Indian Motorcycle Dealers Top-Ranked for Third Year in 2025 Study Measuring Response to Website Customers

Associated Press

07-04-2025

Polaris Inc's Indian Motorcycle dealerships ranked highest in the 2025 Pied Piper PSI ® Internet Lead Effectiveness ® (ILE ® ) Powersports Industry Study, measuring responsiveness to internet sales leads coming through dealership websites. Following Indian were Harley-Davidson, BMW, and BRP's Can-Am off-road dealers.
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Source: 2025 Pied Piper Powersports Internet Lead Effectiveness Industry Study (USA)
Pied Piper submitted customer inquiries through 2,523 powersports dealership websites representing 27 brands. Each inquiry asked a specific question about a vehicle in inventory and included a new customer name, email address, and local telephone number. Pied Piper then evaluated the speed and quality of dealership responses by email, telephone, text message and chat over the next 24 hours. Each brand's overall ILE Score is a combined average of their individual dealer ILE performances. ILE evaluations consist of over 20 differently weighted measurements, based upon best practices that are mathematically most likely to generate sales, combining into an overall ILE score ranging from 0 to 100.
Indian Ranked Highest for Third Consecutive Year: What Sets Them Apart?
2025 marks the third year in a row the Indian brand achieved the top score in the annual ILE powersports industry study. The Indian brand improved their average score by one point for 2025, reaching an average ILE score of 56.
Answering Customer's Question More Often: Indian dealers this year answered their customer's question by email/text 67% of the time on average, improving six points over last year and 17 points higher than the 2025 industry average.
Higher Rate of Phone Response: Compared to the industry overall, Indian dealers maintain an eight point lead in the rate of phone response to customer inquiries, occurring 58% of the time on average.
'Did Both' for More Inquiries: Indian dealers 'did both' (answering an inquiry by email/text and also phoning, improving the odds of a response reaching the customer) 46% of the time on average, eight points higher than last year and 20 points higher than the industry average.
'The Indian motorcycle brand has maintained industry leading web-response behaviors during a challenging time in the powersports industry,' said Cameron O'Hagan, Pied Piper's Vice President of Metrics and Analytics. 'Two years ago, when market conditions were more favorable, dealers could easily afford to expand their staff and refine operations. Today, however, tougher conditions have many dealers battling just to keep the lights on.'
How Did the Industry Perform Over the Past Year?
The overall powersports industry average ILE score remained the same over the last year, both with ILE scores of 44. Powersports dealers in 2025 improved phone behaviors and rate of response, but also experienced declines in other important areas, resulting in no overall change in total ILE Score.
Behaviors that Improved:
Powersports dealers in 2025 performed better in phone and text response, and the rate of dealers failing to respond occurred less often:
More Phone Response: Dealers this year were 5 points more likely to respond to online customer inquiries by phone, occurring 50% of the time on average.
Better Use of Texting: Customers were more likely to receive a text response answering their question, increasing 5 points to an overall rate this year of 30%.
Fewer Failures to Respond: Dealers failed to respond to online inquiries less often this year, occurring only 9% of the time on average.
Behaviors in Decline:
There were two notable declines in behavior that held back overall industry score improvement:
Less Emails Answering Questions: Dealers answered customers' questions by email 27% of the time on average in 2025, down from 35% last year.
Not Offering Appointments as Often: Only 10% of customers in 2025 received a response that included an offer to set up an appointment, in contrast to last year where it occurred 13% of the time on average.
What is the '80/40 Rule' and How Does it Relate to the Powersports Industry?
In the 2025 powersports industry study, 13% of all dealerships measured scored above 80 (providing quick and thorough personal responses), while 42% of dealerships scored below 40 (failing to personally respond to website customers). The 'over 80' and 'under 40' segments each shrank by 1% since last year, with a larger pool of dealers performing in the space between both categories.
'The effort to improve from the under 40 bucket into the over 80 is worth it,' said O'Hagan. 'Historically, we have found that dealers who improve their ILE performance from scoring under 40 to scoring over 80 on average sell 50% more units from the same quantity of website customer leads.'
What is the Powersports Industry's Greatest Opportunity for Improvement?
There are two different key areas of improvement for powersports dealers, depending on their current performance level. One in four powersports dealerships currently fail to personally respond to website customer inquiries. For this group of dealers, the sole focus should be a commitment to always personally respond to online customers at least once each day.
'Just as you wouldn't lock up at the end of the day with a physical customer still wandering around the showroom, don't leave your digital customers hanging overnight in your digital showroom waiting for your reply,' said O'Hagan.
For the rest of the dealers, the step with the greatest opportunity is to embrace a reliable multi-channel communication strategy, rather than responding to customers using only email, only phone, or only text. In this year's study, powersports dealers failed to use multiple paths 74% of time, leaving many of their responses susceptible to communication breakdowns beyond the dealer's control.
'Emails can land in spam/junk and be missed, customers often ignore calls from an unknown number and don't listen to voicemail, and even texts can be lost or ignored among the large volume of messages many people receive per day,' said O'Hagan. 'A consistent multi-pronged response to every customer is critical since you never know in advance which communication method will be most effective at reaching a specific customer. Then, once contact is established, adopt the successful method for future interactions with the customer.'
2025 Brand Performance Compared:
Response to customer web inquiries within a 24-hour period in 2025 had large variations by brand, as shown by these examples:
'Phoned Customer' - How often did the brand's dealerships respond by phone to a website customer's inquiry?
More than 50% of the time on average: Harley-Davidson, Indian, Honda, Can-Am
Less than 30% of the time on average: Arctic Cat, Roxor, Moto Guzzi, Cub Cadet
'Offered an Appointment' - How often did the brand's dealerships offer to set an appointment for specific date/time?
More than 15% of the time on average: Can-Am, Indian, Polaris, Segway
Less than 1% of the time on average: John Deere, Tracker (Bass Pro Shops), Cub Cadet
'Did at Least One' - How often did the brand's dealerships email or text an answer to a website customer's question and/or respond by phone?
More than 80% of the time on average: BMW, KTM, Moto Guzzi, Harley-Davidson
Less than 50% of the time on average: Roxor, Cub Cadet
'Did Both' - How often did the brand's dealerships email or text an answer to a website customer's question and also phone the customer?
More than 30% of the time on average: Indian, Harley-Davidson, Triumph
Less than 10% of the time on average: Kymco, Tracker (Bass Pro Shops), Cub Cadet
Why Was This Study Conducted?
'Customers today visit dealer websites first, and how dealers respond to those customers drives today's sales success,' said O'Hagan. 'The trouble is that website customers can be invisible in day-to-day operations which makes them too easy to overlook.'
For more than 15 years, Pied Piper has independently published annual industry studies that rank the omnichannel performance of brands and dealer groups. These studies track how industry performance changes over time and let clients understand how their own performance compares.
Pied Piper clients order ongoing Prospect Satisfaction Index ® (PSI ® ) measurement and reporting – internet, telephone or in-person – for their dealerships, as tools to improve and maintain omnichannel sales and service effectiveness. Pied Piper clients have found that the key to driving dealership improvement is showing what sales and service customers are really experiencing – which is often a surprise.
About Pied Piper Management Company, LLC
Monterey, California - based Pied Piper helps brands and national retailer groups improve the omnichannel sales & service performance of their retailers.
Pied Piper's PSI process applies data science analytics to determine the omnichannel sales and service best practices most likely to drive unit sales and loyalty. PSI then uses a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning and human actors to measure and report how effectively retail locations follow those best practices.
Examples of other recent Pied Piper PSI studies include the 2024 Service Telephone Effectiveness ® (STE ® ) Powersport Industry Study (Triumph brand was ranked first), the 2024 Telephone Lead Effectiveness ™ (TLE ™ ) Pontoon Boat Industry Study (BRP's Sea-Doo brand ranked first), and the 2025 Internet Lead Effectiveness ® (ILE ® ) Auto Industry Study (Subaru was ranked first).
For more information about Prospect Satisfaction Index ® study results or to apply ongoing PSI measurement and reporting to improve performance, go to www.piedpiperpsi.com.
This press release is provided for editorial use only, and information contained in this release may not be used for advertising or otherwise promoting brands mentioned in this release without specific, written permission from Pied Piper Management Co., LLC.
SOURCE: Pied Piper
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PUB: 04/07/2025 12:01 AM/DISC: 04/07/2025 12:02 AM