What is a CSI score in automotive?
Published: March 26, 2024
The success of your dealership or service center isn’t just about the quality of the cars you sell or the repairs you make. The complete customer experience you provide also has an impact, and to be successful you need to know how to monitor it. That’s where a customer satisfaction index (CSI) score comes into play.
In this guide, we’ll explore what the customer satisfaction index is, how paying attention to it benefits your business, and how using CSI data can inspire actions that create positive outcomes. This way, your dealership can help customers feel great about their experience.
Let’s start with the big picture. While there are various methods to obtain CSI scores, this article will predominantly concentrate on the most widely recognized method: J.D. Power's CSI scores. The J.D. Power US Customer Service Index score (also referred to as CSI) indicates how satisfied automotive customers across the country are with their experiences.
J.D. Power’s CSI Study surveys owners of vehicles between one and 3 years old about their most recent service visit, including warranty and non-warranty repairs. It researches satisfaction across 5 factors:
- Service initiation: Ease of scheduling appointments and attentiveness of the service adviser.
- Vehicle pickup: How long it takes to retrieve the vehicle when service is complete.
- Service facility: Appearance, layout, and amenities of the service center.
- Service quality: Technical quality of the service and repairs.
- Service adviser: How well the adviser listens, explains repairs, and addresses concerns.
The J.D. Power study is crucial because it evaluates customer satisfaction across these key service factors, providing insights to help automotive dealerships and service centers enhance the overall customer experience, ultimately driving success and loyalty.
Why is an individual shop’s CSI score important?
Dealers are seeing less revenue
One key finding of J.D. Power’s most recent study is that as automakers produce more-reliable vehicles, dealers are seeing less revenue from warranty repairs and customer-paid service jobs. Consumers are also keeping their vehicles longer before trading up for a new car. This extends the ownership period when a car needs ongoing maintenance and repairs.
Loyalty and retention
For dealerships and service centers to adapt, they must increasingly focus on building loyalty and retaining customers over time. That requires an understanding of why vehicle owners choose to return to the same shop versus going elsewhere through surveying customers to find out what your score is.
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Benefits of CSI scores
Before you calculate your CSI score, do you want to understand how it can help your automotive business? Take a closer look at some of the advantages.
Improve dealership loyalty
When customers are satisfied, they often become repeat buyers. And that’s critical to keeping business going. Research shows that 93% of customers will likely buy again from companies with excellent customer service.
Increase sales
The happy customers whom you retain are also more likely to recommend your dealership. Customers will tell an average of 9 people about a positive customer service experience. This ripple effect may allow you to reach a wider audience and bring in more new business.
Boost alignment
Teams that are very connected and highly engaged show a profitability increase of 23%, but it’s challenging to keep everyone on the same page. Different team members and departments may have their focus pulled in different directions.
When you can point everyone to the same metrics, they can begin to recognize those numbers as a go-to source of truth. They can also come to a shared understanding more quickly about what’s working and what isn’t.
Enhance operations and offerings
The way customers interact with and feel about your business can directly reflect the way you’re operating. By identifying gaps in service quality or product offerings, you can channel resources more efficiently. Paying attention to your CSI can offer a roadmap for refinement and may even help you resolve issues before they make a significant impact.
How to calculate a CSI score
You have the answer to the question “What is a CSI score?” But that’s just the first step. Knowing how it’s calculated is also critical. J.D. Power conducts extensive market research to determine CSI scores. By surveying thousands of owners on key aspects of their service experience, J.D. Power can benchmark customer satisfaction across automotive brands. Here’s what you need to know about the process.
1. They survey a large sample of vehicle owners who had service done at dealerships.
2. The survey asks vehicle owners to rate their satisfaction across service initiation, vehicle pickup, service facility, service quality, and service adviser.
3. For each factor, respondents assign a score on a 10-point scale (with 10 being completely satisfied and 1 being completely dissatisfied).
4. J.D. Power gathers all the survey data and calculates average satisfaction scores.
CSI versus CSAT: What’s the difference?
With so many metrics to choose from, what's most important for you to pay attention to? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but you can make an informed decision that aligns with your business goals. Below is a quick comparison between these scores and scales.
CSI is a widely accepted automotive industry metric that allows brands to benchmark their service satisfaction. It provides actionable and standardized insights into critical customer touchpoints.
CSAT (which stands for “customer satisfaction”) looks at one specific transaction or interaction. It usually involves the dealership asking customers a single question like “How satisfied were you with your experience today on a scale of 1-10?” This score is calculated by averaging all answers.
Bottom line: CSI and CSAT provide complementary insights. CSI benchmarks the broader service experience, while CSAT offers a pulse check on specific touchpoints. Using both metrics can provide a more comprehensive view of your customers’ satisfaction across interactions and over time. The combination of CSI trend analysis and real-time CSAT feedback is powerful for identifying strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to better serve your customers.
How to use CSI insights for dealerships or service centers
Analyze trends
J.D. Power has conducted its CSI study for over 30 years using a consistent methodology. This enables businesses to analyze trends in their CSI scores year over year and identify changes in service satisfaction levels.
By looking at CSI data, automotive dealerships can focus on upward or downward trends and better understand their strengths and weaknesses through customer feedback. The insights that the automotive industry can gather from regularly monitoring service satisfaction can drive meaningful improvements.
Create a feedback loop
In general, CSI scores can give you an idea of how satisfied your customers are, but they don't give you a 360-degree view. Understanding where the experience may be lacking can give you ideas about where to dig deeper into potential areas for change.
By pairing CSI scores with feedback from customers, you can develop a better understanding of how customers perceive your business. If, for example, customers frequently give positive scores but mention long wait times, you’ll know where to focus your attention. This will empower you to make data-driven decisions that elevate the customer experience.
Zoom in on employee training
Your employees have a direct impact on customer satisfaction, but they don’t always have visibility into what makes the most impact. When we all know better, we can do better. You can use the CSI score to help them uncover opportunities to improve.
You can also use CSI feedback as a training tool. It can help pinpoint areas where staff training might bridge the gap between customers’ expectations and actual experiences. Regularly updating your training programs based on new feedback and CSI scores ensures that your staff stays aligned with customer expectations as they shift.
Focus on weak points
If certain areas repeatedly emerge as pain points, you can prioritize addressing them. Monitoring CSI scores before and after implementing changes can provide valuable insights into how effective your interventions are.
Before-and-after comparisons can also show you how much weight that particular pain point has on overall customer satisfaction. If the CSI score improves along with the score of an initial weak point, you’ll know you’ve addressed a crucial aspect of customer experience.
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