Actually feel bad for dealerships

[veeman]

A few weeks ago took my Infiniti QX56 to dealership where I bought it in New Jersey for routine oil change.  I usually drop it off, walk to nearby diner and eat breakfast, and then by the time I walk back the car is usually done.  This time when I dropped it off (I had scheduled beforehand the time),as soon as I entered the service bay, the check in guy tells me someone will be with me in a few minutes and leads me to the waiting room.  OK fine.  So then I get a phone call on my cell and a hotel reservation I had booked a few days earlier for an upcoming trip had been cancelled. So I deal with that for about 45 minutes on the phone and square up another reservation. So since no one has come in yet and even checked me in for my car service I go back out into the service bay and don't see my car. It's parked outside in the lot. So I make a little bit of noise and they apologize and say they'll have my car serviced real soon. I go to breakfast and when I come back the car is done. The service guy apologizes for the delay and says I'm good to go. I inquire about the bill and paperwork and he just waves me off. "Don't worry about it." O.K. I'm not even sure if they entered me in the computer. The guy seemed to be sweating. So I thank him and drive home. I get a call a few days ago from the dealership asking for my email so they can send me a survey. OK fine. I usually don't fill out surveys but I got the email today and filled it out.  I lied on most of the questions and said everything was perfect. "Did you have to wait more than a few minutes before being seen? - No" etc. I click submit. 20 minutes later I get a phone call from the dealership. It sounds like the guy who gave me the free oil change. He says he received my survey and thanks me a few times.

Damn man. Corporate seems to have these dealerships by the balls and then some.

[RomanChariot]

Anything but a perfect response on a survey is considered failing.

[Soup DeVille]

Any company that is blindly tying employee performance reviews (which basically means raises) to customer surveys is a shit company. Period.

[Soup DeVille]

Anything but a perfect response on a survey is considered failing.

Which is why I flat out refuse to fill them out. Most people are competent enough to do the job; most shit that happens is outside of their control. I'm not going to gush over the service when its basic and hard to fuck up. You do a really great job at something or go out of your way? I'll tell your boss. You fuck up and correct your mistake? Hell man, who doesn't? You're a lying, lazy shitball? No more business.

[veeman]

I kinda doubt this is limited to Infiniti though.  It seems to pervade all of the automakers (at least their US subsidiaries). Maybe except Tesla.

[RomanChariot]

You have got to be a 5 star dealership so you can bring in the corporate bonuses.

[veeman]

Does any other business have that kind of model? To be so completely customer satisfaction survey benchmarked. I work at a hospital. They're always giving us customer survey results. They usually are O.K. and sometimes the results suck. A lot of that is out of individual nurse/physician/technician control. They always strive to improve. The executive board of the hospital always harps on survey results. My compensation, however, is never based on survey results. A hospital administrator may get fired if survey results continually suck but nurse, physician, or technician salary never gets directly based on those results.

[Xer0]

An internet tech came over recently to fix an issue I had and he stressed how important the after service survey was for him.  I imagine that most customer facing service jobs put a decent amount of importance on these stupid things and it probably makes up something like 15-20% of your end of year review.

[cawimmer430]

After every service BMW would call me a few days later and ask me how satisfied I was with their service.

Normally such phone call surveys bother the hell out of me, but in this case it was ok since it was a clear and friendly young female voice on the other end [I'm a chauvinist pig! Yeah!] AND [most important] the survey consisted of only three (sometimes five) basic questions. Two yes or no questions, and a 1 to 10 rating question.

I never really had grounds to complain. My BMW dealership was voted the BEST BMW dealership in all of Germany and their service was great, and not that expensive (granted, I had a lower end BMW but service costs are service costs...).

[Laconian]

An internet tech came over recently to fix an issue I had and he stressed how important the after service survey was for him.  I imagine that most customer facing service jobs put a decent amount of importance on these stupid things and it probably makes up something like 15-20% of your end of year review.

Yeah, it's all over the place. Being in a customer facing biz must be hell nowadays. Even if your boss isn't giving you hell for low survey scores, the public is going to do the same with your Yelp score.

[BimmerM3]

I might feel bad for the tech. I've never felt bad for a dealership though.

[2o6]

How have y'all never heard of this? Customer service scores directly impact most service writer's paychecks. When I worked at both Chevy and BMW, anything less than perfect at a certain range, and BMW/GM would pay out less bonus money to both the service writer themselves, as well as the entire service department.

And that was evaluated quarterly. It could be sometimes hundreds of dollars out of the service writers pockets due to a string of bad surveys.

[r0tor]

I gave my jeep dealer as bad of a score as possible after scamming my wife... Didn't get any kind of response

[12,000 RPM]

Any job that requires dealing with the public's bullshit is miserable IMO. I go out of my way to be courteous and reward people who do such work. Some people in those fields really just thrive off of helping & serving people, but I imagine many are just trying to pay the bills.

My only bad experiences were with the engine swaps in the Civic. If I had more time I would have taken them to small claims court.

[shp4man]

 Ford does customer surveys, too. As a technician, our score is called Fix it Right the First time. We get no bonus from a good score, and a bad score generates hate from all sides. Thankfully, mine's pretty good.
A shitty Service writer can affect it when they write up stuff that's wack because they fail to write what the customer wants to fix.
Like "Water leak left side"
Or   "Won't start, happens once a week"
Or   "I'm the dumbest service advisor on fucking Earth, so let the tech call the customer" 

Sorry. Do I sound a little bitter? 

[veeman]

Any company that is blindly tying employee performance reviews (which basically means raises) to customer surveys is a shit company. Period.

Yeah, basing job security, promotion, pay in large or total part based upon customer surveys is a horrible way to conduct a business because it may not be an accurate representation of the quality of the employee.  Job satisfaction in places that do this (seems to be the entire auto dealership industry) must be piss poor.  I wonder when this bullshit started?  Two decades ago? More than that? Who started it first and why did the rest all follow suit? 

[Laconian]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter ?

[Xer0]

Yeah, it's all over the place. Being in a customer facing biz must be hell nowadays. Even if your boss isn't giving you hell for low survey scores, the public is going to do the same with your Yelp score.

I used to work at the Gap during undergrad and while we didn't have surveys, they constantly beat us over the head about getting Gap cards.  It was horrible.  Dealing with customers sucks and then on the backend dealing with corporate and random metrics designed by a consulting firm that was paid millions of dollars to maximize minimum wage labor also sucks.  So glad I am no longer in that position.

[veeman]

I used to work at the Gap during undergrad and while we didn't have surveys, they constantly beat us over the head about getting Gap cards.  It was horrible.  Dealing with customers sucks and then on the backend dealing with corporate and random metrics designed by a consulting firm that was paid millions of dollars to maximize minimum wage labor also sucks.  So glad I am no longer in that position.

My wife has over 10 store credit cards.  I keep telling her it's a dumb thing to have, that you are setting yourself up for identity theft, that if your wallet gets stolen it'll be a real pain in the ass, but she won't listen.  It's all about the saving 20% or whatever. 

[CALL_911]

Would u ever consider freezing your credit?

[GoCougs]

I used to work at the Gap during undergrad and while we didn't have surveys, they constantly beat us over the head about getting Gap cards.  It was horrible.  Dealing with customers sucks and then on the backend dealing with corporate and random metrics designed by a consulting firm that was paid millions of dollars to maximize minimum wage labor also sucks.  So glad I am no longer in that position.

One of the chief factors of happiness is having had such jobs.

[AutobahnSHO]

My wife has over 10 store credit cards.  I keep telling her it's a dumb thing to have, that you are setting yourself up for identity theft, that if your wallet gets stolen it'll be a real pain in the ass, but she won't listen.  It's all about the saving 20% or whatever. 

My ex was the same. Inevitably it leads to buying stuff you don't need and floating a balance, and therefore paying the store interest.

I did open a JC Penney card a few years back, bought son suit & other stuff, put it on the new card, "saved" a few hundred, paid the card off as soon as the bill came, and closed it a month later. Credit score seems ok so.....    

[AutobahnSHO]

One of the chief factors of happiness is having had such jobs.

+1

Knowing what it's like to be in a much much better job is definitely nice.

[veeman]

Would u ever consider freezing your credit?

She spends on things which are unnecessary (i.e. new kids bookbags every year even though they can last years) but overall our total monthly credit card bill is still in budget.  We don't carry a balance.  In any case I wouldn't freeze my credit because of my wife.  If it got bad I would have her open up her own bank account with her salary going into her own bank account and then tell her she's responsible for her own credit card bills from her own bank account but I don't foresee that happening.  Financial stuff is not a strain on our marriage.

[giant_mtb]

+1

Knowing what it's like to be in a much much better job is definitely nice.

Yes.  It's a very thing to say, but everybody "should" have a cashier/customer service type job at least once in their life.  The world would be a slightly better place.  Not only from a "glad I don't have that job anymore" perspective, but also from a perspective of what those people have to sometimes deal with and how just being kind to them can make your and their experience that much better.

Like when cashiers go into the "are you a credit member with us" script, as much as I hate it, I put a smile on and say "no thank you."  It's not their fault that corporate puts those pressures on their shoulders.  I hated being pushed for CC signups as an employee. As soon as they've asked, change the subject, ask how they're doing, get to real talk.  Makes it much easier.

[AutobahnSHO]

amen bro!!

[r0tor]

I used to work at the Gap during undergrad and while we didn't have surveys, they constantly beat us over the head about getting Gap cards.  It was horrible.  Dealing with customers sucks and then on the backend dealing with corporate and random metrics designed by a consulting firm that was paid millions of dollars to maximize minimum wage labor also sucks.  So glad I am no longer in that position.

My wife quit her job at a bank because of the mandatory quota of opening up new accounts/products... A couple years later it came out that Wells Fargo applied so much pressure on its employees they opened up accounts without even telling people