Lexus Still Best at Internet Lead Response

Lexus dealers are the best at responding to internet leads for the second straight year according to the 2015 Pied Piper Internet Lead Effectiveness Benchmarking Study.

The study is conducted by sending inquiries to 13,637 dealerships across the country representing all major brands and gauging the responses. Lexus scored the highest while Porsche, Fiat, Dodge and Infiniti close out the top five. On the bottom end, Scion scored the lowest, with GMC, Hyundai, Volvo and Buick sitting at the bottom of the list.

Infiniti had the greatest increase on the study compared to last year, jumping 8 spots on the list, while Mini and Mitsubishi also saw large improvements.

Each dealership is assigned a letter grade, from A to F, depending on their response. Lexus dealers received an A grade 22 percent of the time, compared to the industry average of just 5 percent. Lexus dealers also responded 99 percent of the time, gave a reason to act quickly 66 percent of the time and gave reasons to buy from their specific dealership 29 percent of the time.

Overall, the industry as a whole improved slightly over 2014, but there are still issues. About every 12th customer (8 percent) got not response at all, while Lexus was the only brand to respond to over 98 percent of customer inquiries. One in ten customers got no response at all from BMW, Cadillac, Honda, Hyundai, Lincoln, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Scion, Subaru and Volvo dealers.

Included in the inquiry was a specific question that could not be answered by an auto response. Hyundai, Jaguar and Mini dealerships did the best in this area, answering the question more than 60 percent of the time. On the other end, Chevy, Ford, GMC, Lincoln and Ram dealerhips answered the question less than 33 percent of the time.

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