The good news? A recent study shows that U.S. motorcycle dealerships responded to customer web inquiries within 24 hours 91 percent of the time in 2017. Back in 2013 that same measurement was 72 percent of the time, and in 2008 it was only 30 percent of the time.
However, less good news is the fact that about half of the time, today’s motorcycle customers receive only an automated response acknowledging their inquiry, and then receive no further contact from the dealership.
For the past 10 years, Monterey, California-based consultancy Pied Piper has provided Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) industry studies to measure how effectively each street-legal motorcycle brand’s dealers sell in-person. More recently, Pied Piper has also measured how effectively each brand’s dealers respond to customer inquiries received through dealership websites. For its 2017 study measuring web response, Pied Piper sent customer inquiries through the individual websites of 2,197 motorcycle dealerships, then evaluated how the dealerships responded over the next 24 hours.
According to the study, dealers selling BMW finished at the top of the industry, with a score of 36.