Automotive Design & Production
What Tesla Might Miss With Its Store Closures
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March 2019
“Imagine what it would have been like to sell a gas-powered automobile in the early 1900s,” said Fran O’Hagan, president and CEO of Pied Piper Management Company LLC. “Customers back then were buying their first car, and salespeople would have had to explain the basics, such as how to operate the vehicle or where to find fuel while travelling.” O’Hagan is talking about the experience back then in the context of what’s happening now, as customers ...
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Wards Auto
Survey Ranks Tesla Dealerships First in EV-Selling Effectiveness
Ironically, the electric-vehicle maker plans to shutter most of its retail outlets.
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March 2019
Fran O’Hagan sees a striking paradox in Tesla saying it will close down almost all its dealerships and switch to an online sales strategy. He is president and CEO of Pied Piper Management, a consultancy that today releases results of a mystery-shopping study on how effectively dealerships brand-by-brand handle electric-vehicle shoppers. Tesla scored first. “It’s so ironic,” O’Hagan tells Wards. Referring to the dramatic retailing pivot, ...
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Automotive News First Shift
Audi Tops Mystery Study
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July 2018
Audi rises to the top in mystery shopper study. For the first time, the Audi brand was ranked number one.
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Automotive News First Shift
M-B Tops “Mystery Survey”
March 2018
For the eighth year, Pied Piper measures how every brand’s dealers respond to customer inquiries through dealer websites.
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Wards Auto
Dealership Study: Overactive Filters Block Some Legit Customer Leads
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March 2018
Bots don’t buy cars, but efforts to block them can unwittingly prevent real customer digital leads from reaching car dealerships. When Internet filters diligently battle bots and spammers, such collateral damage can occur. That’s an ancillary finding of the 2018 Internet mystery-shopping study by consultancy Pied Piper Management Co. Overall, it annually measures how dealerships by brand respond to customer inquiries received through dealer ...
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CBT Automotive Network
What a mystery shopping study reveals about dealership processes
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July 2017
Joe talks to Steve Finlay about a recent article he wrote for WardsAuto, building rapport, and a mystery shopping study.
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Wards Auto
Why Dealership Showroom Staffers Should Follow Sales Process
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July 2017
Successful car salespeople regularly follow established sales processes, says Fran O’Hagan, president and CEO of Pied Piper Management, a consulting firm that mystery shops dealerships to determine showroom effectiveness. Dealers themselves, not automakers, should establish those processes. And it shouldn’t be optional for staffers to follow them or not, he says. For the second year, Nissan’s Infiniti brand dealerships ranked highest in the 2017 ...
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Automotive News First Shift
Infiniti Tops in Mystery Shopper Ranking
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July 2017
For the second year, Nissan’s Infiniti brand dealerships ranked highest in the newly released 2017 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index® (PSI®) U.S. Auto Industry Benchmarking Study. Pied Piper's 11th annual study sent thousands of mystery shoppers to dealerships nationwide to see how effectively salespeople sell.
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Automotive News
Infiniti tops sales-prospects survey
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July 2017
Infiniti secured the top spot in a study on prospect satisfaction with dealerships for the second consecutive year. The study, released Monday, measures how effectively each brand’s dealerships sell when car shoppers visit the stores. The 2017 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index is based on how dealerships treated mystery shoppers who visited 5,289 stores in the U.S. between July 2016 and June 2017. The study is conducted by Pied Piper ...
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Automotive News First Shift
Porsche Dealers Treat Customers Best when Responding to On-Line Questions
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March 2017
For the seventh year, Pied Piper measures how every brand’s dealers respond to customer inquiries through dealer websites. Pied Piper's annual study sent 18,000 mystery shoppers on-line to dealerships nationwide to see how effectively salespeople respond.
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