With an assist from Maritz Research, Hyundai dealers unlocked the mystery to customer satisfaction through a proprietary technique known as Make or Break Customer Satisfaction.
Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. partnered with Maritz Research to determine what drives true customer satisfaction, specifically for Hyundai sales and service customers. The Make or Break Customer Satisfaction technique delves into the extremes of customer satisfaction surveys – from exemplary to catastrophic – to better understand how positive and negative customer experiences affect the dealerships, and ultimately, the manufacturers.
Within the Make or Break methodology, two different customer reactions are examined:
The Reward Effect: When outstanding performance in one area outweighs shortcomings in other areas, resulting in a truly exceptional overall experience.
The Punishment (or Non-Compensatory) Effect: When poor performance in just one area penalizes the brand or company severely, even if they perform well in all other areas.
“A customer can buy a car at a good price from an extremely helpful and professional salesperson at a reputable dealership, but if that car has a dent in it when the customer picks it up – we see The Punishment Effect. In this simplistic example, that one negative outweighs everything else,” Chris Travell, Vice President of Strategic Consulting for the Automotive Research Group at Maritz Research, said in a press release. “This customer response may seem intuitive, but what makes the Make or Break technique different is that we can quantify the relationship and determine its impact on dealerships’ future sales, services, and referrals.”
According to Maritz, in more than 25 case studies across several industries, the Make or Break approach more accurately predicted what areas companies needed to focus on to improve the customer experience compared to traditional research methodologies.
“The predictive power of the Make or Break methodology means dealers can use their resources more efficiently to invest in areas that actually impact the bottom line,” Kevin Lattery, Vice President of Marketing Sciences at Maritz Research, said. “We’ve found that people expect good customer service. In those cases, doing something well may not provide a huge lift to customer satisfaction scores, but customers can still punish dealers severely for not doing something well – and the penalty for poor service can be seven times greater than the reward.”
To find out what customers value most, Maritz Research and Hyundai Auto Canada collaborated on a consumer study -- which identified the drivers of buyer satisfaction for Hyundai’s sales and service customers. The top responses include:
Sales Experience: professionalism and courtesy toward the customer, ease of agreement in making the deal, and full disclosure of charges and fees.
Vehicle Services: thoroughness of the work performed, correct diagnosis of the problem, and time to complete the service.
“All customers have very high expectations when they shop for a new vehicle and they demand exceptional quality, reliability and durability. That’s really the cost of entry into the auto industry,” Steve Kelleher, President and CEO of Hyundai Auto Canada, said. “The next battlefield in the fight for auto sales is in the showroom. If we can give our customers a better experience, we’re going to be more likely to sell them a vehicle, and have them come back to us to get it serviced.”