Powersports industry performance has improved substantially over the past five years, but there is now a large gap in customer treatment between top ranked brands and the others
MONTEREY, CA – April 24, 2023 – (Motor Sports NewsWire) – Polaris Inc’s Indian Motorcycle dealerships ranked highest in the 2023 Pied Piper PSI® Internet Lead Effectiveness® (ILE®) Motorcycle/UTV Industry Study, which measured responsiveness to internet leads coming through dealership websites. Following Indian were Harley-Davidson, Polaris Inc’s Side-by-Side/UTV dealers, BRP’s Can-Am dealers, Kawasaki and Yamaha.
The powersports industry has substantially improved dealer treatment of website customers. As an example, five years ago a powersports website customer’s inquiry would be answered only 31% of the time on average, compared to 52% of the time in 2023. “Powersports dealers were quicker to respond to their website customers this year than ever before,” said Fran O’Hagan, CEO of Pied Piper. “On the other hand, there has become a large difference in how dealers for the top-ranked brands treat their website customers compared to dealers for brands ranked at the bottom.”
Pied Piper submitted customer inquiries through the individual websites of 6,247 dealerships, asking a specific question about a vehicle in inventory, and providing a 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.
Brands with the greatest improvement since last years study were Kubota, Arctic Cat, Kawasaki and Yamaha. Only four brands failed to improve from 2022 to 2023: BMW, Harley-Davidson, Triumph and Moto Guzzi. Industry average ILE performance increased five points to a score of 48, an all-time high during the eight years Pied Piper has measured and reported industry dealer web-response performance. As an example of the improved performance, 17 of the 25 brands measured achieved ILE scores over 40 this year, compared to as recently as 2019, when only 3 brands scored over 40.
Twenty different measurements generate dealership ILE scores, on a scale of 100. In a traditional bell curve of performance, 27% of all dealerships nationwide scored above 70 (providing a quick and thorough personal response), while 35% of dealerships scored below 30 (failing to personally respond to their website customers). By comparison, for the top scoring Indian Motorcycle…
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