Recent Press - automotive secret shopping

When it comes to the car buying process, the car pretty much does all the work, pulling in buyers with its impressive MPGs, like the Chevrolet Cruze or Ford Fiesta, or making them drool with offerings of the turbo inline 6 in the BMW 1M. Even completely new and fresh designs like the Kia Soul and completely redesigned models like the Hyundai Elantra are enough to entice buyers— all that's left is to seal the deal. But which dealerships leave customers the most satisfied?

The auto industry is seeing better days since it suffered a crisis back in 2008, when American car sales plummeted to one of its lowest points. Since then, the industry has rebounded and customers are now flocking to dealerships across the country to get their hands on a new set of wheels. But which dealers are performing up to par?

DETROIT (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz dealerships were tops for the third straight year in an independent study issued on Monday of U.S. auto dealers that uses secret shoppers to determine how customers are treated.

Mercedes-Benz, a Daimler AG brand, was followed by Jaguar, a Tata Motors brand, and Lexus, the luxury brand of Toyota Motor Corp , which tied for second.

Toyota's U.S. dealerships and Chrysler's Ram pickup truck dealers were best among mass-market brands in the Pied Piper study. Fuller results are at http://www.piedpiperpsi.com.

Chrysler is managed by Italy's Fiat SpA.

Mercedes-Benz is in a tight race with BMW to overtake Lexus this year as the top-selling luxury brand in the U.S. market. Lexus lost sales because of the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan that curbed production.

While there are variations, the brands that scored the poorest were those that had fewest sales per dealership, where good sales people are difficult to retain, said Fran O'Hagen, CEO of Pied Piper, based in Monterey, California.

As U.S. auto sales gradually rebound, it would seem that dealerships and showroom salespeople would be eager than ever to let the good times roll once again. But could some brands be slowing their sales recovery due to understaffed dealerships that aren't making every effort to inform shoppers about the vehicle, get them in it, be straightforward, and complete the sale?

It's a question that automakers might find worth looking into. According to a major study from Pied Piper, a California sales and marketing company that also runs programs to improve dealership performance, a number of dealerships aren't performing as well as they could—or as well as they were—when it comes to the basics required to sell vehicles.

It looks like Mercedes-Benz' focus on retail, including giving sales staff at dealerships iPads and installing interactive video displays on showroom floors, has paid off. The brand's dealers have gotten the highest satisfaction index ranking for the third year in a row in the Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index, which uses mystery shoppers to rank the retail experience.

The automaker has just opened a flagship dealership "laboratory" in Manhattan to test some of the above-mentioned retail innovations, pulling up stakes at its old showroom near the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel and heading over to the East Side. The company two weeks ago held an opening bash for the five-story facility on East 54th Street.

The Pied Piper study, involving 3,524 paid, anonymous "mystery shoppers" in dealerships nationwide, suggests overall auto industry performance dropped from 2010 to 2011, after four years of gains.

Mercedes-Benz is doing the best job treating potential buyers when they walk into the showroom, reports a new study, which is one reason the maker has continued building demand as the luxury market recovers.

But while it's the third year in a row that the German marque led the annual Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index, its score actually slipped from last year, and the industry, on the whole, has seen a declining in the handling of “ups,” or customers who come to the showroom, cautions analyst Fran O'Hagan.

“Industry-wide, treatment of car shoppers has declined almost across the board,” said O'Hagan, adding that “the easiest explanation is that the number of salespeople declined during the recession and has yet to bounce back, even though sales are picking up again.”

Most-improved player Mercedes-Benz again leads an annual ranking that measures the sales effectiveness of different auto brands' dealers.

This is the third year in a row Mercedes has topped Pied Piper Management's independent Prospect Satisfaction Index.

The consultancy sent 3,524 mystery shoppers into dealerships. The covert operatives recorded how sales personnel did on matters ranging from product knowledge to whether they gave compelling reasons to buy, to whether they provided vehicle walk-arounds.

Annual auto industry benchmarking study shows industrywide decline in dealership treatment of car shoppers

MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA – July 11, 2011 – Mercedes-Benz dealerships ranked highest in the newly released 2011 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index(R) (PSI(R)) U.S. Auto Industry Benchmarking Study, which marked three years in a row of top rankings for the U.S. Mercedes-Benz dealer network.

The independent Pied Piper PSI study sent 3,524 hired anonymous “mystery shoppers” into auto dealerships nationwide, then used the patent-pending PSI process to compile the results into an accurate measurement of how each brand's dealerships treat car shoppers.

According to mystery-shopping consultancy Pied Piper of Monterey, Calif., although Toyota's sales practices are near the industry average, Scion's are the third-worst.
Scion trailed other youth-oriented brands such as Volkswagen, Kia and Mazda mostly because the brand's low-pressure sales techniques don't give customers a reason to buy now or return for a future visit. Scion salespeople fared well in product knowledge, not overselling, and having power over negotiating the selling price.
"We are improving the customer experience, the shopping process, the in-dealership, service," said Dawn Ahmed, Scion corporate manager. "There are lots of opportunities there."

If auto dealerships respond slowly to Internet sales leads, don't blame customer-relationship management software, says Fran O'Hagan. He is CEO of Piped Piper, a consultancy that does an annual study using mystery shoppers to gauge Internet lead effectiveness of dealerships by vehicle brand.

CRM systems help dealerships track and manage leads. But the systems only are as good as the people using them – if they use them at all. “CRM is great” and does what it is supposed to do, O'Hagan says. When Internet mystery shoppers encounter a problem, “it isn't a problem with the CRM systems. The dealership process is broken.”