BRP Inc’s Sea-Doo dealerships achieved the highest ranking in the 2024 Pied Piper PSI® Telephone Lead Effectiveness™ (TLE™) Study, which assessed responsiveness to sales customers inquiring about pontoon boat purchases. Following Sea-Doo were dealerships for Polaris Inc’s Bennington, Avalon & Tahoe Manufacturing’s Avalon, and Brunswick Corporation’s Harris.
For over fifteen years, Pied Piper has provided metrics on best sales and service practices through its Prospect Satisfaction Index® (PSI®) process. This year marks the inaugural PSI® study for the marine industry, focusing on brands and dealerships selling the popular pontoon boats.
The TLE™ study evaluates how effectively dealerships respond to customer calls. It examines whether dealerships can answer inquiries, provide helpful information, and encourage customers to visit the dealership for potential purchases. To conduct the study, Pied Piper anonymously contacted 802 dealerships from March to September 2024, covering the seventeen largest pontoon boat brands.
“One in four buyers initiates contact with a dealership via phone,” stated Fran O’Hagan, CEO of Pied Piper. “This phone interaction is crucial in determining whether a customer visits a dealership and buys a boat, yet these telephone processes often go unnoticed by dealership management.”
The TLE scores, ranging from zero to 100, are calculated based on twenty-five quality and speed of response metrics. Dealerships scoring above 70 provide prompt, helpful, and comprehensive interactions, while those below 40 often fail to answer calls or address customer questions adequately.
Analysis of the TLE scores revealed significant differences in customer experiences among brands:
- Mission Excellent: Achieving a TLE score over 70 with quick, helpful interactions occurred more than 20% of the time for brands like Harris, Crest, and Godfrey, while brands like Sun Tracker and Tahoe scored less than 7%.
- Mission Acceptable: Responding to customers within one minute, answering questions, and offering appointments occurred more than 75% of the time for Avalon and Sea-Doo, but less than 60% for Sunchaser and Tahoe.
- Mission Failure: Instances where calls went unanswered or questions were not addressed occurred less than 5% of the time for Sea-Doo and Avalon, while brands like South Bay and Tahoe faced issues over 10% of the time.
Additional findings included:
- Salespeople needing assistance to answer questions occurred less than 2% of the time for brands like Bentley and Crest, compared to over 15% for Tahoe and Sun Tracker.
- Customers were offered appointments over 70% of the time for Bennington and Harris, but less than 50% for brands like Starcraft and Tahoe.
Customers shopping for top-performing pontoon boat brands were three times more likely to have an excellent phone interaction than those considering lower-performing brands,” noted O’Hagan. “In today’s market, it’s too risky to lose a potential sale over a poor phone experience.” Pied Piper emphasizes that improving telephone interactions is essential for boosting sales, and revealing the actual customer experience can lead to surprising insights for dealers.
