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Porsche tops Lexus in study of online responses
March 2016
Providing additional information for vehicles of interest and being well above the industry for answering questions from consumers online helped Porsche replace Lexus in the top spot in a dealership study released today.
Lexus ranked second in this year’s study after taking the top spot in 2014 and 2015.
Ford, the top scoring non-luxury brand in 2016, has also performed above the industry average for the past three years.
The sixth annual Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index Internet Lead Effectiveness Benchmarking Study measured the online responsiveness of 18,551 dealerships nationwide representing all major brands between September 2015 and March 2016.
Data for the study was gathered through mystery shoppers who made inquiries online to see how dealerships responded. Pied Piper Management Co., of Monterey, Calif., scores brands on 19 factors.
Half hear within half an hour
For 2016, dealerships responded to half of the customer inquires within 30 minutes, but one customer in 11 failed to receive a response of any type within 24 hours.
The industry’s average performance has failed to improve over the past three years and dropped slightly from 2015 to 2016, with 21 of 33 brands declining.
“There are three reasons for poor performance,” said Pied Piper CEO Fran O’Hagan. “First of all, this is a part of the business that’s invisible to management unless management is vigilant and pays attention to what is really happening.
“Secondly, it’s not easy to be perfect every hour of every day, with customer inquiries never falling through the cracks. And third, we often see failures of third-party CRM software, and these failures are usually invisible to the client.”
Porsche dealerships’ score came in at 68, up three points from last year.
‘On top of this’
For O’Hagan, this year’s study had some surprises.
“It’s interesting how some manufacturers are on top of this,” he said. “And then there are some with no improvement.”
For example, Toyota has finished at or above the industry average for the past three years.
On the other hand, all GM brands performed below the industry average, a score of 56, in 2016. This has been the case the past two years. All but Buick were below the average for the past three years. In the latest study, Buick ranked last, with a score of 46.
Yet Chevrolet was one of six brands that have improved their performance each of the past three years, along with Acura, BMW, Ford, Mini and Mitsubishi.
BMW and Mini were the most improved this year, with each posting an eight-point increase in their score.
Phone vs. email
There are variations in how some of the higher-ranked brands respond to consumers.
Lexus dealerships answered a customer’s specific question via email 69 percent of the time. Follow-up via telephone was attempted only 20 percent of the time.
Ford dealerships were nearly the opposite, answering questions via email 21 percent of the time and by telephone 70 percent of the time.
