How to stop feedback fraud at Auto Dealerships

Picture this.

You are a savvy CX manager who knows the importance of delighting customers in driving Sales. You have excellent CX strategies in place, backed by customer feedback data and insights. Your brand should be thriving. Your customers should be happy.  

But that’s not the case.  

Because what if the data that you have based your decisions on is incorrect? That would be a huge problem.  All that money, all that work, only to arrive at conclusions that might not be completely accurate.

This is the problem that most car dealerships face today. Customer Feedback fraud is all too common and hard to manage. However, it can be minimised.  

In this article, we break down the ways in which dealership employees try to provide fake feedback and how to stop it. So, buckle up and get reading.

‍

How some dealership perform feedback fraud

Some of the common ways that employees use to game the system are-

1. They give out their own phone numbers instead of the customers’.
2. Sometimes, they request the customers to forward them the feedback emails or SMS, and then fill them out themselves.
3. Often, they will proactively call up customers and request a good rating.  

All these actions not are not only harmful for your company’s CX department, they also erode customer trust.  

However, they can be managed easily. Here’s how Numr avoids feedback fraud and ensures the accuracy of customer feedback data.

Here's how to prevent feedback fraud

1. Don't incentivise Customer Satisfaction survey scores

If you conduct NPS or customer satisfaction surveys, make sure that your employees are neither rewarded nor punished based on the overall rating. Like we have started before, NPS is more than just a number. It is symbolic of your relationship with your customers.  

Furthermore, Numr has witnessed several times how rewarding or punishing employees based on NPS removes the focus from customer satisfaction. Instead, the staff tries to debunk the data to escape penalisation.  

In fact, if you want to find out how we improved customer satisfaction for retail bank branches, click here.  

2. Don’t conduct telephonic surveys

Telephone surveys are expensive, intrusive and yet inaccurate. Moreover, the results of telephonic surveys usually fluctuate based on the quality of the tele caller, which is extremely hard to manage.

3. Text Analytics for feedback comments

Use Text Analytics to identify feedback reviews written by dealership employees.

If one employee is writing numerous feedback comments, then chances are that they will have a pattern (repeated words and phrases), which can be easily detected with Text Analytics.

If you’d like to learn in plain English how we use Text Analytics to analyse feedback, go here.  

4. Detect IP addresses and cookies

Any good survey system should be able to detect the device (using cookies) and the geographic location (through IP addresses) at which the survey is being taken.  

So, if numerous surveys are being taken on the same device, you will know that there is a problem.  

5. Measure the average survey time

Try to measure the average time it takes to complete your survey. If someone is completing the survey too quickly, chances are that it’s a dealer who is extremely familiar with it.  

RESPONSE RATE VS RATING

While, the above tips are extremely useful in identifying customer feedback fraud, perhaps there is something else that you should be more focused on.

That something else is Response Rate.

Why?

Simply out, response rate is an exceedingly accurate indicator of your customers’ relationship with your company.

Focusing on the response rate by asking the customers for feedback and not a good rating is fruitful. It promotes truthful behaviour and improves the accuracy of your feedback data. What’s more, it strengthens the relationship between your customers and your company.  

All CX practices should and must lead to increased trust and loyalty between you and your customers. And, obtaining correct feedback is the first step towards this.