Bathtub tom
I think you are being overly suspicious. Whenever I take my Nissan to the main dealer for a service, a customer feedback questionnaire follows in the post a few days later and there is often a call from the garage to make sure I am happy with the service.
In fact, I did make a complaint when responding to the questionnaire last time and, surprisingly, this was the one time when a follow-up call did not occur.
I do think, though, that customer surveys are standard practice with Nissan, and a jolly good idea - if they follow up on your suggestions!
Primera Man
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My local Toyota dealership do the same. It occupies about 30 seconds of my time, once a year.
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Information gathered in this way is used by manufacturers to determine if their dealers are conforming to the "corporate guidelines" usually with reference to vital car maintenance issues like whether the coffee machine was working or if there were fresh flowers in the waiting area.
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Bignick 2
A somewhat cynical view, if I may say.
Certainly I think it's a good idea and have only ever been asked questions directly relevant to the servicing of my car - never about the state of the coffee machine or flower arrangements, neither of which are available at my Nissan dealer, thank goodness!
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Somewhat overstated perhaps but 30 years plus working in franchised dealerships tends to make one into a cynic/realist
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I suspect there are still differences, though, between different manufacturers. The Nissan dealer I use is really rather old-fashioned and in no way like one of those dreadful 'glass palaces' for Audi, BMW etc.
But I do accept that, with 30 years experience, you must know a lot more about what really goes on than me, as I try to avoid garages as much as possible!
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Primera man - odd you should mention Audi - try this one for corporate insanity.
During the 1990's when VW/Audi were beginning to separate their dealer networks again (after merging them in the 70s) corporate branding went mad.
The combined dealer at which I worked was compelled to :
1.Build a wall dividing the service reception into separate VW and Audi sections.
2.Each section had to follow corporate colour schemes - red for Audi and blue for VW.
3.Where previously two receptionists had dealt with all customers we now had to have three in order to keep the separate desks continuously manned, the floating person had a blue tie and a red tie depending which desk he was covering.
4.The Audi reception had to have free coffee, a telephone socket, a TV, carpet. The VW reception had to have a coffee machine (free or charged at the dealers discretion) and a TV.
5.The technicians had to be divided into separate franchise specialists with appropriately coloured uniforms and the workshop painted with one half red and one half blue. If a dealer inspection found a car on the wrong side or a technician in the wrong colour overall working on it the dealership failed its inspection.
I saw the writing on the wall and moved on. The dealership lasted another two years.
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Off topic, I know, but Audi are a good example of a car I just couldn't buy, or at least not from a main dealer. I often pass the main dealer in Camberley - huge new glass showroom, loads of fantastic cars you can see from the main road. Would I buy one from there? Never - the costs of running that showroom must be huge. Just think of the mark-up they would need to make on each car. I'm not wasting my money on helping them to look posh. I accept that's not completely rational, given that I think Audis are great cars. Must be the impact of my accountancy background!
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BMW used to do this all the time usually after a Garage visit.
So do Citroen. The garage are set targets for customer satisfaction which is measured by these surveys.
Ironically, on the one occasion I was dissatisfied with the big sales/service franchise in the area, Cit custoemr service could not have cared less.
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The 'feedback' questions you are talking about for part of the dealer's CSI scoring (typically done quarterly). Bonuses etc depend on it. A particularly high CSI score on servicing may get the service manager an additional 'reward' (e.g. free holiday, TV set etc).
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>>They then abruptly ended the call, saying the car was outside the age parameters of the survey, after confirming the details in the early stages of the call.
This is the bit I couldn't understand. They knew the age of the car before commencing the call, but used it as an excuse to end the call.
Perhaps I'm being silly, expecting some efficiency?
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I don't think the age comes into it. If its a CSI call then age of vehicle is immaterial (within reason). They are interested in the service that the dealer gave. They probably thought you sounded like an awkward customer and just wanted to gracefully end the call ;-)
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I gather it's common practice in the US, and I've seen it once here, from a Honda dealer, for the Service Manager to call or write and beg you to get in touch if you can't put either Very or Extremely Satisfied foe every answer on the survey.
The thing is, I'm a glass half empty kind of person, and it's Very or Extremely unlikely that I'd be able to rate anything at that level - they'd have to do something truely exceptional to make me pick those ratings. On price alone, I'm never going to be happy paying £350 to service a Jazz, I don't care how fiddly the valve adjustment is.
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IBM used to do this with their agents, probably still do. The daft thing is that agents could find out which customers were going to get a questionnaire beforehand so that problems could be got out of the way.
Back to the thread ... if you simply take your car to a dealer for servicing or repair and don't give any authority about your details, then there's surely a Data Protection Act offence if your details are passed to third parties without authority - whether it's the manufacturer or a market research organisation?
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>>They probably thought you sounded like an awkward customer
Moi! ;>)
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Surveys are in theory a very good idea. It goes awry when they don't form a central plank of a customer care policy and instead are treated by the franchise with an attitude ranging between disdain and outright hostility. I'll put it perspective; I've been a marketing pro for nearly 20 years and had a pretty good career, but I still get into trouble with a Board of Directors when I get a request to formulate a customer satisfaction survey as I always ask if they take them seriously or if it's just a wheeze they dreamt up at a meeting. The looks I get are pretty amusing until you remember you're advising them and it's coming up to contract renewal time. oops!
That, essentially, is the whole point. They're either taken very seriously and get viewed right at the top and changes are implemented to improve the customer experience or they're a complete waste of money. Personally I don't mind being called and asked for my views when it happens but I always ask what will happen to the information being collated and how my details are to be handled.
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"excuse to end the call"
I subscribe to a couple of consumer sites that occasionally offer on-line surveys for a small reward. The odd/amusing thing is that the first few questions invariably 'profile' you for the rest of it, and frequently stop when you answer inappropriately. Effectively, they are limiting their survey to those who will give certain answers, so the purpose seems to be gratification rather than feedback!
I was helping some friends out with a Dell computer yesterday, after a long battle to get a Dell engineer to pay a visit (they had on-site maintenance). This he had done, but not before their on-line support team had re-installed XP remotely and wiped out a load of data, so when the inevitable phone call came, the caller got an earful. He seemed to have been expecting a bit more gratitude...
Edited by J Bonington Jagworth on 17/11/2007 at 17:24
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