Manufacturer survey about dealer

Wow, I didn't know about these surveys.

I just had work done on my Honda and the service guy was a dick. I gave him average on the survey not knowing he would get dinged. The service manager even called my house

I didn't know all this info. I will try harder next time. The Honda guy was a total dick though.

pete240z wrote: The Honda guy was a total dick though.

Total Dick sounds like perfect or even exceptional Dick levels. 10s for him all around!

I'm curious how many of you survey sufferers have a process to dispute a bad grade. My employer doesn't. The only bad survey I've ever been able to expunge was one that was actually a job done by someone else that somehow got attributed to my name (I don't even know how that's possible in our system, but...). Management had some red faces on that one. They are required to call the customer for an explanation on any 'bad' returns, but even if the customer explains they were confused and thought "1" meant "10" (it's happened) they still won't change the results.

Some mfgs. have appeal processes, for instance Toyota. But as a general rule the others do not. Once a bad score hits you are stuck with it. ddavidv, I know of one instance where a S/A changed the S/A number on an RO to purposely deflect what he knew was going to be a crappy survey. Yes he got caught and lost his job. I know that for a fact because I am the guy who fired him.

Full disclosure: I no longer work for the local Toyota dealer. There were two instances involving bad surveys which led to my leaving. (By the way, Toyota surveys EVERY customer, most mfgs have a random type thing where you don't know for sure who will get a survey. The warranty and customer pay surveys are handled separately. The manufacturer does the warranty survey bonuses, the customer pay are handled by the dealership itself.)

One was a guy who was back in for the second visit for a pull/vibration concern. In the business, this is called a comeback and always takes top priority. I did my part 100% correct, pulled the tech from what he was doing, notified the service advisor handling that repair that a comeback was involved and had the tech test drive the customer's car. When he got back, the next thing I know he is working on someone's truck. Why? The service manager pulled him off of my comeback to do whatever this was. Problem was, my customer saw the whole thing through the big picture window into the shop and I got clobbered on the survey even though I explained what happened. (Shoot the messenger, anyone?)

Then I got a survey on a vehicle which involved some tires which were not ordered properly meaning the customer brought her truck in, waited an hour and a half only to find the tires were not the right size so the originals were reinstalled so she could go home. Now this is the kind of thing which will stick out in your mind and I could only recall a visit for replacement of a weatherstrip. So I bring up the original RO in our system, the one that generated the survey was my RO for replacement of the weatherstrip, the RO for tires was 2 weeks later and involved another service advisor. So I did my job correctly, he screwed up, I got dinged.

In both instances these were zero surveys and I brought the circumstances to the service manager's attention, in both cases she said basically 'So what? Tough titty. Live with it.' That's not acceptable given the nature of the service advisor job so we came to a parting of the ways.

The interesting part is that my warranty surveys were a perfect 100 across the board, on the day we parted I got home to find a prepaid $500 gift card from Toyota in my mailbox.

Curmudgeon wrote: No, I think you are the typical product of this instant gratification age. It appears the only person that you have to impress each day is your boss. The service advisor has to please at least 20 people every day, day in and day out, with this exceptional service you expect. Not to mention their boss. I suggest you get on the front lines of dealing with the public day in and day out for a year or so, then report back and we will see how you feel about it then.

I've done a ton of customer service jobs, and still perform one today.

I managed a restaurant for 3 years when I graduated college, and dealt with ungrateful or drunk customers all of the time. Lucikly, it was a single-owner business and he worked there 2-3 days a week to keep up on how things were going. It made explaining problems a whole lot easier.

I work in a call center. My boss relies on the feedback from 15 call center managers outside of my department I do work for every day on my overall rating. They base their opinions on the team leads and 1000 reps they have working for them who in turn base their opinions of my work on the millions of callers we get every day.

I think I have it covered.

Again: It is not a value add proposition for me to pad your pockets at no benefit to myself. If you want a 10/10, earn it. or don't. I'm still going to grade you based on my perception of the service, which is the point of the survey in the first place.

I agree that it is a complete bullE36 M3 way for you to be graded on your job, but it is what it is.

I get the funniest feeling you don't get graded by the public directly. That is, you don't depend on 10/10.

Done with this thread.

The vast majority of phone customer service jobs do get graded directly by the public. They get graded both internally, and by customer surveys.

Now that i'm no longer on the phones, i STILL have my bonuses affected by those in customer service not getting a 10/10, because of the way the bonus payouts work.

I don't depend on them to get a 10/10, because i don't depend on a bonus. A bonus is a bonus.

The problem is that you can bend over backwards as a service advisor and the customer doesn't like the decor or is mad about something you completely have no control over and the score only hurts the service advisor. What does the waiting room stuff have to do with the service advisor? The whole thing is ludicrous.

We are not only talking about just bonuses, we're talking about employment. You will get fired if your surveys are not a certain percentage. It's not the employees fault that the dealership methods suck. There is nothing they can do about that. I get what people are saying but it's not the reality of the situation. It's not about perfection, it's basically pass/fail.

Don't fill the freaking thing out. At least it won't hurt the person. And don't get me started on customers who hold the knowledge that you need a perfect 10 over your head to get free stuff. The whole system is meaningless.