Soleil EV Weekly Gazette

CSI And Google Reviews: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The automobile manufacturer-dealer relationship is a curious one, and they do an interesting dance with one another to each look after their interests. The dealer needs a competitive product to sell and the manufacturer wants their brand well represented. The manufacturers try to measure everything that can be measured and then develop a long list of targets that they want the dealers to hit. For the ones that are judged most important, the manufacturers make them ‘margin dependent’, which means that money is withheld unless the target is met. This can be substantial, and often will equal the entire profit opportunity for the dealership. The message is pretty clear: ‘do it our way and you will make a profit, otherwise you’ll make nothing’.

This practice, in my opinion, is heavy-handed, and the pressure that filters its way down to the dealership staff sours many customer experiences - the very thing that the manufacturers are trying to improve. Let's take the customer CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) surveys as an example. The manufacturers write the survey that touches on the ordering and delivery process, presentation of the vehicle, time in the shop, facility etc., and then set a minimum threshold for an average score that the dealer has to meet in order to receive their margin. This is usually filtered down to the Sales and Service Manager and their staff as part of their commission structure. Fair enough, but the target can be something like 90% or more. 

In a perfect world - or manufacturer HQ - this may seem reasonable. But in a world of supply chain logistical challenges, regulatory issues, quality or design problems, and any number of other factors extraneous to the dealer, selling or servicing a vehicle and having everything go 100% the way you want it to is extremely difficult. 

Not that dealership staff don’t have the majority of the responsibility (they do), but the 90% target becomes impossible if things go wrong that are beyond the staffs' control. Service writers have it particularly bad as they didn't build the car, aren't the ones who fixed it, and have limited control over whether the right parts are on hand - yet they are supposed to make sure the customer is 100% satisfied.

The survey starts to devolve into a farce. Instead of asking for customer feedback with which the company can use to improve their processes, it becomes an exercise in coercing the customer to give you a perfect score. There’s the beg: “If I don’t get a 10/10 my manager will get mad at me”. Or the bribe; “Give me a perfect score and I’ll give you a free service”. The negotiation; “I’ll give you that price if you give me 10/10”. If you’re lucky, you get the marginally less annoying; “The manufacturer considers anything less than a 10/10 a fail, so if there is any reason why you wouldn’t give me a perfect score let me know and I will try to fix it”. That’s fine, but if the whole process was a big mess, there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it after the fact. 

The pressure is so great that you might get multiple calls priming you for the survey, in the hope of averting a bad score. If everything goes really badly you might not even get a survey at all, which means the worst ‘fails’ go unreported. 

The results of each dealer in a region are then tabulated and compared against other regions and markets. I was in a meeting in Toronto which compared the Canadian CSI results with those in other countries - the Canadian CEO anxious that his territory performed well against those of his peers. The country at the top of the list with the best worldwide CSI? The Russians of course. I’d be interested to what their ‘best practices’ are...

If I am going to take the time to fill out a survey, I’d like my efforts to be meaningful. As a customer, I feel valued if somebody listens to my opinion and considers it. Few things in life are perfect. There is always room for improvement. Getting multiple requests to give somebody a 10/10 is just plain irritating. Surveying the customers is a good idea, but the execution of this idea in the automotive industry misses the opportunity to receive meaningful feedback.

Google Reviews

Manufacturer CSI results are not generally shared publicly, though many in the industry see them as priming customers for the JD Power Surveys which are. Google reviews are gaining importance in rating automotive dealers, and just about everything else. These are now being looked at by vehicle manufacturers as an important metric for dealer performance. The only problem with that, is they can be easily faked. 

I used to get emails from marketing companies, “Drive Down Bad Reviews!”, “Let Our Team Of Marketing Professionals Give Your Dealership The Reviews You Deserve!” So if you get a string of bad reviews, you call up this company and they get a bunch of their writers to open a bunch of Google accounts and fabricate Five Star reviews for you. The bad reviews get ‘pushed down’ the list and only the positive ones show up on the first page. They also claim to be able to get rid of bad reviews for you, though I have no idea how they go about doing this. 

You can usually pick the fake reviews out fairly easily as they will be over-the-top complimentary, mention everybody by name, and the ‘customer’ writing the review will only have one or a few postings. The other things the ‘customer’ has reviewed are also illustrative. Watch for the dealer reviews all being the same length and format as if they were written by template. If it reads like a paid advertisement it probably is.

If a dealer is desperate enough to fake their own reviews then I think they need to make some management changes. When evaluating a dealer, I go straight to the one-star reviews. Some people are just mean or unreasonable, but most will describe a problem that wasn’t handled very well. For these, I look to the dealer response. The best dealers don’t have too many of these, but when they get one, they will say they are sorry, admit the problem, and then try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. 

Customers don’t want to be pressured, either to buy a car or to be told what to score a survey. Staff don’t want to see their compensation based on metrics they don’t fully have control over. Dealership owners should value meaningful feedback from customers without fear of decreased margins. The practice of ‘coaching’ customers to fill in surveys should end. 

Common sense will usually prevail- but sometimes it takes a while. In the meantime, if you want to give a dealer meaningful feedback, but don’t want to punish them, the comments section is widely read, but not scored. 

Sorry, I'm not buying this...