Chris Collins shares a tip for boosting Customer Satisfaction Index scores in automotive service. Instead of asking for good ratings at the end, service advisors should commit to customer satisfaction upfront, making it part of the initial promise rather than a last-minute ask.
This is Chris Collins with your Service Drive Tip of the Day. I was on a plane the other day and I sit down next to a guy and you know, you start the little chit chat and at some point he says, hey, what do you do? And I said, oh, I work with car dealerships in the automotive industry. And he said, oh, man. He goes, what's the deal? Every time I bring in my car, I don't get called back. Nobody does anything. I show up to pick it up and the service advisor's telling me I gotta fill out this survey, I gotta give him a great score. And I started laughing. I go, yeah, that's csi. I'm like, did you give him a good score? You have to. And he's like, no, I hate that. And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of how things work in our industry. I said, but CSI is very important to dealerships in our industry and it's how they're graded by the manufacturers and money's tied to it. Sometimes it's a big deal. Let me tell you something. If your service advisors are begging for CSI at the end, you are driving your customers crazy. And your advisors aren't going to be consistent because it's a hard thing to do. I can tell you from being service advisor, begging for it at the end is the worst. So I'm going to give you a tip that's life changing. That will really, really change your CSI scores and your perspective. Stop begging for it at the end and start committing to it up front. And it works something like this. Dear Tom, when we're all done here today, Honda is going to reach out to you and ask you about your experience. Not only am I committing to you that you're going to want to answer the survey, but you're going to give me a perfect score across the board. Now I'm going to earn that from you. If for any reason you're uncomfortable or you think I could have done something better, let me know so I can fix it for next time because I want you to be my customer. Now what does that do? That puts the customer in control. It makes the customer feel like, hey, I have a say in this and he's going to earn it from me. It also creates a magnetic thing that happens where now the advisor is committed to it. You got to perform, you got to call, you got to follow up. Your advisors will get better if they do it and your customers will like it and feel like they're in control of the situation. You'll get more surveys and the customers will be happy about it. The experience will be vastly improved for the customers if you do it that way. So stop begging for CSI at the end and commit to it up front. This is Chris Collins with your Service Drive Tip of the Day.
