DealersEdge Professional Forums

Whom has the BEST Plan for getting the Factory Surveys returned by their customer's? We are a FLM-Mazda-Toyota-Kia-Mitsu-Hyundia Dealer Group and can't seem to get our Surveys return rate up! HELP!

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Service Sales Manager

Are you making follow up calls to your customers? That's a good time to tell them about the survey and ask them to participate. All too often, customers don't realize the importance of the survey to those involved.

Linda

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Linda Graham Hansen
Auto Dealer Focus
www.autodealerfocus.com

And to add to what Linda said..It's also a great time to let the customer know how important the survey is to them. We explain to the customer that by filling out and returning the suvey it allows you to better serve them should a non warranty issue arise. We also explain at that time that anything less than "completely" is an "F". Works for us!!!

I am the SM at a stand-along Mazda store. My response rate is double the average in our district. I find that faxing in and/or calling in the customer info. the to Mazda CAC helps in generating more surveys, thereby increasing the rate of returns. Mazda's filters are set so tight that unless the name and address match EXACTLY the survey will get filtered out.

I think FLM has a way of updating customer info. online. The more surverys you can get out there, the better your chances are of getting more in.

As a former District Manager for one of the "big three", I always found how ridiculous CSI Surveys were. If they really were the foundation for positive change, that would be great. What it has turned into is begging for a great survey. He who begs best wins.

I once worked for a dealer that offered a free oil change if you brought the survey in and let the dealer mail it. Of course they were opened and the bad ones hit the trash can.

I have seen several scheme's to raise CSI and get them returned. The scheme's work for a month or two then fall apart because something didn't go right or business picked up so on and so forth. The best plan I have helped work with that has consistantly worked to get a high CSI is to treat every customer right. This starts with the moment they step in the door until they take their car after the work has been completed. Treat customers like they are the reason you are there and stress the importance of the survey with every warranty customer is a start in the right direction. Make sure your employees are doing what they say they are going to do and if something can't be met CALL THE CUSTOMER IMMEDIATELY to inform them of the hold up before they show up. The other ideas above help to stress the importance of the survey to you but I wouldn't worry about getting more survey's back if the customers don't feel like they are #1. By the way our return rate for service is usually around 30%.

I don't think there is such a magic formula for survey response, specially the positive responses.
You will DEFINITELY get the response from the people who have something negative to say. For the positive responses, customers usually don't return the surveys. Even when you follow up and request that they mail it in.
Letting customers know How important the survey is for dealers means that the survey is used to blackmail the dealership in order to get the things that are not covered under warranty and that customers don't want to pay for.
It is my personal experience that what works best is for service advisors who develop a relationship with customers get the best response for the dealership.

Reply: From SSM:

Thanks to Everyone that replied! But I have been doing all of the basics! We have a Call system that the Advisor makes the first call and the Call Center makes the 2nd and 3rd call! We walk and talk the survey and make it a personal survey for the Advisor. The survey is the personal report card of the Advisor. We do a lot of begging. To go along with that statement we polled our customers over a 30 day period and 97% of the customer base was happy with our process and service supplied. We do a lot of training on Relationship Building and we offer a lot of FREE services at the time of write up and inspection that no one in our area is doing but we can't get our survey count up! The Factory Surveys are running about 3-6% return. The other fact is we have a very loyal customer base in the high 70th percent in a Domestic Store. Lat month rate was 79% loyalty base. HELP!!!

[This message has been edited by SSM (edited 09-30-2008).]

Wouldn't it be great if we could assume un-returned surveys assumed COMPLETELY SATISFIED, and only the returned ones were calculated as a percentage of total RO's for that time period?