Archive for the ‘Customer Satisfaction’ Category

Today the Detroit News reported on the latest results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, specifically the fact that Detroit brands did worse this time around and ranked near (or at) the bottom.

Claes Fornell, the professor who heads the study, noted, “The gap is extending. Detroit is falling. It’s all foreign at the top and all American at the bottom.”

To Fornell’s the the newspaper’s credit, they do note a major reason for Detroit’s decline: people are unhappy with the fuel economy of their large SUVs and pickups–most of which were made by Detroit.

In other words, people are unhappy that the vehicle type–not brand–they decided to buy as much as three years ago uses more gas than they’d like it to–now that gas costs about $4 a gallon. This doesn’t really reflect badly on Detroit.

A key problem with these results: they’re only reported at the brand level. It would be nice to see how Detroit’s CAR models compare to the foreign-based competition, but the numbers needed to do this weren’t released.

Finally, the absolute differences are small. Every brand except Jeep is within five points of the average, and even Jeep–the worst–is only six points worse than the average.

As they stand, these results don’t tell us nearly as much as they pretend to.

In late June I asked, “Satisfaction studies, is there a point?” Well, today the results of another such study, by Claes Fornell of the University of Michigan, were released. And The Detroit News subtitled an article based on these results “Customer contentment with U.S. automakers improves sharply as Asian brands drop.” Really? Let’s take a closer look.

Results were only released at the brand level, not at the model level. And as with many results at the brand level, these don’t vary much. All but one brand falls within five points of the average, and 13 of 21 brands fall within a mere two points. This is two points out of 100.

And the sharp improvement reported by The Detroit News? A couple of domestic brands were up by three points compared to last year, and a couple others were up by two points. The others were up by a point or less. Jeep even feel by two points. As did Honda and Nissan. While Toyota feel by three points.

But the real news is that the differences, whether from brand to brand or from year to year, are almost all small. No brand changed by more than three points compared to last year. And even with sample sizes of over 100 for each brand, a point or so is bound to be random variation or simple rounding. So I don’t see any sharp changes.

To its credit, The Detroit News did note that “the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing brands has been cut from 18 points to 12 points since 1994.” Problem is, people want to read about dramatic changes, not about a lack of differences. So journalists are under pressure to take two- or three-point differences and write as if these were far larger.

J.D. Power got its start performing reliability research, which is also what TrueDelta has been focusing on.

But some critics mused, “Enough about things gone wrong. What about things gone right? Perhaps some cars are so pleasurable to own and drive that a few extra problems are of little consequence.” And so research firms started conducting a second type of study, on owners’ satisfaction with the design and operation of their vehicles. Strategic Vision might have been first with its Total Quality Index, but if so J.D. Power soon countered with its similarly focused APEAL study. The results of both annual satisfaction studies were released this month.

TrueDelta conducts no such owner satisfaction study, for a few reasons.

(more…)

“Don’t Coach Me on how to Answer your Stupid Survey,” Mrad writes over at Volksbloggin, a VW-focused blog. The object of his ire: dealers that ask you to give them perfect marks on sales and service satisfaction surveys conducted by the manufacturer. I’ve come across this myself, and read about it often on various forums. Why is this survey process so corrupt, and what could manufacturers possibly learn from it as a result?

(more…)