Crazy Bimmer

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...rvice_glance_2


The study, released Tuesday, uses an index ranking system in which 1,000 points is the highest score. It focuses on customer experiences with dealer service departments during the first three years of ownership.

___

1. Lincoln: 912

2. Buick: 909

3. Infiniti:908

4. Cadillac: 904

5. Lexus: 902

6. Saturn: 901

7. Acura: 900

8. Jaguar: 899

9. Mercury: 891

10. Audi: 883

10. HUMMER: 883

12. Mercedes-Benz: 878

12. Porsche: 878

14. Honda: 877



15. BMW: 875

15. Volvo: 875

17. Saab: 874

18. Pontiac: 872

19. GMC: 869

19. Oldsmobile: 869

21. Chevrolet: 868

22. Ford: 859

23. Chrysler: 858

24. Subaru: 850

25. Jeep: 848

26. Nissan: 847

26. Plymouth: 847

28. Toyota: 845

29. Dodge: 843

29. Mazda: 843

31. Land Rover: 841

32. MINI: 838

33. Mitsubishi: 834

34. Hyundai: 832

35. Volkswagen: 821

36. Kia: 813

37. Suzuki: 809

38. Isuzu: 786

39. Daewoo: 754

cusdaddy

Wow.. Very suprising results. It's interesting to see Lexus only in 5th place

gavriil

Lincoln, Buick Top Power CSI Survey - - Domestics lead the luxe pack for the first time in a long time. - - by Jim Burt (2004-07-20) - - Source: The Car Connection


On the heels of Hyundai topping Toyota brand in J.D. Power's Initial Quality Study last April, Lincoln, and Buick both finished ahead of Lexus and Infiniti in the firm's Customer Service Index Study (CSI).

Indeed, six of the top eleven brands ranked for dealer service were domestic.

Lincoln finished a respectable third place last year, but rose to the top after a sustained effort by Ford to improve service even more at Lincoln Mercury dealerships. In doing so, Lincoln set a record for the study, besting Lexus's best year.

"In addition to their subsidized maintenance program, Lincoln's CSI performance was also helped by improved vehicle quality. This has translated into a 14-percent decline in the volume of repairs needed, meaning that more of Lincoln's work is maintenance-only, which is easier from a customer satisfaction viewpoint," said Joe Ivers, executive director of quality/customer satisfaction at J.D. Power and Associates. "Ford's domestic brands - Ford and Mercury - also showed similar effects of improved quality performance, as did Land Rover."
These are brands that are fighting for their lives, said marketing consultant Dennis Keene.

"You have to hand it to Ford and its dealers…while they are waiting for new product to arrive they are doing everything they can to hold onto the customers they have," said Keene.
All of GM's brands finished above industry average. But the story was different at Chrysler Group, where all of its brands finished below average.

Power uses CSI to measure customer handling during the three years after a new vehicle sale. The study is based on responses from more than 97,000 new-vehicle owners. The questions posed to consumers involve treatment in the service center of dealerships for maintenance and repair.

Among maintenance customers, who make up two-thirds of service business, Lincoln was cited for "fairness of charges" and in the areas of service initiation and service delivery. Ninety- percent of customers say they got the appointment date they wanted, and many said it was easy to get in and out of the dealership.

Japanese mass-market brands have long suffered in such surveys because customers flock to Toyota and Honda mostly for quality. Dealers not only don't have to work as hard as their Detroit competitors to make sales and keep customers, but customers have sometimes unreasonable expectations that nothing will ever go wrong with those models.

Highlights and Lowlights:

Toyota brand finished well below average. Despite the year-in and year-out great scores by its Lexus sister division, Toyota brand has never scored above industry average since the survey was modified some years ago to deal strictly with customer handling issues.

Audi scored well above average, despite a big recall last year for faulty ignition coil switches. Audi and Jaguar shared the largest improvement of any brands.

Land Rover was the only luxe brand to score below-average this year. But it was also one of the most improved brands.

Nissan, Mitsubishi , Hyundai, and Subaru all finished below average, adding to the underperformance of Japanese brands.

MINI and Volkswagen also finished well below average.

gavriil

So this measure dealer satisfaction. And the domestics are on top. Very interesting.

Crazy Bimmer

rest of the lineup http://www.acura-cl.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148270

charliemike

Volkswagen is 35 of 38 ... Perhaps THAT is why the Phaeton isn't selling?

patsmere

hmm i might have to buy a buick or lincoln now

farberstyle

saturn and buick higher than MB and BMW? very suprising.

chungkopi

acura shouldn't be top 10.

1SICKLEX

Glad to see quite a few high scores. Good for consumers

Crazy Bimmer

Old people have low standards?

farberstyle

are you saying my grandparents are old cause they drive a buick?

Scrib

Infiniti

EZZ

Toyota is in the crapper for customer service. I guess they are getting complacent being the most successful auto maker in the world. Not surprised at Infiniti being so high. They treat me like a king when I need service

gavriil

Should I merge them?

Chaptorial

Go Acura.

anothercls

Isn't Daewoo bankrupt or was I just dreaming about that last night?

Crazy Bimmer

Why you asking me, im not the mod. I see no reason to, or you can lock my thread. unno:

gavriil

Being the mod does not mean I can do anything I want. People forget that what they write, belongs to them. Of course I am seeting aside extreme and inappropriate posts with this. I am not going to merge a thread of yours from another part of the forum without your consent.

Crazy Bimmer

Gav im not that anal about stuff like this. You can do what ya like with my threads

gavriil

It's not about if you're anal or not, it's about the principle of freedom of expression.

TSX69

CSI Study

J.D. Power and Associates Reports:
Exceptional Service Satisfaction Enhances Dealer and Manufacturer Profitability Through Improved Customer Retention, Even as Vehicle Sales Decline

Lexus Ranks Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Dealer Service

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.: 25 February 2009 — In today’s tough automotive market, providing consumers with superior service experiences translates into increased profitability for dealers and automakers, with the highest-performing brands retaining more than 80 percent of their customer maintenance and repair dollars within their dealer network, compared with retention rates of less than 60 percent for lower-performing brands, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Customer Service Index (CSI) StudySM released today.

The study, now in its 29th year, examines satisfaction among vehicle owners who visit a service department for maintenance or repair work. The CSI rankings are based on dealer performance during the first three years of ownership, which typically represent the majority of the vehicle warranty period. Five measures are examined to determine overall customer satisfaction with dealer service (listed in order of importance): service quality; service initiation; service advisor; service facility; and vehicle pickup.

The study finds that although satisfaction with dealer service tends to decline as vehicles age—particularly during the fourth and fifth years of ownership—those automakers whose dealers provide the highest levels of satisfaction during the warranty period retain a greater share of future service visits at the dealership, even after the warranty period expires. Brands with dealers that achieve particularly high CSI scores (800 or higher) during the first three years of vehicle ownership retained 79 percent of dollars spent on maintenance and repairs during the first five years of ownership. In contrast, brands that attained CSI scores below 800 retained only 69 percent of customer maintenance and repair dollars.

The study also finds that consumers report spending an average of $310 annually on oil changes, routine maintenance and repairs during the first five years of vehicle ownership. Higher satisfaction with dealers leads to a dramatically lower likelihood to spend this money on visits to non-dealer service facilities. For example, customers who say the dealer service they received was “unacceptable” report spending eight times as much at non-dealer service facilities, compared with customers who report receiving “truly exceptional” service from their dealer.

“Since dealer service is the last touch point in the vehicle ownership cycle that auto manufacturers have with customers, providing superior levels of service can leave owners with a lasting favorable impression of the brand,” said Jon Osborn, research director at J.D. Power and Associates. “Providing excellent service is not only good for customers, but it also benefits dealers and automakers in terms of income from future service visits and sales. The significant decline in new-vehicle sales means that dealers are relying even more heavily on the service-operations side of their business for much-needed revenue. In many cases, this income is keeping the dealerships open. With the stakes so high, it is imperative for dealers to focus heavily on maximizing satisfaction levels.”

Lexus ranks highest in customer satisfaction with dealer service in 2009—improving from fourth rank position in 2008. Lexus achieves an overall CSI score of 835 on a 1,000-point scale and performs particularly well in four of the five measures: service quality; service initiation; service advisor and service facility. Rounding out the top five nameplates are Jaguar (810), BMW (808), Cadillac (806) and Acura (805).

“The highest-performing brands differentiate themselves particularly in the service quality and service facility measures,” said Osborn. “There are several practices that the highest-ranked brands consistently perform that help elevate customer service satisfaction levels, including providing prompt service appointments; greeting the customer immediately on arrival; knowing the vehicle’s service history; returning vehicles to customers in a clean condition; and offering alternative transportation to customers leaving their cars for service. These courtesies may seem intuitive, but many dealers do not provide them consistently. We find that they are very effective in raising customer satisfaction, provided that the service work performed on the vehicle is also satisfactory.”

The 2009 CSI Study is based on responses from 106,059 owners and lessees of 2004 to 2008 model-year vehicles. The study was fielded between October and December 2008. J.D. Power and Associates measures dealer service in various countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and the UK.

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

you know.. after visiting Lexus dealer for the first time to get some service done, i realized how poor Acura has been treating me for the last three years.

Ken1997TL

Acura dealerships are hit or miss IMO. Honda needs to crack down on some of them.

ostrich

It is such a shame that Lexus has no vehicle that excites me, in fact, with each new product coming out now the line-up is getting worse.... otherwise, it would have been great to own a vehicle with wonderful customer service!

My local Acura dealer has been fairly good. Not wonderful but pretty acceptable.

I am surprised by the lower ranking of Infiniti and by the very high ranking of Jaguar! Oops, Honda is low.... and Mazda is REALLY LOW! What is going on there?

TSX69

Honda looks low until you realize that it is @ least above the industry average & Toyota & Nissan are not. From my experience, Honda service was bad mostly in the sense that it was always a mad house due to the amount of people that owned Hondas; I suspect that Toyota suffers from the same problem.

Acura was going to make a push to improve dealerships but they pretty much called it off after the economy/market went bad. Hmmm, I wonder whatever happened to that guy that spent over a million dollars on his dealership in hopes that Acura was going to make good on their Tier 1 promise ...

The Mazda ranking does not surprise me @ all. After getting a recall done they gave my # to some companies who rang my phone non-stop for days. After searching the web for the #, I discovered that everyone else who was getting calls from that # had just come from a Mazda/Ford service ctr.

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

It's normal that Lexus vehicles do not really excite you. Lexus's main target segment has been the older generation, not us younger generation.

They have been trying pretty hard to come up with some strategies to attract younger buyers though.

TSX69

NewsDay
BY TOM INCANTALUPO | tom.incantalupo@newsday.com
7:40 PM EST, February 25, 2009

Dealers handling Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus vehicles do a better job than any others of keeping customers happy in their service departments, a new consumer survey has found.

But dealers handling less-expensive Toyota brand models score far below the industry average in the study.

The latest "Customer Service Index," which is updated annually by California-based market researchers J.D. Power and Associates, also found that vehicle price is no guarantee of top-flight treatment in a service department; while the highest scorers tend to be luxury makes like Lexus, Cadillac, Acura, Jaguar and Land Rover, dealers handling more moderately priced Buicks and Saturns kept their customers happier than those handling vehicles made by Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti, Power said.

The survey also threw cold water on the notion of Japanese cars and their dealers being better as a group than Detroit's Big Three cars and dealers; Nissan dealers scored third from the bottom. Nissan vehicles also have scored poorly in recent Power surveys.

A Nissan spokesman had no comment.

Suzuki dealers scored lowest, but Jon Osborn, research director at Power, says below average performance does not mean poor performance. "Some perform better than others," he said.

Osborn said the low ranking might be due partly to the brand's young and presumably less-affluent clientele, for whom a repair bill is more likely to be a budget buster than the same bill would be for a Lexus owner. "It's a bigger financial pain for young people," he said.

In a statement, Suzuki cited a "regrettable attrition of dealers and -- correspondingly -- reduced number of service personnel [which] puts stress on the service infrastructure and subsequent service satisfaction scores."

Dealers handling Toyotas ranked below dealers handling all of General Motors and Ford Motor Co. brands. Toyota spokesman Joe Tetherow in California said it is working with dealers to improve service and that dealers are investing billions of dollars in physical improvements. "We take it seriously," he said. "We don't like being where we are."

Osborn says top-ranked service departments excel at giving prompt appointments, greeting customers immediately when they arrive, offering alternative transportation, doing the job quickly and right the first time, and returning the car cleaner than when it arrived.

The new study is based on responses from 106,059 owners and lessees of 2004 through 2008 model-year vehicles.

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

^ Totally makes sense.

tritty12389

I work for one of the nicest acura dealerships in the nation and i'd have to agree. our dealership is constantly miles above the national, regional, and district CSI scores for acura. and the acura dealership right down the road from us is always below. i think it has a lot less to do with acura and more to do with the owner of the dealership

Black Tire

Agreed.

taitando

I'll vouch for the Lexus customer service. I had an IS300 for a couple years and had very good experiences with their retail and service departments. When I had my RL, it was hit and miss, but more often miss. I often found it difficult to get loaner cars or have TSB's applied with the Acura.

yohan81718

So they service Acuras at Lexus deaership too?

chill_dog

Looks like another win for GM.

kneedragger87

Lexus raped every other manufacture...

majin ssj eric

I've had nothing but great service at my Infiniti dealer...

biker

Looks like Jaguar is movin on up.....

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...oSXBQD9712DHO5

The most noteable thing in the article is that they changed the survey to exclude maintenance items - it's bizarre that they were included before.

Yumcha

Merged...post all CSIS news in here going forward. Thanks!

Mokos23

i thought a lot of you guys said that BMW's have poor reliability?

biker

^ it's all relative....