I'm very proud of the study our team just released that tracked and graded over 400 Automotive Mystery Shops for 30 days. In the study, we read every email and listened to every voicemail. Also, we graded dealers' REAL response time: that is, the time it takes them to actually pick up the phone and call the prospect. Since we used a valid, working phone number for every shop, we did not allow dealers to "Stop the Clock" with an email; only a phone call. 

You can download our free White Paper from the study here: http://pladoogle.com/mystery-shops/

As you'll read in the White Paper, we undertook this study for two reasons: first, our overall impression of the quality of dealer communications was that it had not improved over the years despite the millions spent on new technology and training; and second, no previous study of dealer responses to e-leads was broad enough to encompass both email and phone responses for the critical thirty days after the lead was received.

We are (by design) a small company and cannot personally assist every dealer in America; therefore, our underlying goal with this study was to broaden the average dealer’s awareness about what may or may not be happening on their behalf in their own dealership.

Both the depth and the breadth of this study were large when compared to prior automotive dealer response studies. Between July and October 2014, we submitted price quote requests for VIN-specific new cars on 425 dealer websites. We chose to shop 425 dealers to be certain we’d receive at least 400 valid responses to grade for our study. Nineteen of the 425 dealers never responded to our lead submission; though because we couldn't rule out a CRM or website error for these dealers, we simply did not include their data in the study, and therefore ended with what we termed as 406 valid shops.

What might be most interesting to DealerElite members is our "side study" of top dealers. We chose 20 dealerships (at random) from the last 60 stores who've had a member of their internet team grace the cover of a certain digital magazine. While their overall results were better than the average dealer, neither their quality nor their quantity scores were anywhere near outstanding.