Between CSI, NPS, SEI, and FIRFT, a dealer group’s monthly report can start to look like alphabet soup. It’s tempting to treat them as different flavors of the same “how happy are customers” number. They aren’t. Each one is generated by a different OEM survey question, measuring a different part of the customer experience, and each is worth understanding on its own terms.
One clarification before the breakdown: none of these four scores are calculated by Oxlo. Each is generated by the individual OEM’s or brand’s own survey system and published to that brand’s own portal or website. Oxlo’s role is to connect to those portals and pull the scores that already exist, standardizing them into one export. Oxlo doesn’t survey customers or produce a score, it exports what the OEM has already measured.
Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI)
CSI measures overall satisfaction across a customer’s sales or service visit; how the experience felt from start to finish. It’s the broadest of the four metrics and the one most directly tied to reputation, repeat business, and OEM incentive programs.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS answers a narrower question: how likely is this customer to recommend the dealership to someone else? It’s scored from a single 0–10 survey question and expressed as a net percentage of promoters minus detractors. A store can have solid CSI without a correspondingly high NPS, or the reverse, because the two are measuring different things.
Sales Effectiveness Index (SEI)
SEI evaluates the quality and consistency of the sales process itself, not how the customer felt about the outcome, but whether the sales team executed the process the way they’re trained to. It’s often a leading indicator of sales performance issues before they show up in closing ratios or overall satisfaction.
Fix It Right the First Time (FIRFT)
FIRFT tracks whether a vehicle issue was resolved correctly on the customer’s first service visit, without needing a repeat trip for the same concern. It’s a technical execution metric, distinct from how the visit felt, and often surfaces comeback and rework problems before they drag down CSI.
Why These Scores Shouldn’t Be Averaged Into One Number
It’s tempting, especially across a large group, to blend everything into a single composite score for simplicity. That simplicity comes at a cost: averaging CSI, NPS, SEI, and FIRFT together hides exactly the kind of signal that makes each one useful in the first place. A rooftop with a technical execution problem (weak FIRFT) but a friendly front desk (strong CSI) looks fine in a blended number and gets no attention until the problem is much bigger. Keeping the four scores distinct, even while reviewing them together, is what preserves their diagnostic value.
The Real Challenge: Every Score Lives on a Different OEM Portal
Understanding what each score means is the easy part. The harder part, especially for a multi-brand dealer group, is that CSI, NPS, SEI, and FIRFT are rarely reported in the same place, on the same time frame, or in the same format, even within a single brand’s own portal. Multiply that across every brand in the group, and pulling all four consistently becomes a manual project every single reporting period.
How ASAP Brings All Four Scores Into One Standardized Export
Oxlo’s Automated Score Aggregation Program (ASAP) connects to every brand’s portal and exports CSI, NPS, SEI, and FIRFT into one standardized file, on consistent time frames, across every rooftop in the group. Each score stays distinct, exactly as the OEM published it, so nothing gets lost or blended in translation.
See All Four Score Types in One Export
Contact Oxlo to see how ASAP consolidates CSI, NPS, SEI, and FIRFT from every brand into one standardized view.