Automotive News
Infiniti tops survey on satisfaction among sales prospects
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July 2016
Infiniti stores outperformed all brands in a new study on prospect satisfaction. The 2016 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index is based on the treatment of mystery shoppers who visited 6,157 stores in the U.S. The study was conducted between July 2015 and June 2016. Foreign brands dominated the upper echelon of the index -- now in its 10th year -- taking nine of the top 10 spots. Lexus and Mercedes-Benz stores tied for second; Toyota ranked ...
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Wards Auto
Mystery Shoppers Put Tesla Dealerships in Cellar – Again
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July 2016
Fran O’Hagan is a methodical guy who’s baffled as to why Tesla stores year after year score so low in an annual mystery-shopping study of dealership sales effectiveness. The electric-car maker, which has skirted the traditional dealership franchise system in favor of owning its own sales outlets, ranked dead last on this year’s Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index. The study by brand measures how well dealerships follow sales processes, such ...
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Automotive News First Shift
Porsche, Lexus and BMW ranked highest for responding to customer internet leads
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March 2016
For the sixth year, Pied Piper measures how every brand’s dealers respond to customer internet inquiries. Pied Piper's annual study sent thousands of mystery shoppers on-line to dealerships nationwide to see how effectively salespeople respond.
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Truth About Cars
Tesla Dead Last in Dealer Experience, First in PR
July 2015
We have opined in these pages before about how for every Tesla sold in America, there are two or three glowing stories written about the electric automaker. There are days when over 50 percent of the pieces on auto industry news feeds are about Tesla, which is not bad for a company capturing 0.1 percent of the U.S. automobile market. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is truly a marketing and public relations genius. Given that, it is fascinating when a ...
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Wards Auto
Luxury Brands Have Great Cars, and Great Salespeople
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July 2015
Why do Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus rank 1-2-3 in U.S. luxury-brand sales? Reasons vary. But one of them is that their dealership salespeople are real pros. And a reason for that is their staff retention rates are high, meaning good people stick around. And they do so because they're earning a good living from healthy margins on premium cars. “It boils down to profitability,” says Fran O'Hagan, head of Piped Piper Management, a consulting company ...
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Automotive News First Shift
Benz dealerships score with mystery shoppers
July 2015
For the seventh straight year, Mercedes-Benz dealerships ranked first in Pied Piper's annual survey which rates how car dealers treat car-shoppers in person. Pied Piper's annual study sends thousands of mystery shoppers to dealerships nationwide to see how effectively salespeople sell.
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The Car Connection
Mercedes-Benz Is Tops In Shopper Satisfaction, But Tesla? Not So Much
July 2015
Today's auto market is a tough one for consumers. There are loads of great cars on the lots, and the differences between those from Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen, and most other mass-market automakers are disappearing. In that kind of environment, customer service is king. The way sales personnel treat shoppers can make or break a dealership. That's why studies like the Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) from research firm Pied Piper are so important ...
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The Detroit Bureau
Turning Shoppers into Customers: Mercedes Tops the Chart in New Study
Tesla turns its showrooms into museums.
July 2015
When Linda Brightman started out to buy a new car she had her heart set on a new BMW 3-Series. The suburban Los Angeles mother of two made one concession to her husband, agreeing to at least visit a few other showrooms to see what the competitors had to offer. He was nonetheless surprised when she drove home in a new Mercedes-Benz C-Class. She liked a lot of the safety features, Brightman explained. But what had clinched the deal was the way the ...
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Mini, Lexus, BMW stores most-improved in responding to potential buyers
July 2015
Mini, Lexus and BMW dealerships achieved the industry's biggest improvements in building rapport with potential buyers, while Mercedes-Benz stores led the way for a seventh-consecutive year, according to a newly released study. Volvo, Smart, Jaguar and Cadillac had the largest drops in performance. The ninth-annual Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index U.S. Auto Industry Benchmarking Study measured the responsiveness of 6,370 dealerships of all ...
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MERCEDES-BENZ DEALERS RANKED HIGHEST BY 2015 PIED PIPER PSI(R) --MINI, BMW, LEXUS MOST IMPROVED--
July 2015
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA – July 6, 2015 – For the seventh consecutive year, Mercedes-Benz dealerships ranked highest in the newly released 2015 Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index® (PSI®) U.S. Auto Industry Benchmarking Study, which measured treatment of car-shoppers who visited 6,370 dealerships throughout the country. Study rankings by brand were determined by the patent-pending Pied Piper PSI process, which ties “mystery shopping” ...
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