Lincoln Dealers Ranked Below Average For Phone Effectiveness

Lincoln dealers haven’t historically performed that well in certain studies related to customer service levels, which has also been the case with the Ford brand as of late. In fact, Pied Piper’s 2023 PSI Internet Lead Effectiveness (ILE) Study found that Lincoln dealers ranked below the industry average in terms of their responsiveness to internet leads coming through dealership websites. Now, Pied Piper has released the 2024 version of its PSI Service Telephone Effectiveness (STE) Study, and it also contains bad news for Lincoln dealers.

The Pied Piper 2024 PSI Service Telephone Effectiveness (STE) Study measures the efficiency and quality of service telephone calls from a customer’s perspective, with an eye toward how quick and easy it was for those customers to set up a service appointment with their local dealer. For those year’s STE Study, Pied Piper called 2,716 dealerships, after which it assigned a score between 0 and 100 based on a variety of measurements, including how quickly a service appointment is scheduled and how helpful representatives were. This year, Ford dealers performed quite well, ranking ninth among all brands with a score of 59. However, Lincoln ranked near the very bottom of the list with a score of 49, tying it with Genesis and ranking it ahead of only Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Polestar, and Fiat.

“Well-run service departments focus on increasing customer loyalty, and the first service experience to drive that loyalty is a customer’s phone call to schedule an appointment,’ said Fran O’Hagan, Pied Piper CEO. “Vehicle customers who find scheduling service difficult vote with their feet by moving to another dealership or independent shop, or even getting rid of their problem vehicle.”

Aside from these two recent Pied Piper studies, Lincoln dealers haven’t fared well in J.D. Power’s U.S. Customer Service Index (CSI) Study over the past couple of years, either. In fact, those entities ranked below the premium segment average and near the bottom of the pack in both 2023 and 2024.

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