INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Automotive dealerships may be responding quickly to internet leads while still responding to the wrong customer.

That is one of the findings emerging from an ongoing series of real-world dealership lead-response audits conducted by Automotive Lead Performance Institute. The research found that 67 percent of dealership responses failed to adequately address the customer’s actual inquiry.

Founder Scott Miller describes the problem as dealerships “responding to a customer who doesn’t exist.”

“When a customer tells a dealership exactly what they want, how they want to communicate and what information they need, that information should shape the response,” Miller said. “Instead, we repeatedly see responses written for the generic internet customer the salesperson has in their head. The dealership responded to the lead, but it didn’t really respond to the person who submitted it.”

Miller brings more than 25 years of automotive retail experience spanning sales, finance, management and digital customer engagement. His research evaluates dealership lead handling from the customer’s perspective, beginning when an inquiry is submitted rather than when activity is first recorded inside the dealership.

The audits examine actual response time, whether the customer’s question was acknowledged or answered, whether the submitted information was demonstrably read, whether direct contact information was provided, the communication channels used and whether an appointment was offered appropriately.

Miller believes the distinction matters because traditional dealership performance measurements can show that a lead received a response without measuring the quality or relevance of that response.

“Response time matters, but speed alone isn’t enough,” Miller said. “If a customer says they’ve already driven the vehicle and the first response asks when they’d like to come in for a test drive, the problem isn’t response time. The problem is that nobody listened.”

Automotive Lead Performance Institute is an automotive research and consulting organization focused on dealership internet lead response, customer engagement and sales conversion. Through real-world dealership audits, performance analysis, consulting and staff training, the Institute identifies gaps between customer inquiries and dealership responses and helps retailers improve digital sales performance.