get more high-scoring reviews to make the cut. You handle 40+ calls in a night, and you tell all of them about the surveys, and even the ones who tell you how much they love you - after you’ve practically built their businesses’ web presence in less than hour - NEVER COMPLETE THE DAMN SURVEYS. ONLY PISSED CUSTOMERS RETURN THEM CONSISTENTLY.

In conclusion, fuck customer surveys, and companies that use them against their employees. It’s bogus most of the time, and there are far better means of ensuring great customer service - like not directly linking customer satisfaction with the continuation of employment over every other factor.

AkursedX > gravit8 12/16/2015 at 14:09

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Excellent contribution! Thank you!

StuntmanDan > AkursedX 12/16/2015 at 15:48

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At a dealership I used to work at we had a customer fill out a survey with every question given the minimum score because the shuttle driver was rude to him. It ended up costing the service advisor over $1000 in bonus money. The whole process is a farce and doesn’t help anything at all.