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Letter to the Editor

Satisfaction Is Not a C+

Our feature article this month has collected comments from shop owners in Indiana and California who participated in State Farm’s test of the insurer’s parts ordering program. The opinions given were certainly diverse. Overall, I think I would give a C+ to the project. Before contemplating a national launch, State Farm will need to do some tweaking.

The huge jump in online purchasing by American consumers throughout the past year certainly suggests that electronic order placement can be workable. For this parts ordering program to make sense, it will have to get easier to use - and get used efficiently by shops and dealer parts departments.

April’s TrendLine survey (See page 18.) looks at collision repair facilities’ satisfaction with Customer Satisfaction Indexing (CSI) programs. The percentage of survey respondents who believe that long-term CSI monitoring has improved shop performance is a big shock to me. Only 50 percent of shop owners who responded feel that CSI tracking has helped with quality. This number is significantly down from last year’s 89 percent. What happened? What needs to change? Please phone or e-mail me. (See below for contact information.)

CSI program providers certainly will be concerned with the satisfaction levels of shop customers. The reported overall level of satisfaction with CSI program providers, 3.2, a C+ on a scale of 1 to 5, is not satisfactory to INSIGHT or any of the other industry CSI providers. Your comments are needed.

The big news this month is the merger of CCC Information Services and Mitchell Inter-national (See page 3.). Things are never dull in estimating system provider territory. INSIGHT will continue to track this.

Allstate (See page 12.) has made available online 150,000 pages of documents pertaining to the insurer’s review of its claims practices, done in the 1990s with the assistance of McKinsey and Company. I may not finish reading them until 2020.

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