Improving Survey Take Rate

[1000cuts]

Good day y'all!

I've been reading a lot of great posts here, but this is my first time posting so I wanted to first say thanks because there really is a ton of awesome ideas on these forums.

I am hoping for some help since I recently started working for a large Dealership Service Dept and we recently switched over to Net Promoter Score as our key metric on the Service Drive, and I would be very interested and appreciative of any ideas y'all may have on how we might get more customers to take the email survey. We've been verifying emails, providing reminders during and following up on services with a reminder about the survey, and trying to come up with clever ideas to get customers engaged and build rapport, but I still feel like we're missing out on too many that just aren't following through when the survey comes through their email.

At our Dealership our NPS score is based on the question "How likely are you to recommend our Dealership to other?", and the customer's score us on a scale of 1-5

Does anyone here by chance have experience with this type of survey model and be willing to share any best practices to improve the survey take rate? Or improve NPS in general?

Thanks again for all of the great posts and info on here, I came from working for a manufacturer and as I get more experience at the Dealer level I'm hoping I can contribute here too

 

[Carsten]

As a end user:
1. no participation = ok service, not special enough to bother praising anyone.
2. participation = pissed off or very happy

What do I get for helping you?
How about a $5 off coupon? This would motivate me, I'd probably forget about the damn thing so you don't loose $5, but it might get more repeats out of me.

Why would a dealer be different than any other retail service for something like this?

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

How about a $5 off coupon?

Dealers can't offer anything in return for filling out the survey.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

As a end user:
1. no participation = ok service, not special enough to bother praising anyone.
2. participation = pissed off or very happy

What do I get for helping you?
How about a $5 off coupon? This would motivate me, I'd probably forget about the damn thing so you don't loose $5, but it might get more repeats out of me.

Why would a dealer be different than any other retail service for something like this?

I wish that I could tell you what the secret bullet is, because we certainly haven't found it. We did start having more success when we implemented having the Finance Manager walk the customer through what each question meant and why it is important at the end of their process. We printed and laminated the survey questions and go through it with the guest.

 

[Carsten]

I was thinking back to when I was a wee tad younger. I used to walk up to tables of ladies and ask how everything was going? How are the drinks? How's the atmosphere. Lots of people thought I was a manager or the owner.

The coffee guy could ask if they want something to drink and at the same time about the stage that the customer is going through.
Hey! Coffee Late or Espresso? How are things going so far? They could send out the bat signal if something is going south too.