Report: Dealership Bans Customer For Bad CSI Score
CSI scores are an interesting subject for dealers. When the ratings are excellent, the review is welcomed, however, if the rating is bad, would someone from your store follow-up by banning that customer from your dealership?
A report from the consumerist alleges that when a customer provided a salesman at a Ford store with a negative CSI score, the salesman struck back. The report indicates that a customer had a poor experience purchasing a truck and felt that his poor review was accurate. The customer allegedly didn’t think that the salesperson was good with people. After submission of his review, the customer was still interested in working with the dealership where he left the negative review. The customer then alleged one year later he wanted to purchase another vehicle from the dealership and received the following response:
“Since that survey actually cost myself and the dealership money from Ford, I will have to personally pass on your offer. I’ll go brush up on my people skills and I hope you find what you’re looking for in the future.â€
Is this a real occurrence? Do dealers send out emails asking dissatisfied customers to stay away? Also coming from the Consumerist was the report of a customer who had a terrible experience at a Ford store and heard back from the general manager. That GM asked him to never come back. The alleged letter published by the consumerist read in part, “I am content that we are simply not capable of making you a satisfied customer and respectfully ask that you never return to my dealership as you are no longer welcome here.â€
Have you ever faced any challenges related to the current CSI scoring system? Is the CSI system broken? If you could replace the current CSI system with a new one, what recommendations would you make?
Related Articles
About the Author: DrivingSales News
The DrivingSales News team is dedicated to breaking the relevant and the tough stories affecting car dealers. Have questions for DrivingSales News? Reach the team at news@drivingsales.com.
Warning: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /home/pg4b1yzvrqqo/domains/test.drivingsalesnews.com/html/wp-includes/class-wp-comment-query.php on line 399
What unfortunately is not posted, is the lies the customer told the salesperson about a better price from another dealer that does not have a vehicle, or makes a deal and then at delivery reopens negation’s and hold the dealership hostage after they just spent money to trade the vehicle in for the customer. It is getting harder and harder to exceed customer’s expectations as we have to stop at some point. We personally wish all customer’s would change their mindset from this is going to suck buying a new vehicle and set a negative attitude from the start, to enjoying spending $30,000 dollars Plus! We want to have fun and be excited for you and provide you the best OWNERSHIP EXPERIENCE not just a Buying Experience possible! Its like dating and sometime when you start straying from the truth in order to get something it only ends in failure. Unfortunately. I am thankful the thousands of great clients that I have served, serving and to be served for understanding that we are a “FOR PROFIT ORGANIZATION” we just need to be fair so when they want to trade in that vehicle, you are in a great position to do so, which is the true sign you were treated well!!
We had a customer that’s credit was to put this as polically correct as possible, was inadequate for any major financial institution to approve a vehicle loan. Naturally, this potential customer was upset with her salesperson for not transporting vehciles between dealer for her. She could not purchase so he did not get a bad CSI score, even worse, she submitted a Google Review hurting him.
I sold a new Ford to a close friends son. A perfect survey was a essentially guaranteed. The survey was sent to the Mom who only signed as a guarantor on the loan. She never even saw the car or sales process. Soon she told me that she had just submitted a perfect survey. Unfortunately she wasn’t wearing her glasses and misread a slightly ambiguous question. Months of calls letters and consumer pressure couldn’t undo the damage. That one error cost me over $3,000. I learned from Ford corporate that dealers are forbidden from having CSI surveys as a “major component” of the pay plan. Two months earlier at our first meeting of the year, Mike Maroone (via CD) detailed how CSI would be a “major component” , his words , of the new pay plan. I informed HR of this. I’m still waiting for an answer. 10 years.
CSI IS A JOKE IN THE CAR INDUSTRY. TOO MANY PEOPLE HAVE BUYERS REMORSE,REALIZE THEY COULD HAVE SAVED 5 DOLLARS ELSEWHERE, CAME IN WITH Un REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS, FEEL THIER TRADE IS WORTH MORE BECAUSE THEYRE BURIED AND THE DEALERSHIP SHOULD PAY OT OFF ETC. NOW A SALESPERSON SPENDS AT LEAST 4 HOURS MAKING A DEAL. HE DID GREAT BUT FOR SOME REASON THE AC DOESNT WORK THE NEXT DAY OR THEY REALIZED THEY CANT MAKE THE PAYMENT. THE CUSTOMER BLAMES THE SALES PERSON. WHATS REALLY SAD IS WHEN THE CLOSER IS THE ONE THAT TREATED THE GUEST LIKE CRAP BECAUSE HE HAD TO GIVE THE CARE AWAY. THE SALESPERSON GETS THE CSI. VERY UNFAIR. THE CURE IS EASY. STOP CSI ITS DOES NOTHING EXCEPT ADD STRESS TO A STRESSFUL JOB
THE TRICK IS CREATE FAkE EMAIL ADDRESSES SO THE SURVEY COMES TO THE SALESPERSON. HE GIVES HIMSELF A GREAT SURVEY. I KnEW SOMEONE THAT HAD OVER 600 EMAILS AND KEPT TRACK OF THEM ALL. HE WENT FROM SALES TO DESK IN 2 YEARS. Got all the bones AND HE’LL BE A GM IN NO TIME. ALL BECAUSE OF SURVEYS.
GREAT SYSTEM…
Are used to sell cars in the auto industry and I had a couple of sales managers that wanted me to help them take care of any HEAT DEALS back in the day by false find the RDR records in other words the automotive manufacturers get false contact information on the new car buyers that are unhappy but the automotive manufacturers don’t know what kind of RDR records they’re really getting.
If an auto dealership is not satisfying the customer to the best of their ability why would a customer want to buy from them in the first place
The problem is they focus on commission and not the customer. Too many or too eager to focus on that next commission check. Google the following phrase Auto dealer does ( Auto dealer does CSI Diversion ) how many auto dealerships divert the CSI by falsifying the RDR records this can help prevent customers that buy new cars from ever getting safety recall notices. Name me a form of media that does stories about this
My how times have changed. In the old days, dealers “reviewed” consumer credit reports to judge their worthiness to buy a car from said dealer. Now consumers look to Yelp and other review sites to judge a dealerships worthiness to provided them with great service. Maybe the next stage will include a review site geared toward exposing the bitter, litigious customers that suck the air out of a room just to get their own way (right, wrong or indifferent). Least we forget we reserve the right to refuse service. If someone crashes cars and collects tickets, no one cries about the carrier cancelling the policy. Orwellian theory will become commonplace when all interactions and transactions are recorded to fend off law suits much like the roll out of police body cameras.
The CSI system is completely broken. Manufacturers punish dealers for gaming the survey or coaching the survey but then game the dealer with money driven incentives around obtaining or missing the benchmark number they pull out of the sky. Then to make the customer the victim they have scoring that is 1-10 and a 7 is shown to a customer as very good? The benchmarks are driven around being 95-97% great which if you are being honest as a dealer are not obtained through superior process they are being obtained by coaching the survey. I think independent surveys are worth much more like Google or dealer rater aa they have an exterior influence on your next customer where a manufacturer survey score is not customer facing. In the end it’s just another hoop we jump through to make JD power more valuable.
We do have a handful of customers who have been legitimately burned by poor service/mistakes on our end, but despite all efforts they return a few times a year for their maintenance and absolutely rip us up on the survey. I’m confident a free car would not sooth them… If you were curious, no, our manufacturer will not allow us to omit this customer.
Luckily we do an outstanding job with CSI so we can “drown out” the inevitable bad surveys. I can’t imagine banning a customer just because of the social media feedback you could generate… that would be much more costly than a bad survey.