Whenever you buy or lease a new car from a dealership, the manufacturer sends you a survey in the following weeks.
In recent years, though, every time I've bought a car, my sales person tells me he/she needs me to give them a "10" (on a scale of 1 to 10) on EVERY question, or else they'll get in trouble, or not get a bonus, or somesuch--on EVERY question, even questions about things the sales person isn't responsible for. The sales person says if there's any reason at all why my experience doesn't rate a perfect 10 in every single category, tell them now so they can fix it.
I don't like this.
I'm a college teacher and my students fill out an anonymous evaluation of me at the end of every semester. If I tried to influence them into giving me better ratings, I'd get in a lot of trouble.
But the purpose of my evaluations is to find out my strengths and weaknesses so I know what to try to improve next time.
The purpose of these auto surveys is different. It seems to be to generate marketing materials, e.g. they can say "look! our customers give us perfect 10s in every category! therefore you should buy your car from US!".
I'm looking at the survey now. For each question, the possible answers are 1 to 10 and they are labeled like this:
1 or 2 = unacceptable
3, 4, 5 = average
6, 7, 8 = outstanding
9 or 10 = truly exceptional
So, 6 out of 10 is outstanding? The upper half of the available choices are outstanding or higher and only the lowest 2 out of 10 options are unsatisfactory. There are no options between "average" and "outstanding." All of this leads to favorably biased responses according to textbooks on survey design.
I don't want my salesman to lose his bonus or whatever. He was helpful, he didn't use annoying psychological tricks to pressure me, he actually knew the cars he was selling really well (which is often not the case, sadly), and he seemed to be a nice person.
But I also don't want to give my dealer straight 10s when they were not "Truly Exceptional" in every single category.
What do you think? Should I just give in? Should I fill out the survey honestly? Should I not fill out the survey at all?
What do you do with this survey?
In recent years, though, every time I've bought a car, my sales person tells me he/she needs me to give them a "10" (on a scale of 1 to 10) on EVERY question, or else they'll get in trouble, or not get a bonus, or somesuch--on EVERY question, even questions about things the sales person isn't responsible for. The sales person says if there's any reason at all why my experience doesn't rate a perfect 10 in every single category, tell them now so they can fix it.
I don't like this.
I'm a college teacher and my students fill out an anonymous evaluation of me at the end of every semester. If I tried to influence them into giving me better ratings, I'd get in a lot of trouble.
But the purpose of my evaluations is to find out my strengths and weaknesses so I know what to try to improve next time.
The purpose of these auto surveys is different. It seems to be to generate marketing materials, e.g. they can say "look! our customers give us perfect 10s in every category! therefore you should buy your car from US!".
I'm looking at the survey now. For each question, the possible answers are 1 to 10 and they are labeled like this:
1 or 2 = unacceptable
3, 4, 5 = average
6, 7, 8 = outstanding
9 or 10 = truly exceptional
So, 6 out of 10 is outstanding? The upper half of the available choices are outstanding or higher and only the lowest 2 out of 10 options are unsatisfactory. There are no options between "average" and "outstanding." All of this leads to favorably biased responses according to textbooks on survey design.
I don't want my salesman to lose his bonus or whatever. He was helpful, he didn't use annoying psychological tricks to pressure me, he actually knew the cars he was selling really well (which is often not the case, sadly), and he seemed to be a nice person.
But I also don't want to give my dealer straight 10s when they were not "Truly Exceptional" in every single category.
What do you think? Should I just give in? Should I fill out the survey honestly? Should I not fill out the survey at all?
What do you do with this survey?