When you coach a customer on feedback, you’re not asking for true feedback. You’re asking for a favor. It’s that simple. And, customers are not there to do you a favor.

The way it works is: you do a good job and the customer offers you their feedback based on the experience you helped them have. Or they don’t. It’s not their job to help you. It’s their choice, if they want to.

And, to all the defenders of “survey coaching” I understand these folks are just trying to earn a living but that does not make it right.

When you ask a customer for good survey scores you are saying your focus is on you, not the customer. And the more you focus on what you want, the less likely you are to give the customer what they want.

I no longer take my VW Jetta to Lokey VW in Clearwater, Florida.

Absolutely keep the line of communication open between dealers and customers. But don’t try to “taint the waters” to your advantage. (your being the collective)

We love you

At least they phrased it nicely though.

Thanks for the assistance there buddy :-) you wanna also pay off this nice car loan for me too?

I just might take your advice there Jordan.

If they really want this process to work, they’ve got to lose the emphasis on compensation and work to engage in real dialogue on all levels, customer to dealer to manufacturer. If someone is really listening, customers will be more than happy to talk.

I think you’ve given me a future entry into my own blog…

My point being: surveys are crap. Most times, they’re designed by people who aren’t “in the field” with customers and don’t really understand customer feedback — they’re more about giving the marketing department something to tout.

A more logical way of assessing customer issues is simply to ask for customer complaints or praises, instead of having people answer vague questions. i.e.- “Anything we could have made better?” / “What did we do great?”

Mrad, I’d suggest just avoiding the survey altogether. If they ask, tell them you’d rather not bring their “points” down by answering anything below what they expected, so you’re just not going to answer it.

But for surveys, as I said up there – the burden of communicating how to fill out the survey as well as it’s importance should be on those conducting the survey, not on the service guys in the trenches. My former Toyota dealer used to do it on all levels, from the sales guy to the service guy. It drove me nuts. My fear is that it’ll get to that point with VW, where people will want to give negative feedback just to spite them.

And I love having a service department call to check up. It doesn’t happen enough.

Thanks for the comment Jeff.

In reality, what they’re trying to do, aside from genuinely checking up on what we thought of their service, is to also slip in a teeny tiny guilt trip on us so that we may feel bad giving our honest ratings to the survey (if they’re not good).

On the money thing, on one hand dealers/service department have every right to make as much money as they can, just like any business in America. On the other hand, I think the majority (not all, of course, there are some good dealers out there) are already swindling enough money out of customers’ hands during purchases.

As for shop labor rates being on the rise..we may as well get used to this. Since the internet, customers know what dealers pay for their vehicles and they are making less and less in the sales departments..so you know what that means!! Dealers have to make money somehow and the service department is where they make most of it now.

-Jeff