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Press Release: SUBARU DEALERS RANK HIGHEST IN 2025 AUTO INDUSTRY STUDY MEASURING RESPONSE TO WEBSITE CUSTOMERS
March 2025
- Subaru top-ranked for first time
- Overall industry continued its upward trend
- Room for improvement: 1 in 5 online inquiries received no personal response
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA, USA – March 3, 2025 – Subaru dealerships ranked highest in the 2025 Pied Piper PSI® Internet Lead Effectiveness® (ILE®) Auto Industry Study, which measured responsiveness to internet sales leads coming through dealership websites. Following Subaru were Infiniti, Acura, Toyota and Lincoln.
Pied Piper submitted customer inquiries through the websites of 4,023 automobile dealerships representing all major brands. Each inquiry asked a specific question about a vehicle in inventory and included a customer name, email address, and local telephone number. Pied Piper then evaluated the speed and quality of dealership responses by email, telephone, text message and chat over the next 24 hours. ILE evaluation of a dealership consists of over 20 differently weighted measurements, based upon best practices that are mathematically most likely to generate sales, which combine to generate an overall ILE score ranging from 0 to 100.
Subaru Ranked Highest for the First Time: How Did It Happen?
2025 marks the first year Subaru achieved the top ranking in an ILE industry study. The Subaru brand performance improved by nine points for 2025, reaching an average ILE score of 77, the new highest auto brand ILE score to date. Subaru dealers this year were much more likely to reach out to website customers through multiple communication paths, doing so 71% of the time on average, compared to 49% of the time for the overall industry. Subaru dealers were also much less likely to score below 40 – failing to personally respond to website customers – only 8% of the time on average, compared to 19% of the time for the industry overall.
How Did Industry Performance Change Over the Past Year?
The overall auto industry average ILE performance increased three points to 65, the highest average to date. Acura, Hyundai, Subaru, Lincoln and Fiat were the brands with the largest improvement compared to last year, each improving their ILE average score by nine or more points. Looking at the past five years, the auto industry has maintained a steady upward trend in performance. For example, in the 2025 study, 28 brands achieved ILE scores of 60 or higher, compared to only eight meeting the same benchmark in 2021.
