Automotive News
Dealership service departments improve phone call handling but issues remain, study finds
September 2024
Napleton Automotive Group was honored by performance measurement firm Pied Piper Management Co. three years running for having the fastest and best response times on Internet sales leads. But Brian Napleton, the group's director of operations, was disappointed last year to finish last out of 17 large dealership groups in Pied Piper's Service Telephone Effectiveness study. Napleton said the group "felt we did a very good job handling service ...
Read More >
» View PDF of Article (795.6 KB) 
Automotive News Daily Drive Podcast
Pied Piper CEO Fran O'Hagan discusses the 2024 Dealer Group Service Telephone Effectiveness(R) Study results with Automotive News
Permalink >
August 2024
We in the auto industry have been fixated on measuring service customer satisfaction. We've measured it all kinds of ways for decades, but if truth be told what we really care about is loyalty, and we've been using customer satisfaction as a proxy to measure loyalty. If you think about it what we really care about is what customers do rather than what customers say. You may say you're satisfied but really what I'm interested in is are you going ...
Read More >
Automotive News
Study looks at how well dealerships answer service department telephone calls
July 2024
Endless ringing or getting stuck on hold happens to one out of seven dealership service customers who try to schedule an appointment, according to new Pied Piper research. In a first-of-its-kind study, Pied Piper called 2,716 automotive dealerships spanning 34 brands between January and May to measure the efficiency and quality of service calls when attempting to set up an appointment for a check engine light. The study aimed to measure a new ...
Read More >
» View PDF of Article (1.05 MB)
AUTOMOTIVE NEWS
Napleton Automotive tops new survey on Web lead response times
May 2024
When it comes to Web-related sales leads, Napleton Automotive Group developed a strategy to capture as many of them as possible. Napleton chose to centralize most of its business development center functions into two large offices. A facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., employs roughly 60 employees to handle Web leads from Napleton's dealerships in the Southeast, working essentially like a call center. About the same number work in Merrillville, ...
Read More >
» View PDF of Article (934.3 KB)
Automotive News
Dealerships' responses to website inquiries improving, new study shows
March 2024
More dealerships than ever provided more thoughtful and thorough personal responses to inquiries on their websites, according to a new study from Pied Piper. The study, released this month,ranks dealerships on a 100-point scale based on how they responded to mystery-customer inquiries on their websites within 24 hours. The industry average score rose to 62, the highest since Pied Piper started tracking responses in 2011. Many dealerships ...
Read More >
» View PDF of Article (703.4 KB)
Automotive News
Dealerships improve response times to customer website inquiries
September 2023
Auto dealerships have made great strides in responding rapidly to customer inquiries on their websites, according to a new study from consulting firm Pied Piper Management Co. "What everyone has learned is that responding quickly to customer inquiries translates to higher web lead close rates," Pied Piper CEO Fran O'Hagan told Automotive News. "What that means is that out of every 10 people who contact a dealership through the website, more of ...
Read More >
» View PDF of Article (1.36 MB)
Automotive News
Group 1 scored highest in a survey of the top 17 dealership groups on how well they answered service calls and booked appointments
July 2023
When a customer calls to make a service appointment at a Group 1 Automotive dealership, there's a roughly 95 percent chance their call will be answered within 20 seconds and only a 2 percent chance the call will go unanswered. Stats like that explain why the nearly 150 participating Group 1 stores ranked first in handling service appointment calls in a study by Pied Piper Management Co. from January to May. The study relied on "mystery shoppers" ...
Read More >
» View PDF of Article (1.02 MB)
Automotive News
Frictionless service call processes can enhance customer loyalty, study finds
Permalink >
July 2023
A fair number of fixed ops departments nationwide turn away customers every day by failing to do something very simple and elemental: efficiently handle phone calls and book service appointments. In fact, according to a survey performed by Pied Piper Management Co., an average of 1 out of every 9 "secret shoppers" — or around 11 percent — who called 1,739 auto dealerships hung up without booking an appointment. Those stores were owned by 17 of ...
Read More >
» View PDF of Article (2.3 MB)
Automotive News
Automotive News Discussion: Survey shows which dealer groups handle service calls best
July 2023
Pied Piper has been able to add some data science to its service telephone effectiveness dealership survey, giving dealerships for the first time an idea how well they are handling customer service calls.
Read More >
Automotive News
DAILY DRIVE PODCAST: March 4, 2023
Ford to offer second EV battery type; Pied Piper CEO Fran O'Hagan
Permalink >
March 2023
A look at Pied Piper's survey on how well each brand's dealers respond to online inquiries.
Read More >
