Your Source for Up-To-Date News and Research on the Collision Repair Industry 

 

click here to subscribe to the FREE INSIGHT Editor's Desk News Alert Email

SUBSCRIBERS-ONLY
Today's News
INSIGHT This Month
INSIGHT Archives
Survey Center
Letter to the Editor

Business Tools
Subscription Information
CSI Reporting
Financial Analysis
IRS Audit Guide

Management/
Technical Info
1999 Market Watch Rates
INSIGHT Inside this month's issue...

Feedback
Letter to the Editor

Keeping Tabs on Customer Service

Is Your CSI the Marketing Tool It Ought to Be?

Most shop owners can readily see some of the internal benefits of tracking their shop’s customer satisfaction. Because they understand the impact customer satisfaction and retention can have on the bottom line, they know that CSI - customer satisfaction indexing - provides information that can be as valuable as those on the monthly profit and loss report.

This can be particularly true for absentee owners or those with multiple locations, although CSI can also help shops of all sizes get valuable ideas from customers for service and quality improvements, and also base employee compensation on service as well as sales or production.

But aside from these internal uses, is CSI really a valuable marketing tool? The shop consolidators in the industry appear convinced that it is.

"I’d say it’s a very vital piece to our overall presentation when we’re talking with insurance companies," said Marty Wojciechowski, of the 68-store ABRA Auto Body and Glass chain. "Rather than just walking in with a handshake and saying we’re provide great customer service, CSI gives us the data to support it."

Wojciechowski admits that insurers are just as interested in severity and cycle time, but says that CSI is not far behind in terms of value.

"It’s not the most important, but it is one of the major factors that goes into setting us up as a little different than our competition," he said. "It gives you an edge when you have more data than the average shop out there."

"Insurers are putting a great deal of emphasis on it," Clark Plucinski, executive vice president of True2Form agreed. "They’ve finally understood that one percentage point of CSI can have a phenomenal impact on policyholder retention."

"Insurance companies, like all of us as business owners or consumers, are looking for value," said Cheryl Boyd of Boyd Market Development, one of a handful of companies specializing in CSI services in the collision industry. "We know the concern they have with pricing, but they are just as interested in good value, and CSI provides shops with a marketing tool to show them how good your service quality is."

Ray Kihara of AutocheX, a California-based CSI provider, said insurers aren’t just talking about the importance of good customer service; they’re scrambling to provide it.

"It’s gotten way beyond lip service because of the competition for policyholders," he said. "It’s become a critical piece of the drive to retain customers."

There are two primary ways collision repair shops collect customer satisfaction information: reply cards and phone surveys.

The INSIGHT CSI service, for example, uses a 2-part reply card. The shop completes one half of the card - providing the administrative data for the job and a tracking number - and submits it to INSIGHT. The other half (with the same tracking number) is given to the vehicle-owner to complete and return to INSIGHT postage-paid.

There are a number of advantages to a reply card system, most notably its lower cost. It is also less labor-intensive to perform, and may be seen less intrusive to consumers, some of whom may find a phone survey an irritating interruption (particularly if they receive two such phone calls, one from the shop and one from the insurer). Response rates to reply cards are generally lower than those achieved through phone surveys, but if the importance of returning the card is emphasized to the customers picking up their repaired vehicles, a return rate of 40 to 50 percent is achievable.

Phone surveys solicit opinions from a more random sampling of customers, and the response rate is higher. Many people, it seems, would prefer to respond verbally rather than in writing.

"People are busy and it takes a little more effort for them to respond in writing," ABRA’s Wojciechowski said. "You may hear from the people who are unhappy, and maybe some of the good things, but you’ll miss out on all the rest."

Ted McLintock of Collision Team of America likes the phone survey because it increases the percentage of customers the company’s 33 stores "check in with."

"We find it’s really important to make those phone calls because a lot of customers have questions or concerns they might not have let us know about otherwise," he said.

Phone surveys may also allow the shop to learn about (and resolve) customer complaints more quickly than a reply card system. They can be time consuming if done in-house, however, or more expensive than the reply card system if outsourced.

Not surprisingly, CSI vendors say there are a number of advantages to not conducting the surveys in-house - and many shops and consolidators seem to agree.

• First, conducting CSI surveys (especially phone surveys) can be time-consuming. Too often, collecting and compiling the CSI data becomes a low priority when the shop gets busy, and it doesn’t get done consistently.
• Second, customers may prefer to respond to an independent, third-party. This allows them to avoid a direct confrontation with the shop, and they may be more candid in their responses.

  "As someone who tracked it on my own for many years, I learned that customers don’t like to give you bad news unless they’re very angry," Plucinski said. "I use the analogy of a waiter asking you how your steak is. Generally you say it’s fine, even if you’re not thrilled with it because you want to avoid the confrontation, the hassle. People are a lot more prone to tell a third-party if there was something they were unhappy with."

• Third, using an independent service lends credibility to a shop’s CSI numbers. Shop owners can be assured that the numbers aren’t being altered by an employee. Potential customers may place more faith in findings coming from an independent source. And insurers, agents and other referral sources appreciate the documented evidence provided by a third-party to back up the shop’s claims of service and quality.
• Fourth, the companies offering CSI services generally provide prompt notification of any negative customer comments (allowing the shop to resolve problems quickly), as well as weekly or monthly summaries, with charts or graphs that can help highlight trends or problem areas, and show how the shop’s performance compares with that of other shops using CSI. These companies may also offer marketing ideas or materials to help the shop use CSI information to increase its business.

No matter which method or vendor you choose for your CSI program, the next step is making it part of your marketing program.

John Webb of CSI Complete, an Ohio-based company that provides CSI services for about 300 shops nationwide, said he recommends thinking of CSI as a way to market to three groups: existing customers, potential customers and secondary customers (referral sources).

"The ‘word of mouth advertising’ you get comes from your existing customers," Webb said. "Checking back with those customers is like a grass roots marketing campaign. Every one of those people you save from maybe being a little unsatisfied about something to being a champion for your business is someone you’re going to get referrals from down the road."

Plucinski said that if a True2Form customer tells the CSI interviewer they are satisfied enough to refer friends or family, that customer receives something from True2Form: a personal note of thanks, a coupon for future service, etc.

He said the "flash reports" they receive from the company’s CSI provider when a customer reports being dissatisfied generally give the shop a chance to fix a problem and save that relationship.

"If nothing else, in the worst case, it gives you a chance to apologize and maybe settle that person down a bit so that maybe they won’t tell 11 people, maybe they’ll only tell three," Plucinski said.

CSI data can also be used in the shop’s advertising and public relations campaigns to reach potential customers, Webb said.

"You can use it to close sales by displaying pages from your CSI reports prominently in customer areas," he said. "Some shops staple a CSI report page - perhaps the one showing the percentage of customers that would recommend the shop - to their estimates."

"If a DRP customer who has never heard of your shop c-omes in, they’re looking for something to raise their level of confidence," Plucinski said. "If they can see your CSI posted and compared to others, that’s going to help you make that sale."

Webb said CSI is perhaps most valuable as a tool to market to "secondary customers," the insurance claims offices and agents, auto dealers, towing companies and others that can refer customers to your shop.

"You want to make sure they know that you care about what you’re doing," he said. "CSI reports are one way of solidifying the commitment you have to quality as a shop. Taking them a box of candy is nice, but while you’re there, show them some documentation. Tell them, ‘I actually have a program in place because this is how concerned I am.’"

ABRA’s Wojciechowski said CSI reports provide a good reason to call on agents and referral sources regularly. "It gives us a little more to talk about in our sales presentation, and generates a lot of great questions and discussion," he said.

Webb said he recommends to his clients that they share with these referral sources some of the negative feedback the shop receives. "It shows your integrity, and gives you a chance to explain that you have a specific program and process in place when there’s an unhappy customer," he said. "They’re in business, too, so they understand that everyone makes mistakes, and we all know there’s going to be an unhappy customer at some point down the road. Showing them how you respond to that is the key."

Plucinski said that when True2Form receives a "positive flash report" about a customer who was extremely satisfied, the shop will fax that report to that customer’s insurance agent.

"Or if there’s a problem with a customer, we might fax that to the agent as well, to let him or her know we’re following up with the vehicle-owner to take care of it," Plucinski said.

Because most CSI providers also ask about the customer’s satisfaction with the insurer involved in the claim, the reports provide shops with valuable information for insurance agents and claims offices.

"It helps unify the efforts to improve customer service and retain customers," Plucinski said. "We can bring that report to them every month and say to an agent, ‘This is what your customer says about you. I thought you’d want to know. We’d like to help you improve this, so how can we work more closely together in the future.’ That’s pretty powerful.

"In the past, we all talked about our great customer service, but we didn’t really have anything to bring to the table to prove it," Plucinski said. "CSI helps you not only improve your service, but prove it to the people you’re trying to market to."

Feedback

Have a comment about this article? Send Email to Charles Baker, INSIGHT's Publisher

©2000 Collision Repair Industry INSIGHT
All Rights Reserved

FEATURED
LINKS:

INSIGHT Supports the NABC!
Do You?