I think this must be more common than you think in car dealerships - I know the dealer we purchased from has this same policy, though my shopping experience was not nearly as rosy as yours (not bad either), but I distinctly remember being pushed on the importance of the survey, but they did earn a good review from us as well.

Then, when our car was heavily damaged in a car accident earlier this year, we really saw how this kind of incentivization becomes ugly. The body shop made some fairly serious customer service blunders while our car was with them, but managed to cover their tracks with personal calls from the owner. When I picked up the car, the owner nearly insisted that I fill out the satisfaction survey right there, before even driving the car home. I declined, stating that I had not even seen my car, let alone drive it, and that I would mail the satisfaction card in to the company headquarters as the form requests. I was wary. Owner copped to the bonus schedule being tied to the reviews, and I was doubly wary.

I left with my car, and barely made it home alive. The car was not properly fixed. It went back, and they did complete the repairs properly, but taking another week. It earned them a very grim review.

I later received a call from the national HQ about my review, to dig deeper into our experience. The owner then called us personally to chew us out, in a very unprofessional manner, and actually stated that it was our fault that he would not receive a bonus this quarter. I pointed out that his bonus does not rest on one review, so someone else must not have enjoyed their experience with his shop too, and suggested that he could think about how he could improve his customers' experience.

As you say, I think this system can work well with some tweaking to lessen the fear-inducing effect of the surveys...we just had one very rotten experience with this system. And we certainly will never use that repair shop again.

i have the same experience with every service appt. at my local dealership: "if there's any reason you can't select 'Excellent' please let us know"

management 101: what you measure and what you reward is what you get. Corollary: be careful what you measure and reward and _how you measure it_. If an organization is fortunate, employees' behavior won't get too distorted by the incentive program du jour. Heavy-handedness like "zero bonus" virtually guarantees distortion. This distortion is known in management-speak as demonstrating results and ends up on the management consultant's resume as: "Designed and deployed service improvement incentive program that yielded a 300% increase in Excellent customer satisfaction."

the 'excellent service' management fad will fade over time, slowly and inexorably replaced by something else. in the meantime, enjoy the fact that in most cases you're getting better service - it wasn't always this way.

Thanks for all of the comments everyone!

@Rachel - That DOES sound fishy. And as you noted, even when the experience is good, it takes a lot to earn an "excellent" rating. BTW, your site looks awesome. Just added it to my RSS!

@Jenn S. - That sounds awful! Hope everything worked out OK in the end. It's pretty clear that for many companies that use this system, the bonus structure may end up encouraging employees to focus on survey results as much (or, in your case it seems, more) than they do on actually providing good service.

@Anna M. - I certainly understand why the salespeople put so much emphasis on it. As you noted, the stakes are high. I think that's a problem, though. As good as management intentions are, there are certainly some unintended (and as reader comments have shown, often negative) side-effect behaviors that result.

@Anonymous - "What you reward is what you get" didn't get its start in management - it got its start in animal training. It's timeless advice, though! I don't actually think the "Excellent Service" thing will go away. I've discussed on my blog before that in a global economy, businesses can't compete on just one thing anymore. They need to have great prices and get service, or a great selection or... anything other than just one unique value prop.

@Jenn - Welcome back from Vegas. Regarding your comment, I'm SHOCKED that the manager actually gave it back you! Talk about BAD service!