Dealer evaluations

jhs70

Can somebody please explain to me what appears to be dealer obsession with how you rate their service? My wife recently took our Envoy in for servicing and when it was all finished, the service tech went way beyond the normal to explain just how my wife should complete the rating of the service (their evaluation). He explained that GMC will not pay them for the service if everything isn't rated excellent (or whatever the highest rating is). He guided her through each and every point and told her to rate them excellent. He was careful to say that she should rate the service, and not her dissatisfaction with the fact that the car had the problem in the first place. This was amazing since the problems that we encountered SHOULD HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED DURING DEALER PREP. This "evaluation badgering" was so bad that my wife complained to the service tech that he was far more interested in the evaluation than whether she was satisfied with the repair, or even if the repairs were adequate (which they've turned out not to be). Not only do we still have the problems, but, independently, the dealer called us back to make sure we rated everything excellent. My wife took the call. She blistered them.
What's going on here? Our car still isn't fixed. By the way, our problems are a 4WD that doesn't want to shift into 4WD and a persistent chirping coming from the left front end.
Can anyone shed some light on any of this?
THANKS.

zueslewis

"He explained that GMC will not pay them for the service if everything isn't rated excellent (or whatever the highest rating is)."

CSI ratings ARE important, and many times, if someone is pissed about problems with their vehicle, they slam the advisor on the survey - happens all the time. The advisors, in many cases, get paid based on their CSI ratings - I got bonuses as an advisor if my CSI remained above certain levels.

I'm not excusing the obsessive behavior, I just know what it feels like to get burned on CSI over something the advisor has no control over (whether something breaks on your vehicle).

dshepherd3

Well said Zueslewis, I was a GM service Mgr. for 20 years, and found the entire csi rating process , torture for all concerned, more emphasis was put on this process than actually repairing the vehicle, and of course this passed down to all in the dealership function. I did my best not to connect my employees pay plan to the csi, of course if a writers ratings were really in the tank, I would look into it, but their attitude reflected how much they were getting "beat up" because of the shop's inability to fix cars, this was my problem to resolve!

Mr_Shiftright

A classic case of "quality management systems" taking precedence over common sense.

zueslewis

funny thing, sort of related.

When I was a Chevrolet service advisor ('97-98), my service manager got tired of hearing people from Northern California (no offense, they were just different than the Oregonians) screaming at the service advisors. Our department, 47 strong, wasn't perfect, but danged good. I had a "go to" guy for every area I needed and got things done with miraculous efficiency.

My boss offered a "gimme" to the first person who came in with a problem and was truly nice about it it. He covered whatever "customer pay" work they had done - period. One lady had an a/c problem (covered under warranty), but also needed front brakes ($300). She understood at 30,000 miles how this could happen and agreed. At the end of the day, it felt really good to tell her "no charge".

armtdm

When I see these great manufacturer ratings that dealers display about their sales or service dept (we have the Chrysler 4 star rating for service) or some regional gold award etc) I consider them all worthless due exactly to the problem cited. I am convinced the only third party surveys received in the mail are for good service, the dealer does hand over the poor sales or service addresses to the survey company.

Yes, their is pressure to fill out the form the way they want it and the follow up call is more pressure. The poster above was correct to blast that person for poor service.

And, the ratings are even more meaningless when the service manager turns over every 6 months, the mechanics every two months etc.

swschrad

it's another way for detroilet to sqeeze dealers, I suppose. mine is quite seriously paranoid about calling every single customer and getting a rating of their own. if one in 200 actually gets the corporate survey from Ford, and two users slam the service department, that probably works out to two days' complete service roster marked up as incompetent, bumbling, dangerous and haphazard drooling fools mishandling Ford's customers. the dealers hear about it real quick, and sooner or later, everything affects their zone score, ability to get special models, all that stuff.

so my dealer has one or two staffers that mainly spend all day calling every customer and asking The Three Questions (was everything completed, done on time, are you completely satisfied.) they want to take that back and say, here's what we got on every single customer bar three who didn't get back... five were not happy and the general manager has been able to talk to four, we brought one car back in, you know the score how the rest of this goes.

there are all kinds of little games that go on under the surface, most I strongly believe were concocted to allow more junior assistant vice neutrons to hire their golfing buddies, and that's just the nature of management.

I will say I have been treated well, and a good part of that is not ranting like North Korea when I come in with a low tire or a spot on my fresh wash job. there ARE customers like that, and they are everybody's headache.

Mr_Shiftright

I think there should be customer evaluations that get passed from dealer to dealer. Fair's fair.

I wish people could understand how far patience and courtesy will get them in a dealership. Old Chinese proverb: "He who controls his anger one day avoids many days of suffering".

This does NOT mean becomeing a weenie.

zueslewis

swschrad

and it's not that hard to do. like the saturn ad in which the luser keeps pulling in and saying, "I hear a noise," when he's after the donuts in the waiting room... and his car report eventually adds, "prefers jelly donuts." the car makers' service systems have been linked for quite some time so that every dealer service performed on the car stays within the system, and all have instant access to this by VIN.

as one practical example, for years and years certain of our national backbone utilities' ticket software used by multiple companies has had a screen field labelled "IR". if the entry in that field is "Y", you have an IRate customer on the other end of this account. this can be used in a number of interesting ways, including determining service priorities.