In the many forms I had to sign to buy the car, there was one odd checkbox:
If you received a survey asking for your rating of your customer experience buying a car from us, would you rate us as “Excellent� [Yes / No]
This is a terrible methodology. You can’t find out what people think by asking them what they will say. Not only do people change their minds, but it’s blatantly pre-selecting a sample. The salesperson it was just to make sure that they gave excellent service. I said they did, but I wasn’t going to check anything saying that, it defeated the point of a survey. She was pretty annoyed.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If a survey is supposed to be an unbiased measure, then you can’t preselect people. If it’s really for the dealership to make sure that they did a great job, it’s not a survey.
Later, I discovered interesting information that cleared it all up for me.
After purchasing a car, customers typically receive a letter or a phone call asking for their opinion of their overall experience with a dealership. Did you receive something in the mail after you bought your last new car?? J.D. Power & Associates is a well-known company that frequently conducts this research. J.D. Power & Associates has been known to send out a survey after a car sale that includes a $1 bill to elicit your participation. Low and behold, the results of these surveys determine the direction of dealerships’ business in the future.
These surveys also help determine how many cars the OEM will give to the dealership, and what incentives the OEM offers to the dealer. I was not aware that an OEM could have an incentive program with one particular dealer in an area that would never be disclosed. Interesting!