Staff-Related Issues Plague Car Brand Health Scores
Widewail is a Burlington, Vermont-based brand reputation agency. It recently published its automotive Brand Scorecard Report for 2024. Widewail scraped over four million Google reviews of more than 17,900 dealerships. Then, it ranked car brand health based on the incidence of positive and negative reviews and the keywords contained within them.
Interestingly, many brands seem plagued by dealership staff-related complaints more than, say, the cost of goods or services.
In the report, brand health scores are influenced by lifetime and monthly review volume, star rating, and review response rate. Lexus earned 95 out of 100 points and top placement, while Genesis landed dead last with only 36 points.
27 of 32 brands have noted weaknesses associated with dealership employees. “Weaknesses” are defined as a Google review aspect being mentioned more or less than the industry benchmark in that area. Aspects include the following keywords:
- Staff
- Sales department
- Service department
- Finance department
- Communication
- Wait times
- Knowledge
- Management
- Professionalism
- Helpfulness
- Review response rate
Widewail lists 32 OEMs from highest to lowest brand health scores as follows. We’re also including what the agency considered “weak” areas on its scorecard for each brand:
| Brand | Score (out of 100) | Widewail’s noted “weak” areas |
| Lexus | 95 | Sales dept, staff |
| Toyota | 94 | Price |
| BMW | 91 | Staff |
| Honda | 88 | Sales dept, price/cost |
| Nissan | 87 | Sales dept, price/cost |
| Kia | 83 | Sales dept, service dept |
| VW | 80 | Maintenance, wait times |
| Hyundai | 80 | Communication, wait times |
| Mercedes-Benz | 78 | Service dept, communication |
| Audi | 77 | Service dept, loaner car |
| Subaru | 77 | No obvious |
| Fiat | 73 | Knowledgeable |
| Infiniti | 72 | Management |
| Acura | 71 | Management, finance dept |
| Ram | 70 | Management, service dept |
| Mitsubishi | 70 | Management, finance dept |
| Mazda | 68 | Price/cost, finance dept |
| MINI | 67 | Price/cost |
| Chevrolet | 65 | Maintenance, damage to vehicle |
| Volvo | 64 | Wait times |
| Chrysler | 64 | Warranty, communication |
| Jeep | 64 | Review response rate, professionalism, warranty |
| Dodge | 64 | Warranty, service dept |
| Porsche | 64 | Communication, loaner cars |
| GMC | 63 | Knowledge, maintenance, wait times |
| Land Rover | 63 | Service dept, loaner cars |
| Buick | 62 | Maintenance |
| Ford | 60 | Helpfulness, service dept, maintenance |
| Cadillac | 58 | Staff |
| Jaguar | 48 | Warranty, communication, loaner cars |
| Lincoln | 40 | Low review response rate, management, maintenance |
| Genesis | 36 | Service dept, communication, loaner cars |
Having worked as a service advisor and operations manager at a shop for more than a decade, I can attest that socially intelligent, caring staff are key to a healthy car brand reputation. Post-pandemic, it’s even more difficult to staff customer-facing businesses properly. Training is essential; the customer may not always be right, but empathy and relationship-focused service go a long way.
