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Chrysler’s Five Star Dealer Service Program: Why it was great, and why it failed!
Mar 27, 2025
What can we do about dealer service? Chrysler found some good solutions, but one major flaw scuttled the program... Ford fixed that flaw but managed to screw up even worse! What was Five Star, and what could Stellantis / FCA / Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram do now to get their dealers out of the bottom rankings?
#mopar #motales #dealership #cardealership
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0:00
hi this is Dave from Motel and I'm here
0:02
to talk about Chrysler dealers and in
0:04
particular the five-star dealer program
0:07
and the idea behind this was that they
0:10
would uh be able to fix the problems
0:13
that they had with dealerships because
0:16
Chrysler had been around if you include
0:18
Maxwell and you really should because
0:20
Maxwell dealers became Chrysler dealers
0:23
since 1904
0:25
dodge dealers started signing up around
0:28
1914 and then you've got the AMC dealers
0:31
are a whole another story that Chrysler
0:33
inherited those as well and AMC was
0:36
Hudson and Nash combined so they date
0:38
back quite a ways so Chrysler realized
0:42
that now that the cars had surprisingly
0:45
high quality and they really don't get
0:46
the credit for how good the cars were
0:49
they had some problems but generally
0:52
they were very good except that the
0:55
dealerships started to fail them and in
0:58
some cases this was dealers being cheap
1:00
with training or cheap with materials or
1:03
having people at the dealerships who
1:05
thought that they had seen it all and
1:07
knew better and so you had a lot of
1:09
mechanics who would do things like
1:10
ignore the technical service bulletin so
1:12
you'd get a problem and I had this
1:14
happen to myself with a few different
1:16
things and in one case I had a problem
1:20
where uh my car started making a really
1:23
loud squeaking noise every time I made a
1:25
right turn really loud and I went to
1:28
Chrysler Paramis several times to get it
1:31
fixed and they ended up replacing as
1:33
from what they told me just about the
1:35
entire front suspension and they put it
1:38
up on the lift and they showed me all
1:39
the new parts and they said they had
1:40
fixed it and I drove it out and it went
1:42
squeak squeak immediately and I had to
1:44
drive it back in that I found out later
1:47
by doing it myself by buying the
1:50
technical service bulletin book buying a
1:52
torque wrench and then torquing one bolt
1:54
exactly a quarter of a turn I solved it
1:58
so Chrysler realized that the sales
2:00
process and the service process were
2:02
both pretty bad for many customers just
2:06
as they are today in fact today
2:08
according to the surveys at least
2:10
they're probably worse
2:12
so uh the the five-star program was
2:15
their answer and it basically took what
2:18
they had learned from changing their
2:20
organizational culture and their
2:21
engineering methods and tried to apply
2:24
to dealers who again independently owned
2:26
and operated not under real control so
2:29
it had to be a voluntary program and the
2:32
way that they did it was that they would
2:34
give you rewards like you could get five
2:36
stars on your sign and they would refer
2:40
customers to you so a customer could
2:42
call them up and say "I'd like to know
2:43
where the best dealer is." It was a
2:46
carrot program there was no real stick
2:49
so to get the five-star rating dealers
2:52
had to have somebody call every single
2:54
customer including car buyers and people
2:58
coming in for service to get their
2:59
feedback at Buer and Bidder somebody
3:02
named Beller was doing it so that should
3:04
tell you that they took it seriously you
3:07
had to survey your own employees on a
3:09
regular basis to find out what they see
3:11
as good and what they see as bad most
3:14
important and as a consultant who did a
3:16
lot of surveys of customers and of
3:19
employees I can say this is most
3:20
important they had to do something with
3:23
the information that they got they had
3:25
to continue to maintain high customer
3:27
survey ratings these are not very useful
3:29
uh these are not as useful as you would
3:31
think rather uh the smile sheet system
3:35
was not very good then it's probably not
3:37
very good now dealers actually got the
3:39
original copies of the surveys with the
3:41
customer's name on it so they could do
3:43
things like they could bribe you to give
3:45
them good ratings and they could punish
3:47
you for giving bad ratings they had to
3:49
provide specified levels of training to
3:51
their employees and last and probably
3:54
least they had to keep their physical
3:56
grounds up to certain standards and
3:58
what's kind of funny about that part is
4:01
that when Sergio took over uh Chrysler
4:04
as part of the Fiat deal the main thing
4:07
that he looked at was the physical plant
4:10
and they had to use certain materials
4:12
and certain this and certain that it was
4:14
all about how the place
4:16
looked and how it ran they got into much
4:21
less and they also incidentally mostly
4:24
used carrots and not sticks so in theory
4:28
this five-star program was a great idea
4:30
and should have been very powerful and
4:31
the dealers who took it seriously like
4:35
Beller they did very well from it and I
4:38
was told by the manager over at Buer and
4:40
Bidder that they learned quite a lot
4:43
from calling up the customers they
4:45
discovered things that they hadn't known
4:46
and they could do a better job but you
4:48
know what they cared to begin with and
4:50
that's what mattered so here's the
4:53
problem with this system the problem was
4:56
that those who didn't care stood a
4:58
decent chance of getting certified if
5:00
they were really in with their zone reps
5:02
because what Chrysler did was they had
5:05
the zone reps administering the program
5:08
and that was a big mistake because the
5:09
zone reps were part of Chrysler's
5:11
problem to begin with it should have
5:13
been done by somebody from outside the
5:15
company now Ford they used JD Power to
5:18
run it and that was actually a very good
5:20
idea and where Ford screwed up when they
5:23
did their program after Chrysler's uh
5:26
because in those days Chrysler was so
5:28
incredibly profitable everybody wanted
5:30
to copy what they were doing ford did
5:33
something that was one above what
5:35
Chrysler was doing but then they set the
5:38
bar so low that pretty much every dealer
5:40
got the top rating anyway so there was
5:42
not much point to that in 2010 or so
5:46
Chrysler replaced the old five-star
5:48
program from 1997 which as far as I know
5:51
uh had been let lapse for many years and
5:55
they had a new program called dealer
5:56
standards and this used uh cash rewards
5:59
for dealers and they had mystery
6:01
shoppers and steadily increasing goals
6:04
and this was operated by a company owned
6:06
by the Swiss SGS group which also did
6:09
the same basic thing for Fiat and BMW
6:12
and Toyota and Volkswagen were all
6:14
customers of this
6:16
organization so uh in theory that should
6:19
have worked out very well uh dealerships
6:22
are rated on customer relations and
6:24
facilities but sales volume was still a
6:26
major factor and so probably it did very
6:29
little to really help so what we really
6:32
need today is something like the
6:35
five-star program that's done by an
6:38
outside
6:40
organization and really leaves out sales
6:42
volume because that's not relevant to a
6:46
dealership experience because if you
6:49
make sales volume the number one then
6:51
the high pressure high volume
6:52
dealerships that are the least quality
6:56
experience or the ones that are in the
6:58
busiest areas will rise to the top of
7:00
the list and that's not really what this
7:01
is about this is about improving the
7:03
customer
7:04
experience and based on survey results
7:07
these days that's something that
7:09
Chrysler Dodge Ram and Jeep really
7:11
really need to do now I could talk about
7:14
other things like separating them out
7:16
again and not having Chrysler Jeep Dodge
7:20
and Ram all in the same showroom but
7:22
that's a story for another day by the
7:25
way I might add that this uh story that
7:28
I just told you about the five-star
7:29
program was the cover story in Quality
7:32
Digest back in the9s uh you can go look
7:36
it up you can look it up on my personal
7:37
website dave.z us or you can go look it
7:41
up on the Quality Digest website it's in
7:43
both places
7:45
see motel
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