Complacency or Concern?
So, what are we to think of the announcement that the RV Dealers Association is only giving out four Quality Circle Awards at the National RV Show this year?
First of all, well-deserved kudos must be extended to Home and Park, Monaco, Tiffin and Winnebago Industries for achieving the coveted award. Nu-Wa also received special recognition, but didn’t meet all the qualifications for a full-blown award. What are these stringent qualifications that prevented the RV industry’s 99 other manufacturers from receiving the award? According to the release issued by the RVDA, to qualify for a Quality Circle Award a manufacturer must have:
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15 returned evaluations from dealers
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Overall ratings of 80 percent or higher
This year, RVDA received 1,845 evaluations from 577 dealers. Is it complacency that prevented the RVDA’s other 1,000 member dealers from returning a single survey? I would hope not. I’d like to think that all RV dealers recognize the Quality Circle Award as an excellent way to recognize manufacturers that make great business partners by producing quality products and providing quality support.
We operate in an industry where nearly 400,000 recreation vehicles are manufactured by 103 companies (an average of 3,800 units per company). It would seem reasonable to me that each manufacturer produces enough units to generate at least one response from 15 of their dealer customers. So, the problem must rest with the 80 percent score – and that’s sad. RVDA’s evaluation form asks dealers to rate their manufacturers in four broad areas: sales, product, management and support. Those areas are broken down into 24 categories that evaluate things like dealer agreements, sales training, territories, competitive product design, product quality, access to top management, fair policies, parts delivery, warranty payments and product support. Failing to qualify for the award means the manufactures can’t generate a low-B grade among their own business partners – people they depend upon for their own economic livelihood. I suppose one could argue that a score of 80 percent represents an above average grade and that a whole bunch of manufactures are content to operate in the middle. In other words, they are willing to “C” their future. Oh, if that were true, I’m sure many RV dealers would be very happy. I don’t have the actual results of the 2006 dealer survey, but looking at last year’s results provides a disturbing glimpse of the foundation supporting our industry’s stagnant customer service scores. In the 24 categories, The AVERAGE score was:
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75 – 80 in five categories
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70 – 74 in three categories
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65 – 69 in nine categories
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60 – 64 in six categories
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50 – 54 in one category
In fact, the AVERAGE average score was 68.1. That’s a D. And it means that half the RV industry’s manufacturers score below D-level in 24 critical business areas as graded, not by consumers, but by their own business partners.
RVDA performs a valuable service in recognizing those manufacturers making the effort to provide quality products and service. Perhaps they’d provide an equally valuable service awarding onions to the stinkers – those companies achieving the lowest scores on the Quality Circle survey.
November 8th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Greg, I have been in this industry for over 20 years and marvel each year that growth occurs despite the poor attitude and support of RV maunfacturers. The 70’s were an example of where we could be, but buyers soon found out how they were treated and left the life style. We have counted on the boomer generation to buy for quite some time but how long can we treat quality this way and get away with it?
Owners, being sales driven, choose to ignore this. They do have to tell people “it is a great product”. Parts and service people have no power since they do not buy the units. So we continue on down a road where customers buying new units, having been told “1 year warranty”, bring their 91 day old unit in because the roof leaks. They customers are told “the 1 year warranty does not include maintainance.” The dealer knows they will not collect to reseal the roof so the industry looses another buyer.
Maybe they buyer who just spent $250,000.00 on a coach should understand why the manufacturer has lost the parts order 3 times and besides that, it is on back order right now and will be another 2 months?
No, it is not apathy, just owners and manufacturers turning their head to an ugly problem. It would be tempting to give the lines you carry a steller review. What a sells tool it would be to show the award off to anyone shopping a different brand. I have worked with one of these award winners and am suprised they are there. Maybe the requirements are still not strict enough.
Thank you and a few other in the industry who are bringing this to the front. Lets all keep trying to improve and promote the industry through training, education, awards like this one, and a lot more listening to the customer.
Bret Folkman
Parts and Service Director
Ray Citte Inc.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Greg: can get a of all of the results to the survey??
November 8th, 2006 at 12:44 am
Congratulations to the award winners, and shame on everybody else! This is a well publicized award and one that many companies treasure each year. RVDA does a wonderful job managing the program, but they can’t manage the dealers who don’t respons or the manufacturers who obviously don’t communicate with their customers … and as Greg pointed out … the dealer is their customer!
Where are the manufacturer’s reps who are supposed to be in constant contact with their dealers? Don’t these reps have enough common sense to engage a dealer in a discussion about this award and what it means to his/her company?
When these results came out this year it jumped out on many of us who report on the industry. This is a disaster waiting to happen and somebody has to step up and take responsibility for the dismal reporting from the dealer community.
Several issues come to mind immediately to when reviewing the RVDA survey results.
1) The manufactuers did a horrible job of managing the process so that their company had a chance to receive an award based on their dealer’s input.
2) The manufactuer’s reps need a stern discussion with the sales managers to find out why their dealers are not participating.
3) The dealers are simply apathetic and probably disgusted with the quality of the product or the relationship they are experiencing with the manufacturer.
4) There is a hugh disconnect between the people who make the product and the people who sell the product.
If this level of apathy is allowed to continue, then the awards will simply disappear because their will be no meaning left to them … and that is not fair the companies that actually pay attention to these results every year.
I’d like to see what reasons the dealers have for not participating this year. How about it guys/gals?
November 7th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Hi Greg,
I agree that it is sad that our manufacturers are producing sub-quality products, but I also think it is sad that many many dealers don’t take a minute to fill out the survey. I also wonder it RVIA, and RVDA have any plans to go back to the manufacturer and discuss their scores. I wonder if quality would improve if all scores were published. I wonder how the manufacturers would feel if the scores were available to the public! That would cause some of them to step up. Like consumer reports, somebody needs to let everyone else know how everyone scored. Then dealers, and customers would make more wise choices on purchases.
thanks, Steve