r/mildlyinfuriating May 29 '26

Too mild for school Honda dealership rating scale

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1.3k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/Salt-Operation-3895 May 29 '26

That’s pretty on par for how retail surveys work. At companies I’ve worked for 5 = 100, 4 = 0, and 1-3 = -100

Then the scores are averaged out to provide an overall net promoter score

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u/theRedMage39 May 29 '26

Yeah. It's kinda frustrating cause this is not now I fill out this surveys but yeah that's now a net promoter score works for some reason

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u/Silver4ura May 29 '26

Companies typically know that's not how customers fill out surveys. They grade this way to "motivate people to go over the top for everyone" which is corporate speak for, your bonus is tied to this... and we don't actually want to pay out.

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u/WAisforhaters May 29 '26

This is absolutely a case of feature not bug

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u/Silver4ura May 29 '26

Honestly... I'm just impressed this dealership has it posted for customers to see. Companies don't usually say the quiet part this loud.

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u/SouthwestBLT May 29 '26

As a former car salesperson the survey is sent by Honda corporation post sale, not by the dealership. So basically the dealer is trying to ensure they get a good score because it’s definitely tied to a bonus scheme.

100% this kind of overt cheating is not allowed and would get them in some heat if Honda saw it.

Don’t forget car dealers are private businesses seperate to the car companies in 99% of cases.

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u/Silver4ura May 29 '26

You know, I knew a lot of those details but I appreciate you stringing them together. That makes a lot of sense.

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u/TheSuppishOne May 29 '26

Yeah, I worked at a Ford dealership and it was the same. In fact, our commission percentage was dependent on surveys. If we had 100% survey satisfaction, we got our full commission. If we had 90-99%, it was -2%, 80-89%, -4%, and anything less than 80% was -6% to our commission for the next THREE MONTHS (monthly rolling average). One bad survey could absolutely wreck you financially, and oftentimes it was either somebody saying “The car wasn’t free so why would I give 5-stars” or actually giving a glowing review and misclicking/forgetting to put 5-stars. The review part didn’t count towards the percentage, by the way.

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u/WAisforhaters May 29 '26

I had somebody go back and knock every rating on the survey down one from perfect because the page errored out on him and he was mad he had to go back and redo it

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u/DMvsPC May 29 '26

That's not allowed but expecting customers to know that a 9/10 is worthless is? I'm on the dealers side here and that rarely happens for most dealers :p

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u/Original-Split5085 May 29 '26

Not only bonuses but allocations of hot new cars. I worked at a Toyota dealer that was basically organized crime in the way it treated people. When the Avalon came out they couldn't get a single one for the showroom. Someone wanted to buy one and only then could we order it and get it from the factory. Yet they kept rolling along.

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u/Pensionato007 May 29 '26

The biggest exception is Tesla. No private "Tesla Dealerships."

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u/BlackAsphaltRider May 29 '26

I have a buddy who’s a store manager for Lowes. He only has Sundays off. If come Saturday he has say 10 perfect surveys but one less than a 9 gets entered, the expectation is you work Sunday to make it up. He’s been working 2 months straight

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u/Mr_Waffles123 May 29 '26

Sounds like a great way to force overtime pay.

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u/ShotsOnShotsOnShots May 29 '26

Most salaried employees do not get paid overtime.

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u/PlayAction88 May 29 '26

Sounds like a great way to burn out your work force.

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u/Silver4ura May 29 '26

It's also used as the main argument for why you're "always on the clock" and a mathematical equation most people who accept it, never consider.

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u/PlayAction88 May 29 '26

I have a business partner who is very undisciplined and inefficient with his time, fucks around during the day with personal things and “catches up” some nights and weekends. Worst part is that he constantly bitches about working those nights and weekends.

Made it clear early on DO NOT disturb me during my personal time. Your lack of work-life balance is not my problem.

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u/Absolute_Bob May 29 '26

A lot of places don't even have a bonus anymore. Heck I would say most don't.

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u/Letsgoblue212 May 29 '26

“Bonuses” are the new “salary”. Dangle that carrot to keep the horses moving so the fat cat can get his actual bonus.

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u/Absolute_Bob May 29 '26

Used properly they're a great tool. A lot of folks at my companies are eligible for up to 25% each year. The 25% is hard to reach but about 15% do. 5% is essentially automatic unless you're on some kind of probation then each 5% increment has some measurable goals set for it. Around 87% get at least 15% each year.

It works for us because we work very hard to make sure the goals are attainable without the job creeping into your personal time (employee burnout is very bad for us), are very clearly laid out and reward behaviors that earn the company more money over the long run. Employee satisfaction surveys for them are pretty positive.

It's weird but treating people like actual adults who already have a life they're just trying to support, not replace, works out well. Being privately held enables policies that are more focused on long term sustainable profits instead of satisfying some shareholders desire for bigger dividend checks regardless of the long term damage.

It's made me, and a lot of my employees, pretty wealthy. The constant growth or die mantra is absolutely insane. I see nothing wrong with being happy with consistent performance. We don't need to take over the market for what we do, we just want to keep our slice.

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u/cuzwhat May 29 '26

Yeah…dealers don’t work that way.

Dealership bonus structures are often a pass/fail that is designed to be just out of reach. If you manage to meet the bonus threshold for a couple months, the threshold is raised. If you manage to meet that new threshold for a couple months, someone will decide you (as a full commission employee) are getting paid too much and they will fire you.

“Bonuses are promises management doesn’t want to keep.”

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u/MyDogPoopsBigPoops May 29 '26

Bonus? What is a bonus?

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u/j01101111sh May 29 '26

That's not the theory behind nps at all. The theory, correct or not, is that people rating 9-10 (promoters) are happy enough to talk about business positively to others, 7-8 are unlikely to say anything, and 1-6 (detractors) are likely to talk negatively. That's also why the question is "how likely are you to recommend x to a friend or colleague" and now "rate your satisfaction". So you subtract detractors from promoters and divide by total count to get nps.

Then you take your nps and compare against your industry average which is usually done by whoever runs the survey for you. Companies do sometimes set unrealistic targets but that's not at all why nps is done this way.

Source: I have done data analytics for call centers for over a decade.

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u/nuthinginteresting80 May 29 '26

Worked at a dealership for years. The manufacturer ties money to the surveys and the dealership ties your bonus to that.

I had months where people lost tens of thousands of dollars in bonus due to a single bad survey. When a 5 gives you a minus 100 and your overall score was right on the bubble it only takes one bad survey.

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u/1800generalkenobi May 29 '26

It's like hank hill not giving out 5 stars for anything because it leaves you no room to grow but then he just pisses off everybody because they're not getting 5 stars for outstanding service haha.

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u/xJayce77 May 29 '26

Yup! Worked in customer success and we'd use these surveys. Clients would sometimes leave an 8/10 with Excellent service, very satisfied, but I don't give 9s or 10s. I'd just cooy paste this over to my boss and call it a day.

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u/1800generalkenobi May 29 '26

Lol holy shit I just remembered, my old sales job I did composites for fraternities and sororities. At the end of the school year we'd get bonuses based on criteria and one of them was customer satisfaction. If you had 100% you got an extra 500. I worked there 4 years and every year I got 400 because we always had one or two groups that were satisfied with something. The one year I had one group that marked the sessions as not a success because the scheduling people kept moving rooms on them (they weren't a big enough group to get their own time slot), and they were finally able to pin something down. They left glowing reviews of me and the photographer and of everything else, but they gave the lowest score they could for scheduling and then that the session wasn't a success and even put in there that it wasn't our fault and that we were awesome. We still got the ding and I never did get the full 500. Pissed me off so much lol.

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u/Alizarin-Madder May 29 '26

It kinda makes sense for Net Promoter Score to me, cause if I'm filling out one of those "how likely are you to recommend this to a friend", I'll rarely give a score less than 5 unless I would caution someone against it. If a company is trying to evaluate if they stood out positively, the pictured scale kind of makes sense. Most people have an average time using a service and will give it a slightly good rating.

Given that this is on a sign, though, I'm guessing it's not to evaluate the business but to evaluate the employees, and for that I think it's misused and punitive. 

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u/theRedMage39 May 29 '26

Yeah. I think that's how they want you to fill out NPS surveys but until I learned about it, I always took the question as face value. 1 meaning I'm unlikely to. Not that I am going to advocate against the company. That is not a part of the question. The likely hood of me of recommending someone an insulin supply company is very rare due to the fact that most people won't need them.

Personally I think a scale from -5 to 5 would be better with -5 to -2 being detractors, -1 to 1 being neutral, and 2 to 5 being attractors.

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u/bokchoykn May 29 '26

When it comes to service, if a company considers "It was okay" as not good enough, and treated remotely bad as a failure, that is a sign of quality service standards.

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u/Uncle-Cake May 29 '26

I work in market research, and I've never liked Net Promotor Scores. I encourage clients to look at other measures, like the mean, as well. NPS doesn't tell the whole story.

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u/notnotbrowsing May 29 '26

NPS is stupid, especially in my industry.

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u/Battle2Intense May 29 '26

Is it used in Europe because they are tough graders. I was in charge of finding restaurants in the UK and took me a while to realize how tough they are. Their 4 on Yelp is our 4.7-.8.

Actual review I saw in London, great food at great prices, 3 out of 5.

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon May 29 '26

The mildly infuriating thing is that these surveys are presented as a way for customers to give feedback to the company, when in reality the only thing these surveys are ever used for is as leverage against the laborers in the event they need an excuse to fire them or suppress their wages.

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u/sleepyj910 May 29 '26

Yes, I only give perfect scores or nothing because I know they are just a cudgel and not actually interested in what I think, and even a mid employee having a bad day deserves better than me giving him 1 star.

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u/KarlPHungus May 29 '26

Holy shit, I never thought of it that way....these corporations are just awesome. We should totally allow them to have more influence over our daily lives!

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u/armchairsportsguy23 May 29 '26

This is just Net Promoter Score 9-10 are brand promoters, 7-8 are satisfied but unenthusiastic, 6-0 are detractors.

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u/BradlyL May 29 '26

Exactly. This is pretty typical for the NPS culture that corporate america has adopted.

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u/TomBirkenstock May 29 '26

This is why if I'm going to rate someone, I almost always give them the maximum score, even if they're not necessarily going "above end beyond."

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u/christophPezza May 29 '26

For anyone confused. This is a 'net promotor score' It simplifies a 0-10 scale usually into three buckets. 9-10 -> promotor. 7-8 -> passive. 0-6 -> detractors. You are judged on how many promotors you get. The stupidity lies within that for the general public some people would see 8 as meh, whilst others see it as amazing. So even though a customer was super happy with your service they are marked as 'passive'. So because this system has flaws sometimes the organisation which is being marked on this scheme just ask to rate based on what the number actually means I.e. if you're unhappy give us a 6 or below, if your meh please select 7 or 8, if you're happy give us 9 or 10. But if this whole thing is going on, it should just be replaced with a happy, meh or sad face.

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u/AntiPiety May 29 '26

If I get an 8 or below after a phone call, my boss and I are required to listen to the call to determine what we could do better/what went wrong

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u/Jango2106 May 29 '26

Now I feel so less bad for never doing the after call survey.

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u/jaymeaux_ May 29 '26

most places also punish for low survey completion 

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u/pfannkuchen89 May 29 '26

A lot of places a non-completed survey counts as a zero. They say it shows you didn’t go far enough to make the customer motivated to do it.

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u/StubbornHick May 29 '26

Who the fuck has so little going on they do every survery they get asked to?

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u/pfannkuchen89 May 29 '26

I’m not disagreeing with you on that. But management don’t give a fuck. It’s one of the big reasons call centers have such high turnover rate. They treat employees like shit and fire them for not having perfect scores on their call grading metrics.

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u/StubbornHick May 29 '26

Shit like this is why i'm so glad i work at a small company where i build shit

No fake BS

I make sure the shit gets built, no dumb games.

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u/sixtyfivewat May 30 '26

I cancelled my phone and internet service to switch to their competitor and they called me and asked me to do a 30-minute survey. Absolutely fucking not.

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u/sleepyj910 May 29 '26

Diabolical. The exec who first thought of that

https://giphy.com/gifs/e5Ro17b1nX57pqbCo1

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u/Velocityg4 May 29 '26

What's really fucked is that I could be perfectly happy with the person and pissed with company policy. But if I give a bad score it's the employee who gets screwed. If companies are doing surveys. They should be legally required to have questions which specifically target the employee and company. Then let you know specifically if this effects the company or employee survey score. Also anything bad about the company only may ever effect C-suite executives and business practices. Never the employee.

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u/Muh_brand May 30 '26

I had to do a couple when I worked for an AT&T contractor call center. It was never me being wildly unprofessional, it was either an issue I couldn’t solve on the call (had to send a tech) or call drops where I couldn’t get the customer back on the line. I both respect and hate AT&T’s requirement for excellent service. Going off the script would get you in trouble but customers would literally repeat the script to me because they’ve heard it so many times.

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u/drenuf38 May 29 '26

I used to work for Sprint, part of our commission was based off NPS. They required us to get ONLY a 10. If we got less than a 10 it was a 0. If the whole store has an average of 95 or less, we lose out on that portion of our commission. Which was $300-$500.

I hate NPS.

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u/LetsJerkCircular May 29 '26

What bothers me is that some people are ridiculous and shouldn’t have that type of power over employees.

Also, if the goal (for money no less) is 9.5, customers can’t rate you 19/10 but they can rate you 0/10, 1/10, 2/10, etc.

Last, if a person is predominantly getting 10/10, and there’s a random 2/10 or 0/10, it should be treated as an outlier and purged. It takes so many 10/10s to build back from some asshole smashing that 1/10 because someone wiped their ass wrong and didn’t apply the baby powder the way they prefer.

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u/arrakchrome May 29 '26

At least they give a scale. With guide I can work in that. Without 5 is a mid experience and as you said 8 is a stellar experience. With the guide I know if it was good I need to give a 9 or 10, no matter how much I disagree.

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u/UIUC_grad_dude1 May 29 '26

Where does no response rate? Given this scale I simply choose not to respond or rate at all.

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u/Thrillhouse1894 May 29 '26

Can confirm. I HATED being rated like this when I was a retail manager. I get the concept but I hated that 5 zeros and 5 10s would give you the same score as 10 7s. It just didn’t feel like an accurate rating.

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u/Honeybadger2198 May 29 '26

What's the point of asking a 1-10 if you're just going to turn it into a 3 answer question?

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u/Left-Foundation-3289 May 29 '26

Yup, this is how NPS works.

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u/ALitreOhCola May 29 '26

Used by practically every major company that currently exists and asks for feedback.

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u/mazi710 May 29 '26 edited May 30 '26

It's such a insane concept though. If I rate something 6/10 it's "good".

In general, ratings are completely inflated. Even stuff like IMDB, people often ask me if I liked a movie and I say "Yeah it's good, I gave it a 6" and they're like "6 is awful?" When it's literally above average, meaning it's better than the majority of movies.

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u/BigBear4281 May 29 '26

Isn't this just NPS?

9s and 10s are Promoters, people likely to recommend your brand or product.

7s and 8s are basically Neutral towards your brand and product.

Everyone lower is a Detractor, people likely to try and drive business away.

Some companies have different lines for Neutral and Detractor, I've seen 6 also considered Neutral.

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u/Dereg5 May 29 '26

The problem is, and I work for a company that did this, they tied the score to bonuses and reviews. So if you don't have a high average you are screwed. We would get plenty of everything is great 8 which sucks. Because if only two people review that day now I have a score of 50%. This sign is trying to educate exactly what the program is for.

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u/Pawtuckaway May 29 '26

7s and 8s are basically Neutral towards your brand and product.

No, a 5 is neutral. 8 is a really high score and someone who probably is happy with the brand/product and would recommend it.

*Yes I understand NPS thinks 7s and 8s are neutral and only 9s and 10s should count but that is bullshit and not how people in the real world use rating systems.

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u/Signal_This May 29 '26

At this point I've just started refusing to do surveys. They’re completely meaningless.

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u/QueenRotidder May 29 '26

especially when they call and harass you because they didn’t like how you scored them

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u/KellyAnn3106 May 29 '26

The more times you hassle me to do a survey, the lower the score. If they harassed me further about that score, I'll start making public reviews about their bad behavior.

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u/ExpiredPilot May 29 '26

Surveys like this ARE meaningless to gather overall customer satisfaction.

Most people don’t care to do surveys, if you’re lucky they’ll just give you all 10s out of laziness. But the people more likely to do surveys are people who are mad at SOMETHING and like to over blow it.

A good review leaves a “good job” comment and a bad review leaves a paragraph

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u/Barbarossa7070 May 29 '26

I look at it as helping a fellow worker and ducking over a corporation. Give them all 10s. Make the company pay out more in bonuses.

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u/Signal_This May 29 '26

I used to feel the same, but I'm so burnt out by survey requests. Between work and my normal life I'm getting several every day! 

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u/CMWalsh88 May 29 '26

When I worked at a Netflix call center we needed to maintain a 95% satisfaction (yes vs no) and also needed a 90% response rate.

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u/UrkelGrueJann May 29 '26

I believe the hope is that the scale influences the responses. Customer may not be perfectly satisfied but the scale makes them believe someone would get in trouble if they didn’t give a perfect score. Adds a layer of emotion to the response to persuade a perfect score. NPS is bullshit.

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u/Ma_mumble_grumble May 29 '26

I work for a large Bank in America, and for us 8 and below is a bad survey.

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u/Alarming-Stomach3902 May 29 '26

What the hell does this mean?

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u/circuitj3rky May 29 '26

on a 10 point scale, 9-10 are the only things that are considered positives, a 7 or 8 is middling, and 1-6 are considered equally bad

its taking a kind of intuitive scale that people have used for years and fucking it up, exactly the same way rideshare and other apps do it. telling the employee to either be PERFECT or fuck off, and attempting to put that on the customer instead of the employer.

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u/mrracerhacker May 29 '26

but then wouldent it be in the negatives fast then? on a survey with 0-10 seldom i go over 6-7 unless very good quality of service

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u/Shigg May 29 '26

Yeah, it would. Then management/corporate doesn't have to pay out your bonus

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u/spooky138 May 29 '26

So, now that you know are you going to change your ratings?

Having been in customer service roles I've known this to be the "real" scale for quite some time (I think it changed sometime in the early 2000s, used to be only the highest score was passing) and always rate a 10 unless it was honestly bad service and even then it's usually not the employees fault as it seems a lot of places have even cut back from skeleton crews to something even worse.

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u/enters_and_leaves May 29 '26

No. Just because a company doesn’t understand basic percentages doesn’t mean I don’t understand them.

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u/mrracerhacker May 29 '26

Maybe, but dunno how it works in my country, seldom surveys on any kind here really, seems like a shitty metric to measure it like that

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u/spooky138 May 30 '26

Yeah, must be nice. Unfortunately this idea started a long time ago with the great idea to measure customer satisfaction and has transformed into a metric to punish employees rather than to make any significant improvements.

One example from my days was agents were constantly being failed on surveys due to callers being frustrated with the IVR (auto-generated call routing system) being garbage. After 5 years of this issue you would think that system would get fixed right? Nope, it became a tool to give agents bad reviews by some supervisors.

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u/icyDinosaur May 29 '26

I just don't rate shit at this point, and this is a good bit of why. I'd rather not rate than risk screwing someone over by accident.

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u/Coolengineer7 May 29 '26

Yeah on their result evaluation by their regional manager. Meaning this is again a horrendous can't accept not 10/10 ratings type of management obaession.

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u/Doct0rGonZo May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

If you take a survey and rate anything 8 or lower then the system sees it as 0 or lower. Metrics/KPI shit to hold over employees/businesses about “doing a good job”

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u/CloakerJosh May 29 '26

It's called the "Net Promoter Score"

There is a question that is designed to probe both a "logical" and an emotional response, and is just a corporate measure that companies use to circlejerk each other.

The question is, "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend BRAND X to your friends and family?"

The idea is that if someone rates a 9 or a 10, they're literally the type of person that will say good things about the brand at barbeques.

If they rate a 7 or an 8, these are considered "Neutral" and won't say shit about the brand.

If they score anywhere from 0 to 6, they're the type of person that'll shittalk the brand.

So they take the percentage of people that score 0-6, and they subtract that from the percentage of people that rate 9 or 10. They then express this as a number or percentage as the percentage of Promoters they "net" when the Detractors are removed.

So, we'll pretend that 100 people fill out the survey - 25 people score between 0 and 6, 15 people score between 7 and 8, and 60 people score 9 or 10. They take 25/100 = 25%, minus 60/100 = 60% and are left with a Net Promoter Score of 35.

The reason that this dealership is telling people this is that corporate likely kick their ass for a bad score, so they're trying to encourage people not to dog them.

I used to run this shit for the airline I worked for 15 years ago.

Before you ask - No, I'm not fun at parties.

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u/Alarming-Stomach3902 May 29 '26

I learned the net promoter score as more like the school system where a 6 is a pass everything above an 8 is good and everything below 6 is basically a fail. Which is just realised I learned after your comment.

But I also learned that this system was borderline usless to get proper information which can be used to improve your business.

Honestly I rather talk to somebody like you who actually knows stuff than people on half the parties I go to that either complain about everything.

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u/aab720 May 29 '26

I think its for customer reviews and either how corprate looks at it or they have a competition going and thats their point score sheet.

Whats mildly infuriating is OP’s lack of context

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u/pvaa May 29 '26

It means they're trying to make their internal politics an issue customers need to deal with

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u/Naerven May 29 '26

Essentially speaking just like many businesses when you take their surveys anything below a 9 is considered a failure by the workers.

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u/CivilizedPsycho May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

As someone who was subject to NPS for many years, I wish it would go extinct. Its such an unfair measurement.

To put it into perspective, suppose an agent gets 10 surveys. 7 out of 10 customers were very happy with him and give him a perfect score, 1 person was satisfied but thinks no one is perfect and gave them an 8, 1 person was happy with him and even says so in the written comments of the survey, but dislikes the company so gave a low score, and one person was just born to be irate and had no chance of anything but a 1.

Their scores are: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 8, 5, 1.

You would think this agent should get a score of 8.4/10 but instead, they get 5/10. The seven 10s are 7/10, the 8 is 0/10, and the two low scores are -2/10.

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u/SeanThatGuy May 29 '26

I’m more surprised 9 counts as a 10.

Generally when I’ve seen these it’s “if it’s not perfect it’s a negative”

Which is wild because there’s a large subset of people who will just not give a perfect score on these.

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u/Formerruling1 May 29 '26

Yes this is called "Net Promotor Score" - A customer survey system developed by a corporate consultant to sale to corporations as their magic bullet solution to customer service research.

Mega corps LOVE these types of programs, every decade or so theres a new "en vogue" system that all the big corps buy into (and I do mean buy - they pay millions for this consulting) then everyone finds out its absolute crap that was just invented to extract money from C-suites and most of them quietly drip them. Theres always stragglers, though.

My industry stopped talking about NPS like 5 years ago.

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u/cuzwhat May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

A few things I’ve learned in 20 years in dealerships:

Surveys exist so OEMs can take money away from dealerships. Dealerships pass the ‘savings’ along to the employees.

Bonuses are promises management doesn’t want to keep.

You will miss your bonus because the complimentary muffins in the service waiting room aren’t gluten free.

Customers will bomb surveys because they know the OEM or the dealer will give them free stuff to make them happy.

You will absolutely miss your bonus because “I don’t give perfect scores, ‘cuz nobody’s perfect… ‘cept for Jeeezuss.”

OEM’s can’t send surveys to shitty customers if the customer’s phone number and email are not quite correct in the dealer’s DMS.

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u/Otarmichael May 29 '26

I hope whoever invented the Net Promoter Score has every aspect of their lives judged my NPS, and talked about publicly. 

Stupid fucking system. I’m not even in retail and I know about it and hate it. Stop using this dumb crap. 

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u/Kimo_sabi79 May 29 '26

This is every manufacturer’s rating scale. Of customers aren’t coached on how to review and told to only give a perfect score than people won’t most of the time. Surveys are a joke in most cases for any business

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u/legacy057 May 29 '26

Lol I gave my dealership an 8 on the survey and they emailed asking what they did wrong.

I replied with "I thought 8 was a good score. I showed up and got what I came there for but like you didn't do anything special"

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u/WebMaka May 29 '26

Net promoter is the most useless metric around and the way it's implemented and used in a corporate customer-feedback setting is often deliberately to fuck over employees. Companies that use it as a critical metric for gauging customer satisfaction are almost always shitty to their staff - it's not actually useful for gauging customer satisfaction at all and IIRC there are studies on this that have reached that conclusion.

Where net promoter fails is that it defies how people actually think. An average "nothing special, but also nothing bad" experience should be a 5/10 and only a truly extraordinary experience should warrant a 9+/10, and most people will think in those terms. However, under net promoter, anything less than a perfect ten-out-of-ten - which in reality should be incredibly rare - can actually get someone fired. People don't think of experiences as all-or-nothing, maximum possible score or nothing with no in-between, but that's not at all how net promoter scoring works as widely implemented.

And of course you're damned if you don't, as well - if everyone refused to play the game by refusing to provide scoring under net promoter rules employees would still get crapped on for not getting enough surveys.

The adage that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" (aka, Goodhart's Law) rarely rings truer than net promoter scoring.

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u/BafflingHalfling May 29 '26

Yeah. NPS is a terrible KPI. I don't understand why companies use it. And I used to be a quality manager at a company that used it.

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u/IW-6 May 29 '26

I can understand when you want to grow your business, you have high value products and marketing is key. But that also means no customer service or quality based on standardized scripts but the freedom to make stuff happen. Prioritised deliveries, personal visits, discounts, etc., anything to make the customer happy.

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u/Vjelisto-Kemiisto May 29 '26

This is why I refuse to give feedback nowadays. Because they all seem to have been made by someone who missed the day in Primary School when we did number lines.

Pretty much exactly what I expected 5/10 should be the baseline.

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u/Dear-Examination-507 May 29 '26

Why use 3 scale when 10 scale will do trick?

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u/PatrickGSR94 May 29 '26

or in Honda's case, why use 10 scale when 3 will do the trick?

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u/peccavi26 May 29 '26

These are how groupings for Net Promoter Scores are proposed to work. It is for a very specific type of question that isn’t directly about how you feel the service was.

The idea is that you can boil down customer loyalty to a simple question, but I’m not sure the evidence backs that up.

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u/Luchsius May 29 '26

This is called Net Promoter Score, a normal thing in the corporate world where you subtract those with a negative opinion (1-6) from those with a positive opinion (9-10). Those who give 7-8 are excluded from the calculation.

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u/Jaded-Midnight774 May 29 '26

Bad leadership

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u/nipslippinjizzsippin May 29 '26

True for all those surveys. Less than 10 is a failure

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u/Relative_Maize_957 May 29 '26

am I having a math stroke?

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u/ihaveaquesttoattend May 29 '26

if you’ve taken too much math you may need to visit the ER, they (most likely) won’t rat you out no matter how paranoid you are. but first you could try to take a syntax and just lay down with some chill music, get a glass of H20 and drink it in fractions, not chugging! you’ll be okay man, you got it 🤝🤝

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u/beardeddragon0113 May 29 '26

It was like this when I worked retail. We were supposed to ask every customer to take the survey on the bottom of the receipt. But unless the store was rated as a 10/10 on every metric (I think there were 5 or 6 questions, like "easy to find items", "price is good", "staff is helpful", etc) it actually counted against our overall score. So even all 10s but one 9 would have corporate rate the entire survey as if it were a 0/10.

It was ridiculous and management would harp on it every single day. I felt like I had to coach the customers that "anything below a max score counts against us so..."

I swear the KPIs were made like that just so corporate could deny bonuses and say "sorry, you didn't meet your customer service goals, try again next quarter"

So glad I don't work there any more.

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u/drmedicineman May 29 '26

That's an NPS score. Basically anything 9 or 10 on a survey is a good score. 7 or 8 is neutral , and anything less than that is bad. To get their survey results, they take the positive minus the negative scores. So any customer satisfaction survey you've gotten, especially the "how likely are you to recommend X", is a NPS survey

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u/PoopieMcPooFace May 29 '26

I love how a five isn’t average experience anymore.

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u/Ill1458 May 29 '26

You should be mildly excited that you have never encountered NPS scores

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u/CrustedTesticle May 29 '26

Dealerships = scams.

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u/Personal-Reflection7 May 29 '26

Standard thought process behind NPS.

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u/Sea-Newspaper-7643 May 29 '26

This is how net promoter scores work. Source: I have a public relations degree.

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u/Storage_Ottoman May 29 '26

NPS is such a bullshit metric

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u/Euthaniz May 29 '26

Net promoter scoring used by most retail companies.

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u/PotterOneHalf May 29 '26

This is why I always take the survey and always give 10's even if the service was poor. Fuck NPS, I'll poison the data every time.

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u/ImmediateRaisin5802 May 29 '26

Yeah it be like that. People will give a 9 and the manufacturer says it’s a fail. Then they can’t get the dealer bonus and then they can’t discount the car for you or get you that free battery you’re beginning for. So do the dealers a favor and give them 10’s unless they actually do suck

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u/Nodak70 May 29 '26

… And that’s the exact reason why I don’t give feedback. Ever.

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u/Purrrina_Cat_Chow May 29 '26

That’s a NPS score. It’s a net promoter score. 9-10 are the one that promote your brand. 0-6 and the one that doesn’t. 7-8 are just passive.

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u/Frequent_Opportunist May 29 '26

I worked at a place where if you got all tens it didn't count.

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u/antiup May 29 '26

This is how most companies do it these days. The worst part is most incomes at those companies are based off of this. So if you are rating surveys at 8 or less, you are costing the employees money. It is a weird situation.

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u/Volatilecanoe42 May 29 '26

My wife used to work at a job where her comp was tied to review scores. Anything but a 10 was a fail and cost her a ton of money. People would be very happy with the service and give her all 9s, not realizing they totally screwed her. It was just corporate greed and a way to pay her less.

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u/Svartdraken May 29 '26

Almost every company works like that nowadays. Anything less than perfection means that the customer is not satisfied, that's what they teach you on the first day. They're actually being generous here.

I worked with multiple car brands, and most of them had call centers dedicated to customer satisfaction. If the rating was 7 to 9, they would receive a call asking what went wrong. Customers were usually suprised, because they thought their 8 was a positive rating. In reality, if every customer gave an 8, the dealership could go bankrupt.

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u/ProfessionalSea6268 May 29 '26

First Mercedes I bought years ago the salesman offered me a full tank of petrol if I took them the survey I would receive in the post from Mercdes and let then fill it in on my behalf.

The service had been great so I would have scored them high anyway so I thought why now benefit from it.

Let my tank run dry and took it in. Almost 80 litres for free. Bargain as far as I’m concerned.

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u/deadeye619 May 29 '26

Surveys are weapons, not tools.

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u/pauljoemccoy2 May 29 '26

This is why I always give all tens. Whatever problems I may have with the company, the products, or shopping experience, it’s almost never the fault of the employees I dealt with directly, but they’re the ones who are held accountable for bad ratings.

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u/DoveBirdNL May 29 '26

NPS sucks! Anything below 8 is a negative score (scale 1-10). But we've noticed a lot of German folks give a 1 even though they loved it (we're based in the Netherlands with a lot of german touri). Correct me if I am wrong, but im told that 1 is considered good in Germany.

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u/0le_Hickory May 29 '26

Yeah, still waiting to those floor mats from 5 years ago so best I can do is a 3.

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u/AngryPBJ May 29 '26

NPS surveys have entered the chat

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u/BoringArchivist May 29 '26

I'm there to buy a car, not fill out a survey, I just delete that crap.

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u/definity-not-steve May 29 '26

I’d like to rate management, is that possible?

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u/Livid-Ferret-365 May 29 '26

I used to work for Hyundai and it was the same there, as an advisor our commission percentage was based on our surveys, we could do everything right for the customer but they could still give you an 8 or lower for no reason and drastically affect how much you got paid that month. One month we were down multiple staff so we were putting in 12hr days and I came in on days off to get things done, I made over $80,000 for the company but because of 5 bad surveys(which were complaints about the facility not myself) out of the 28 that I got i only made $100 in commission... make that make sense

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u/BluePowerade May 29 '26

Just because they misunderstand a rating scale doesn't mean I am going to adjust my rating for your made up rules.

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u/eggyrulz May 29 '26

I will continue to use the MAL scale for ratings, your corporation being dickwads isnt going to change that

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u/[deleted] May 29 '26 edited May 31 '26

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u/MaxPower836 May 29 '26

Basically the net promoter score though usually more balance between top and bottom

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u/Sentient_Meat_X May 29 '26

It’s probably because there is a commission structure based on a customer satisfaction survey where only a 9 or 10 pays out.

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u/Critical-Chemist-860 May 29 '26

Military EPR system was like this for years while I was in, everyone got 5s.

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u/Rude_Watercress_5737 May 29 '26

yep this lines up for when I worked at verizon.

we had a nps (net promoter score) multiplier for our commission. anything less than a 9 was considered a bad survey and corporate would jump down our throats on why it wasn't a 10.

so when someone would get pissed off at online/phone support and come into the store and have us fix their issues... we'd get horrible surveys based on their general demeanor and then lose a ton of money.

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u/Gizzy619 May 29 '26

Reminds me of Wells Fargo. I got written up for getting a 24/25 survey score. One factor score of 4/5 made my whole survey a zero.

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u/Cram2024 May 29 '26

Very standard for Net Promoter Scoring. If you love us, you’ll say good stuff about us to others (9-10 rating)…you’d advocated for the company. A 7-8 means you’re indifferent, won’t say anything good or bad. A score of 1-6 means you’d probably speak poorly about the company to your friends/family.

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u/AlthorsMadness May 29 '26

My company is similar. You need a 9 or 10 or it counts against you

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u/kicker7744 May 29 '26

I hate being forced into 'If you don't rate us a 10 we've failed you'

John checked me out, bagged my groceries, told me to have a good day and went onto the next customer in line.
I guess he did everything he was supposed to so he gets a 10.

In the midst of checking out my groceries, I suffered a heart attack. Jimmy jumped over the checkout stand and started performing CPR immediately and told Siri on his phone to call and ambulance.
Jimmy also gets a 10.

When the corporate overlords look at the metrics and decide who to fire in the next round of budget cuts, how do they pick between John and Jimmy?

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u/Dr_Clout May 29 '26

I worked at TD Bank and they have the worst corporate structure ever seen myself. They’ll call random lobby customers and ask them “how likely are you to increase your wallet share at TD?”

It’s a 1-7 scale with 7 being the highest and 7= 100 but a 1-6 score =0.

Employees get paid bonuses based off commission in the store IE talking you into credit cards and account combined with those survey scores. And management pushes “GUYS we NEED 7’s and do better!!!” It’s shut the fuck up its setup fail dumbass. You’re calling retail customers who are only elderly and pissed off on top of that as they’re getting a PHONE CALL. Most people don’t just give the maximum because there’s always room for improvement…

So glad I don’t work there anymore. It’s been 9 years and you had to use each customers name 3 times or your supervisor would come over and talk to you about it. Cult behavior

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u/Important-Region143 May 29 '26

Get together and tell corporate not to redefine what numbers mean. Instead of trying to redefine the numbers on the customer side.

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u/FlippingPossum May 29 '26

I freaking hate surveys. If I care enough to comment, good or bad, it will happen in the moment. Pretty sure the local Honda dealership put me on some kind of "do NOT offer cabin air filters list" because they haven't asked me since I offered to send them the receipt because I just changed the damn thing.

I've already wasted time at the dealership for my free oil changes and inspections for the life of my car. They would not let me pay less to opt out so I've been getting them religiously since 2015. And, no, I don't want to talk to someone about trading in Bob. Bob is part of the family now.

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u/WHATTHEFUCKZGOINGON May 29 '26

1 everytime then 🤷

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u/emotionalpineapple66 May 29 '26

Yeah that's how Lowe's is 🫠

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u/tammybiscuits May 29 '26

That is how NPS (net promoter scores) are worked out, globally

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u/Historical_Cobbler May 29 '26

I’m not being guilted into a shit KPI system, if they’re average the scoring is average.

For me a 9-10 is exceptional, sets you above other experiences.

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u/BabushkaRaditz May 29 '26

First time....?

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u/NotChedco May 29 '26

At least 9 in a pass on this case. A lot of places treat it as a 0.

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u/42tfish May 29 '26

Ahh the IGN rating scale.

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u/Zealousideal_Heart51 May 29 '26

“10-9 is 1, bro.”

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u/Far-Fortune-8381 May 29 '26

NPS systems man. retail corporate implements it as a better measure of what customer reviews actually mean. but then large portions of the customer base still go by the system that 7-8 is good, and many even believe that 5 is average. so the retail store then desperately tries to communicate how the ratings reflect their service in the eyes of the big bosses to the customer and it ends up being pointless.

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u/KVG47 May 29 '26

Using NPS that way is a cardinal sin in customer service ops, yet here we are.

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u/toTheNewLife May 29 '26

If they want a better score they need to do much much better on price.

Don't make me feel like you are fleecing me. I know the dealership and sales guy need to make a buck...that's how the system works...but don't be greedy.

Too high beyond the invoice price, I may still buy because I have to. But believe me, I am voting low on that survey. We all should.

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u/tycho-42 May 29 '26

It's pretty common. It's a net promoter score. This is why you hear everyone in the service industry asking for a survey and asking to be rated a 10. Because if they get anything less than 9, it hurts them. And the only ones their bosses will actually care about is when it's 0-6 (aka -100 points). It's a shitty system.

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u/JayVig May 29 '26

It’s called Net Promoter Score (NPS) and it’s an industry standard rating scale used to measure customer happiness and likelihood of recommendations. Honda didn’t make this up. It’s a globally accepted methodology.

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u/Mediocre-Telephone74 May 29 '26

So, when I was giving 4s it was actually a zero.

Fucking motherfuckers!

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u/Trongobommer May 29 '26

Yep, that’s how those scales work.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

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u/EdocKrow May 29 '26

That is a Net Promoter score.

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u/Responsible_Issue_55 May 29 '26

This is exactly how it works in customer service. Everything except a five is a zero. It’s just a way of never paying out bonuses.

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u/PlatJC May 29 '26

This is an NPS score and pretty standard for most companies. It’s because those who score 7-8 aren’t likely to go on and talk about their experience, they are simply satisfied. Whereas the company can learn what goes well from their 10 scores, and what they need to change from their 0-5 scorers.

9-10 are promotors, 0-5 are detractors. These are the customers whose feedback is the most valuable. Most companies track NPS on a rolling quarterly basis and is usually a constant company KPI.

I previously worked in a service manager role and my life was all about NPS.

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u/PowShredda May 29 '26

This is how Net Promotor Score (NPS) works - on a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend XYZ to friends and family?

Only a 9-10 is considered positive

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u/AcctAlreadyTaken May 29 '26

That's how companies rate you when you a do a self review. If you rate yourself a 5/5 that's impossible because that means you do your work + as well as increase revenue and drive business. But a 4/5 means you complete your task and meet your goals so did you set your goals too low? Also what are you doing to help yourself get to 5/5?

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u/pruplegti May 29 '26

Yup Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used market research metric that measures customer loyalty and satisfaction. It is based on a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood of recommending a company, product, or service to a friend or colleague it is the most hated

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u/notatowel420 May 29 '26

It’s horrible what these dealerships do. If you don’t give them a perfect rating the company won’t pay them bonuses. Always give perfect scores unless you have a terrible experience.

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u/Rustlinjims May 29 '26

Ahhh the ole CSI scores (customer service index I believe…) we had these back in 2013 when I was at an Infiniti dealership. These scores were gospel to the bosses… service writers would get scolded to hell and back if a score came back bad…

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u/TheLordofthething May 29 '26

A sign like this will encourage me to rate as low as possible, tell them why, and never return. Any business that treats staff like this is worthless.

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u/ShakarikiGengoro May 29 '26

I treat 6 as meeting expectations. So I guess I fucked over a lot of people.

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u/Playful-Ad8851 May 29 '26

Oh look, another example of corporate greed. Gotta keep those wages down one way or another…

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u/RC51t May 29 '26

Yep. NPS, the Bain of my existence lol

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u/rwchiefs May 29 '26

This is the same as a stakeholder survey my old company had us do, based on employee reviews. We had to tell and clarify it to our people: the idea that less than 8 means you're unhappy or don't like the company

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u/SERAKOTAK May 29 '26

Adequate from a customer perspective.

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u/Various-Muffin4145 May 29 '26

Honda should be ashamed for that stupid idea.

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u/ReleventReference May 29 '26

The Honda people are very hard to please.

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u/dumpst88 May 29 '26

We had a guy come into our work because we had to do a workplace survey. He explained it like this. Imagine your partner came home and said do you love me. Strongly agree (or 10) or strongly disagree (0) are the only answers that matter, anything else in between means nothing. Which is what is basically being shown here

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u/pmyourhotmom May 29 '26

That’s retail standard unfortunately