Measure, Report & Improve
Pied Piper Helps Brands Improve the Omnichannel Sales & Service Performance of their Retailers
Pied Piper Helps Brands Improve the Omnichannel Sales & Service Performance of their Retailers
Recent Press - Automotive News
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Automotive News – Daily Drive Podcast
AI vs. humans on dealership service calls
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July 2025
Pied Piper CEO Fran O'Hagan talks about how well artificial intelligence is doing compared to humans when answering service appointment calls. Read More >
Automotive News
AI often beats humans in service call quality, but challenges remain, Pied Piper study says
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July 2025
Across dealerships, the effectiveness of service calls is improving — increasingly with the help of artificial intelligence. The 2025 Pied Piper Auto Dealer Group Service Telephone Effectiveness Study showed improvements across a majority of dealerships. Industrywide, average telephone service performance was up six points since 2023 with an average score of 64 this year. It was 60 in 2024. The study also looked at how dealerships are using AI ... Read More >
Automotive News
Dealerships: Call, text or email to boost web lead response times
May 2025
Dealerships that use email, text messages and phone calls in tandem to address online customer inquiries improve their web lead response times, industry consulting firm Pied Piper said in a new report. Pied Piper CEO Fran O’Hagan said pursuing the options together helps reach customers more effectively. “Otherwise, customers just don’t see or listen to the dealer’s response,” O’Hagan told Automotive News. That’s one of the central conclusions ... Read More >
Automotive News
Dealerships keep improving internet sales lead responses
March 2025
Dealerships are continuing to improve how they respond to internet sales leads, though about 20 percent of customer inquiries still receive no personal response, a new study from industry consultant Pied Piper found. The firm’s 2025 Internet Lead Effectiveness Auto Industry Study found the average internet lead effectiveness score was 65 out of a possible 100, three points higher than a year ago and the highest average since the company began ... Read More >
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 >
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
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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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
