Consumers take a lot of factors into account when buying a new vehicle, but not all of those factors have to do with the vehicle itself. How people have been treated during past dealership visits can have an especially big impact on their purchase decisions as well.
So, which automakers are playing nicest with the customers? According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Customer Service Index (CSI) Study, Lexus is providing the best dealership experiences among the luxury brands, while a surprise name leads the mass-market brands: HUMMER.
Lexus bests its competition for the second straight year, with Power saying the brand “performs particularly well in four of the five measures: service quality; service initiation; service advisor; and service facility.” (The other category is “vehicle pick-up.”)
The rest of the top five, representing the only other brands with above average scores on the CSI, were Cadillac, Jaguar, Acura and BMW. Boston Jaguar Dealers noted that Cadillac was one of the two most improved companies compared to last year, along with Mercedes-Benz.
For the common folk, General Motors made a very impressive showing in the study, with GM divisions taking the top four spots among mass-market brands, and six of the top seven. The improvement hasn’t been much of a surprise to Minneapolis Chevrolet, which has steady aimed at improving customer service in every way. But if that’s the good news, here’s the bad: Three of those divisions are now among the dearly departed: First-place HUMMER, Saturn, which finished second in the study, and Pontiac, coming in at number six on the list.
Other above-average mass-market brands included Buick (#3), Chevrolet (#4), MINI (#5), and GMC (#7), followed by Mercury, Ford, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Honda, in that order. Seeing the greatest improvements in this part of the study were Volkswagen and Kia.
The 2010 report also showed a bit of a silver lining to the cloudy sales seasons of 2008-2009. J.D. Power indicated that the lower sales volumes meant fewer people coming to dealerships for service, allowing the dealerships to take more time with each customer. Richmond used Lexus dealers can attest to this treatment along with retailers of other premium brands such as dealers of Infiniti preowned cars in Mass. As a result, CSI for the industry as a whole improved for the 10th consecutive year.
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