Electric vehicle (EV) brands are not perfect, and according to a recent report, they are lagging behind their ICE counterparts in terms of customer service.
A study conducted by Pied Piper found that all four electric-exclusive brands in the United States in the bottom quarter of their Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) rankings.
The PSI rankings uses 70 best-practice behaviours to measure retail service performance. This includes:
- In-person
- Web-response categories
- Salesperson attentiveness
- Availability of financing options and;
- How quickly a dealership responded to an online inquiry
Pied Piper used telephonic communication to sub in for in-person scores if a company did not have a physical dealership.
The four all-electric brands, Tesla, Lucid, Polestar and Rivian, ranked in the bottom quarter of the 25 brands that were included in the study.
Rivian finished last, with Polestar finishing 24th and Lucid at 23rd. Tesla came out best among the EV companies but landed at number 21.
Tesla’s in-person PSI scores have dropped over the years. In fact, since 2019, Tesla has dropped 18 per cent in terms of in-person scoring.
Pied Piper CEO Fran O’Hagen had this to say about this year’s results and the poor showing of EV companies:
I think the leadership of those companies doesn’t value customer experience compared to how much they value products. All of the non-sexy parts of the business are the ones that require all of the sweat and toil, and they have little to do with the product — things like customer service for your new customers.
In terms of the results, the top five companies were:
- Cadillac
- Infiniti
- Mercedes-Benz
- Acura
- Volvo
The full results are below.
