On the right track

Almost anyone who regularly sends out surveys would rejoice if they received 1.5 million responses annually. But for General Motors, a number like that is nothing new. Since 1979, the automaker has logged a consistent 50-55% response rate to the nearly three million surveys it mails each year to measure customer satisfaction with GM dealers.

Buyers of new GM cars and trucks receive the survey six months after the purchase of their vehicle. Designed to look like a personalized mail piece, each division's questionnaire package contains a cover letter signed by the divisional general manager and is mailed from a post office near the division's home office.

Though primarily intended to measure customer satisfaction with the services of the dealer who sold the car or truck, the survey begins with questions on satisfaction with the vehicle. These questions are followed by sections on: the performance of the sales staff during and after the purchase; the delivery condition of the vehicle; how well the selling dealer handled any warranty service; overall satisfaction with the selling dealer; and an open-ended question asking customers to suggest ways to improve customer satisfaction at the dealership.

Customer Satisfaction Index

The results from the dealer survey- which is one of many GM conducts with its customers-are tabulated and reported monthly to each dealer as part of GM's Customer Satisfaction Index (CSi) program. The dealers receive a CSi report summarizing their performance in several service areas during the previous three- and twelve-month periods.

"The information is arranged into index ratings that are used to compare the dealer's performance on the overall measures and in specific areas to logical comparisons of other dealer and zone averages, so the dealer has a relative measure to compare his performance to," says John Corbets, manager of GM's Customer Satisfaction Studies.

Not report cards

One of GM's goals has been to show the dealers-some of whom view the CSi summaries as "report cards"-that the CSi program is not intended as a watch-dog system but rather as an information and management tool that can help them improve their business by emphasizing customer satisfaction. (To further communicate this idea, GM last year changed to the lower-case "i" in CSi, Corbets says, to emphasize that customer satisfaction- and not the grading of dealer performance-is the most important part of the program.)

"The effort has not been to be punitive with the dealers because of their performance, it's been to reinforce their actions. Reaction to this type of program is logically going to be mixed. While the dealers who do well like the program, some of those who do the poorest try to find ways to discredit it. But our use of the information over time has shown the dealers our commitment to the program. They have seen the effort that we've gone through to make it a legitimate and accurate reflection of their performance. More and more dealers have bought into the process and used the program in a positive way, which is how it's intended to be used.

"We do use it in a number of incentive activities where we have motivation and incentive contests that may be based on sales performance or service performance or a combination of the two. CSi is often used as one of the measures of the dealer's performance."

Educating dealers

Corbets says that a great deal of effort has been put into educating the dealers about the program's goals and making sure they understand its purpose and the benefits of customer satisfaction. This includes video presentations made to the dealers on customer satisfaction and CSi, how it functions, and how it relates to the dealer's business.

"The best program in the world, the best information in the world, isn't effective unless it's properly utilized. One of our biggest focuses with the dealer organization and the divisions is to encourage them to use the information to try to respond to special needs.

"We have worked with the divisions to develop training programs and feedback to the dealer on the use of the information. We encourage management at all levels of the company and especially within the divisions to refer to customer satisfaction and CSi performance as a priority in GM."

Each of the General Motors divisions handles the dealership improvement activities a little differently, Corbets says. For example, some have customer satisfaction managers who will work with dealers specifically to improve their performance in customer satisfaction. In others, the sales and service representatives are empowered for dealership improvement in customer satisfaction areas. But the dealer must also be willing to participate in the process.

"In general, the dealer needs to take the information we provide and research it another step further to identify the causes of dissatisfaction. For example, when we ask (in the survey) about the attitude of the service personnel, it may be that the dealer's lower ratings are attributable to one individual. So while we can identify the source of some dissatisfaction, the actual cause probably needs to be further researched."

Dealers seeking more in-depth information can contact GM for additional data and diagnostic information not found in the regular monthly reports. "If they see some things in their numbers that concern them, or that they want to know more about, they can call us to get more information. The effort has been made to get away from (the CSi program) being strictly a report card to providing them with information they can use to help improve their customer satisfaction. And of course that applies all the way up through to the divisions and the corporation as well," Corbets says.

All CSi reports and information are provided by Maritz Marketing Research, which has conducted the CSi program under GM's direction since its inception. Jim Stone, manager of Maritz' GM Customer Satisfaction Center, says that Maritz has programmed the reporting system for maximum flexibility.

"With so many users of the data throughout the GM organization we need to be able to respond quickly and efficiently to almost any imaginable request for CSi-related information. We work closely with GM staff to provide the divisions, plants, and dealers with the information they need to continually improve customer satisfaction."

Ongoing analysis

The information gathered through the CSi program has facilitated an ongoing analysis of the importance of customer satisfaction and its impact on various customer groups, the GM divisions, and dealers, for example.

Corbets says that GM and Maritz have responded to dealer fears about possible non-response bias with extensive analysis. "One of the dealers' biggest concerns was that the people who respond are only those who are dissatisfied. And even though we've had a consistent response rate over the years, there has been concern that we're not hearing from a true representation of the total population. So we have done extensive studies to verify that we're not impacted by nonresponse bias."

GM has also verified that measuring customer satisfaction at six months is an accurate predictor of long-term satisfaction and that there is a strong link between satisfaction and repurchase behavior. "We have the numbers to support what you logically and intuitively believe: that the more satisfied a customer is with the product and the dealer, the more likely he is to repurchase from the selling dealer, the division, and General Motors," Corbets says.

The survey was originally sent to buyers 12 months after they purchased their new vehicle. In 1982, that time period was shortened to 6 months. "Changing it to a shorter horizon meant that if the dealer made a change in his operation he could see the impact of it much sooner. We researched extensively before the change was made so we knew what its impact would be," says Maritz' Jim Stone.

Main purpose

Stone says that two things have made the General Motors dealer study successful. First, GM does not allow anything to interfere with the main purpose of the survey: to measure satisfaction with the dealer body. Second, the CSi program is constantly being researched to make sure it meets information needs.

"When you're talking about a database of a million and a half respondents a year, a lot of people will want to use it for a variety of purposes. We try to be responsive to these needs and provide the information whenever possible, but anything that would interfere with the primary goal is disallowed. It is a very focused program, which means that tinkering with it or adding questions because it would be nice to know something disrupts the tracking nature of the study.

"The program has changed over time, but very slowly. If, for example, someone in one of the divisions suggests an improvement or change, even if it looks like a perfectly obvious thing to do, we don't do it until we know what its impact will be. Pilot testing goes on almost year-round, so if we add a question, we know what its impact will be on the overall ratings," Stone says.

Paid off

GM's customer satisfaction research efforts have paid off in many ways. For example, the Cadillac division recently received a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. And over the past ten years, even as consumers have become harder and harder to please, GM has seen a considerable increase in customer satisfaction with its products and its dealer service, Corbets says.

"We use the CSi information extensively throughout the corporation. The customer satisfaction scores have gone up on both the GM product side and the dealer side because the company has responded to the needs of our customers and reacted to customer satisfaction and CSi."