One important metric for any dealership that wants to grow its customer base and retain existing customers is the Customer Satisfaction Index or CSI. Tracking this metric allows you to get a sound idea of what your customers think of your dealership and what they need. To learn more about the CSI, keep reading.
Understanding CSI Scores
To get a better idea of what a CSI score is, you need to understand what it measures. This is the score that tells you how satisfied a customer is with their experience as well as how happy they are with a product they purchased. It is generally calculated by asking how happy they were on a scale of 1-5, where a score of five means “unhappy” and a score of one means “very happy.” The CSI score is an average of these ratings from 0-100.
What Are CSI Scores?
CSI is used in the automotive industry to evaluate and assess customer satisfaction. The score gives insight into how well dealerships meet the needs of their customers. It measures several factors through a questionnaire that allows the customers to rate how they feel. These surveys are then evaluated and a CSI score is created.
What is a good CSI score?
CSI scores involve several details in their calculation. In general, a good score is above 90. It is important to note that there will be subtle differences among customer demographics, regions, and manufacturers. As such, it may be a better idea to analyze or interpret the CSI score along with other metrics and feedback from customers.
How do you calculate the CSI score?
The first thing you need to do to calculate your CSI score is to get the number of respondents and get the ideal demographic for your survey. For statistical significance, consider the sample size. From here, you need to create a direct and concise questionnaire.
The next step is to determine the Total Score and then calculate the total points all respondents earned. To calculate the total score, add the scores of each respondent together. From here, you can calculate the average score. This will give you your CSI.
How to interpret CSI
It’s important to remember that a CSI score reflects your customer’s overall perception of their satisfaction with your dealership and their perceived loyalty. When the CSI score is high, customers are content. You should note that statistics show that more than 90% of customers will buy from a company a second time when they provide excellent customer service.
Factors Influencing CSI Scores
There are several factors that contribute to your CSI score as an auto business. Your customers’ experience, how you communicate with them, the quality of your products and services – all of these will affect your score. Other factors are value and pricing, transparency, ease of using your services, end-of-sale support, and more.
Customer Experience
Customer experience is a powerful factor in your CSI scores and one that you can influence. Making sure your staff is trained to greet everyone and that they know how to properly handle customer concerns. It also helps to ensure that your staff is trained to handle queries online or via phone. This will make an impact on how the customer experience goes.
Other ways of ensuring your customers have an excellent experience at your dealership are making sure there are quality refreshments, the dealership is spotless, and everyone looks and behaves professionally.
Product/Service Quality
Service quality and product quality are important factors in your CSI score. Keeping these areas working well and only providing the best quality products will help keep you on the high end of CSI scores.
Pricing and Value Perception
If your customers feel that you aren’t giving them the best deal or even a good deal, they aren’t going to have as positive of an experience as the customer who walks away feeling they got a steal. While it’s true that there is only so much you can do with the pricing of a vehicle, it is important for you to make sure your customers feel like they walk away with good value for the money they spent.
Why Are CSI Scores Important?
Your CSI score is important because it gives you a good idea of how your customers feel about your brand and if they are likely to return to the dealership. More than that, it can give you an idea of what your dealership’s reputation is like.
In addition, having a higher CSI score gives your dealership an edge over the competition. When you have your CSI scores and surveys, you have an endless opportunity for growth and development.
How To Improve CSI Scores: 9 Tips
When your CSI scores are low, your business will have a hard time keeping and retaining customers. Any score below 90 leaves room for improvement and gives insight into areas where your sales and customer service teams need more training.
Enhancing customer service
One of the fundamentals of CSI is being able to see where your customer service is meeting expectations, and where it is falling short. Do customers think your dealership could be cleaner or more welcoming? Are your customers able to navigate your website?
Looking closely at your CSI scores and discerning which areas need improvement is not only a key factor to boosting customer/dealership relations, but important to developing your brand’s image overall. The process will help you find opportunities to improve your products and services and help your customers have a better experience.
Product/service innovation
Another excellent way of improving your CSI scores is to bring on better products to offer your customers. Making sure your dealership only offers the best vehicles and stands by the products they sell will go a long way to improving your CSI score.
Likewise, making sure that each customer has a warm and welcoming experience makes it easier for them to rate your dealership highly.
Feedback collection and analysis
With each survey you collect, you can get an idea of how your dealership handles different situations. This provides an opportunity for continued training and improvement. Use the surveys to collect data on areas that need improvement and provide training to your staff to overcome obstacles.
Automatically QA 100% of your sales and service calls
It is important to set up scripts to automatically ask your clients questions about their experience with every sale. These scripts should be concise, easy to articulate, and proven to convert clients. Podium offers a range of these scripts to help you get in touch with what your customers are feeling about the service you are providing.
Coach dealership employees to properly handle phone-ups
Understanding how to work with clients when they call the dealership to ask questions is an important part of your CSI score. Making sure you have quality scripts your sales staff can follow is a foolproof method of providing quality phone service. Podium is able to help with this.
Get visibility into sales and service performance across all dealership locations
Using your CSI score to properly analyze what is happening across all your dealerships is an important part of making sure there is consistency with the service your employees are providing across your brand.
Take customers on a vehicle tour
Another way to improve your CSI scores is to give the customer a tour of the vehicle they’re interested in. Get them into the cabin and introduce them to all the features.
A vehicle tour is more than just listing the features each vehicle has to offer. To help boost your CSI score, your customers need a tour of the vehicle and all the features they will love. You can do this by doing a personalized video tour. Podium can help you have a better idea of professional videos that provide this kind of tour.
Make the customer journey as seamless as possible
When your customer comes to you, they want a convenient, comfortable experience where they can complete the transaction as quickly as possible. Car purchases are already stressful, so making sure your dealership has everything in place to make it easy on your customers from the moment they walk through your doors until they drive off in their new vehicle. Doing so will go a long way in improving your CSI score.
Take the time to understand each customer and their needs
Treating your customers on an individual basis is an important part of providing quality customer service. This means taking the time to listen to what they are looking for and personal details like whether they have a family, etc.
Podium can help your business develop better customer service skills, work through gaining more reviews, and organize your customer communications. To get a solid idea of what Podium can do to help your automotive business, check out the platform here.
Creating quality surveys that ask the right questions to get insights into your customers and how they feel about your dealership can be difficult. That is why it is best to leave it up to the experts. Podium offers a host of different surveys for the automotive industry to help you get an idea of what your CSI score is.
