Car Connection
The Best Brands -- And The Worst -- For Shopping Experience
July 2012
There are a lot of ways to measure customer satisfaction. J.D. Power talks to recent buyers. Polk looks at sales stats and customer retention. But the folks at Pied Piper do it the old-fashioned way: with secret shoppers.
Between July 2011 and June 2012, Pied Piper hired 4,419 secret shoppers to visit dealerships across the U.S. The shoppers scored each sales pitch on 60 different criteria: were they offered a brochure? Were they given a walkaround demo of the vehicle? Did the salesperson discuss financing options? And so on.
Now, Pied Piper's data has been tallied, and the firm has released its 2012 Prospect Satisfaction Index (aka the "PSI"). Overall scores soared, proving that dealers and their teams have taken previous critiques to heart. Fran O'Hagan, Pied Piper's President and CEO, said that “This year's record high PSI results show that today's dealership employees work harder than ever to be helpful to car shoppers”.
» View PDF of Article (431.1 KB)