Dealers for GM brand Buick ranked below average in the 2023 Pied Piper PSIÂ Internet Lead Effectiveness (ILE) Study, but still improved its performance year-over-year by a considerable margin.
Pied Piper, an automotive mystery shopping company, has carried out the ILE Study annually since 2011. The study ranks dealerships with a rating out a possible maximum 100 points based on their performance in responding quickly and effectively to online contacts from potential customers.
Buick scored 56 points for its dealership responsiveness during the study period of period from July 2022 to January 2023. This puts it two points below the auto industry’s overall average of 58 points for all 5,428 major car company dealerships across the U.S. that were considered in the study.
While Buick dealers ranked slightly below average for U.S. dealerships, they made several significant improvements in their performance. For one thing, the 56-point ranking of Buick dealerships improved by seven points from the previous year, while the average dealership improved by just three points year-over-year. This demonstrates Buick dealers are putting intensive effort into improving Internet service.
Buick dealers also closed the gap between their online performance and that of the average dealership nationwide. Buick scored 49 in last year’s ILE Study, six points below the 55 average industry rating. This year Buick dealers were only two points behind the average.
The ILE study’s 100-point scale ranks dealerships based on responsiveness to online customer inquiries, measuring performance in 20 different areas to generate a score for individual brands. Pied Piper gathered the necessary data by sending secret shopper customer inquiries dealerships during the study period, then analyzing the responses.
More points were given to dealerships that responded quickly to customer inquiries. Sending a personalized, detailed response addressing the contact’s specific concerns also increased ranking, as did response via multiple contact channels, including email, text messages, or telephone calls.
Pied Piper analysts subtracted points for failure to respond within 24 hours of contact or for using only a single communications channel for contact. Following a classic bell curve pattern, about 30 percent of dealerships registered a score above 80, while roughly 29 percent scored below 40 points.
Pied Piper notes a swift response to online customer contacts and information requests can be a crucial component in maintaining higher sales volume in the modern automotive market. As CEO Fran O’Hagan of Pied Piper said, “Dealers who respond quickly, personally, and completely to website customer inquiries simply sell more vehicles.”
Buick scored lowest in the 2023 ILE study out of GM’s four automotive brands. Cadillac topped the chart with a score of 72 points, pushing last year’s winner Infiniti to second place. Meanwhile, GMC and Chevy each scored 60 points, putting them in the middle of the pack, just two points above the industry average.
All four of The General’s brands improved their Internet Lead Effectiveness Score significantly year-over-year in the 2023 study.
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Comments
That surprises me, because everytime I go to a Buick dealer’s website, the online chat window opens with an offer of help. But the most important part is having product to show on the site, not the discontinued 2022 Encore or making the Avenir trims like they are additional vehicles. C’mon Buick, get the 2024 Encore GX rolling in May, bring the Envista into the showrooms, give the Envision the new Buick styling, and redesign the Enclave. Oh, and show us what the first Buick EV will be for 2025.
Yeah that chat box is annoying, can’t delete it fast enough.
Whatever, never heard of this before.
Just another survey company looking to sell themselves as if they are worth something. The last thing I’ll do is make a determination to buy a vehicle just from on line chats. All information can be found. Just too many people ask stupid questions because they are too lazy to look things up themselves.
All dealerships of all brands must use the the same software since the chat pop up’s is non stop. When it gets too annoying I change to another dealership to look over inventory. The popup are not the dealer employees but some contractor anywhere in the world that will have a canned list of answers. They are not all pretty white girls on the other side of the chat.