Fiat Chrysler Brands Ranked Worst in Customer Service

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 1:52PM EST · Published Mar 17, 6:25AM EDT

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Fiat Chrysler Brands Ranked Worst in Customer Service — © courtesy of FCA US LLC

[cnxvideo id=”655237″ placement=”ros”]After several blows to its quality reputation from major research firms like Consumer Reports and J.D. Power, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) has been let down by its dealers. In the new J.D. Power 2017 U.S. Customer Service Index (CSI) Study, the manufacturer’s Fiat, Jeep, Ram and Dodge took the bottom four spots. The company’s Chrysler brand ranked almost as poorly.

The CSI looks at four metrics: service advisor, service initiation, service facility and vehicle pickup. Vehicles owned from one to five years were considered. The data were collected from over 70,000 respondents to the J.D. Power questionnaire. Cars were assigned two categories: luxury and mass market.

Brands were ranked on a scale from 1 to 1,000. Among mass market brands, the average for the industry was 807. Buick topped the list with 860 points. Fiat took the 19th spot out of 19 vehicles with 739 points, Jeep the 18th with 753 points, Ram the 17th with 755, Dodge the 16th with 771 and Chrysler the 14th with 785. Mazda filled in the 15th place with 784 points.
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Among luxury cars, the brand average was 869. Lexus finished first in this category with a total of 874 points. Land Rover finished at the bottom of the luxury car group with 828 points.

The numbers are more than just scores, according to the research firm. Chris Sutton, Vice President, U.S. Automotive Retail Practice at J.D. Power, said:

The quality of work—doing the job right the first time—can noticeably affect customer satisfaction and loyalty, but it shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum. Proactive communication with the customer, especially while the car is being serviced, is one element that has a direct influence on loyalty.

Fiat Chrysler dealers have a poor set of practices that could cost them future sales.

J.D. Power 2017 U.S. Customer Service Index (CSI) Study

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.