REV #068: Communication Isn't a Communication Problem

Welcome to the REV. A weekly briefing on what the Auto industry can learn about customer experience from millions of Google reviews. Every Thursday, we Rank, Explore & Visualize automotive reputation & sentiment data. 
 
Our latest research report dropped last week. It analyzes 1.2M Google Reviews from 18,000 U.S. dealerships across Q1, revealing what customers are saying across the auto industry. Check it out below: 

Report: Q1 2026 Voice of the Customer Report

Read online. Subscribe to REV

Communication is the most common complaint at luxury dealerships, and it never moved on its own last quarter.

When it shifted, service complaints shifted with it at 12 of the 13 luxury brands. The only exception was Lincoln.

RANK

Service, Management Tied to Communication

Management followed at 11 of 13 brands; only BMW and Cadillac broke step. It runs both ways. When communication complaints climbed, so did service and management.

For contrast, we highlighted a topic that did not move in sync with communication: wait time. Wait time negativity improved at nearly every brand in Q1, no matter which way communication went.

EXPLORE

Widen Your View

So what is the communication complaint actually measuring? Not just your messaging. A score that moves with service and management is tracking the service experience itself.

Communication is just the word customers reach for when that experience breaks down.

Our advice:

When communication complaints climb, look upstream.

It’s all tied together: communication > service > front office.

Treating communication as its own box to fix is the comfortable move. It's also why it stays at the top of the list. The number isn't telling you to talk more. It's a readout of how customers are handled.

This is the Widewail thesis. Reviews can do more for your business; there is gold in those hills if you know where to look.

Case in point, the FTC.

When the FTC warned 97 dealer groups over deceptive pricing in March, we ran the public list against the Widewail Index.

On star rating, review volume, and healthscore, the flagged stores were indistinguishable from everyone else. At the topic level, negative sentiment on price, financing, deals, and bait-and-switch ran 1.5x to 2.4x higher. Service and vehicle complaints, unrelated to the FTC's themes, showed no gap. The surface said nothing. The topics said everything.

We dig into that gap this Thursday. Melissa Terrell, Jake Hughes, and Paul Stansik walk through the pricing study, the benchmarks for each problem topic, and how to read your own Q1 2026 numbers against the Index.

Thursday, June 18 · 12 PM ET · 30 min + live Q&A

Register here

See you next week - Emily, Marketing @Widewail