Indian Motorcycle Dealers Ranked Highest in 2024 Industry Study Measuring Response to Website Customers

Industry’s average performance declined: Increased use of texting was offset by lower speed and quality of email and phone responses

MONTEREY, CA – April 9, 2024 – (Motor Sports NewsWire) – Polaris Inc’s Indian motorcycle dealerships were ranked highest according to the 2024 Pied Piper PSI^® Internet Lead Effectiveness^® (ILE^®) Study, which measured responsiveness to internet leads coming though powersports dealership websites. Following Indian were Harley-Davidson, Polaris Off-Road, Triumph, and BMW.

Pied Piper submitted mystery-shopper customer inquiries through the individual websites of 3,718 powersports dealerships, asking a specific question about a vehicle in inventory, and providing a unique customer name, email address and local telephone number. Pied Piper then evaluated how the dealerships responded by email, telephone, and text message over the next 24 hours.

Powersports industry average ILE performance declined over the past year. “2024 is a much more challenging business environment for powersports dealers,” said Fran O’Hagan, Pied Piper’s CEO. “New digital retail tools and effective web-response processes are more prevalent today post pandemic, but powersports dealers are challenged to retain skilled employees to use those tools and processes effectively.”

Twenty different quality and speed of response measurements generate dealership ILE scores, which range from zero to 100. Dealerships which score above 80 provide a quick and thorough personal response by email and phone, and often text too. In contrast, dealerships which score below 40 fail to personally respond in any way to their website customers. For top scoring Indian Motorcycle, 24% of their dealerships scored over 80, while 32% scored under 40. In contrast, measurement of the overall powersports industry showed that only 14% of dealerships scored over 80 while 43% scored under 40. “The effort is worth it,” said O’Hagan. “On average, dealerships that score over 80 sell 50% more vehicles to the same quantity of website customers, compared to dealerships that score under 40.”

Brands with the greatest improvement from last year included BMW, Triumph, Honda and Royal Enfield. The performance of eleven of twenty-seven brands declined. Brands suffering the largest drops included Kawasaki, Arctic Cat, John Deere, Harley-Davidson and Yamaha.

Dealerships this year were slightly more likely to respond to online customer inquiries by text message than…