REV #050

The Turnover Divide

BY JAKE HUGHES

February 12th, 2026

High staff turnover is a well-documented challenge of automotive retail, and it does impact customer experience, but how it does specifically is something we can learn from as an industry.

We’ve been studying customer reviews for three years now, and staff execution remains the most influential driver of customer perception.

Across 5.5M Google reviews in 2025:

• 82% of positive Sales reviews mention staff
• 65% of positive Service reviews mention staff

The takeaway is clear: people define the experience.

Now look at workforce stability.

Source: NADA Workforce Studies 2023–2025

What stands out:

• Sales turnover is accelerating across every level.
• Service turnover has stabilized.

At the same time, starting in Summer 2024, sentiment diverges. Sales positivity softens, sales negativity rises, all while service staff negativity drops to levels in line with the Spring of 2023.

In the next section, we will unpack why this split matters.

The full analysis is detailed in the 2026 Voice of the Customer Report. See how staffing patterns are reshaping perception at scale.

Sales is more structurally exposed to human variability.

It’s event-driven, high-dollar, emotionally charged, and highly dependent on individual expertise.

Service is process-anchored. Interactions are by appointment, repeat-customer-heavy, and predictable in their timeline.

That difference matters when evaluating staff sentiment specifically.

Recent 2025 dealership reviews tied to Sales staff include:

“When I asked a question, he never knew the answer or always sounded very unsure. This did not give me much comfort…”

“It seems to me that the entire customer service experience stops mattering to them after the paperwork is signed. I went from feeling like an asset before I signed to a liability/inconvenience after.”

These comments are directed at individual execution, not pricing, inventory, or product.

The data shows Sales staff sentiment is softening year-over-year, while Service staff sentiment is comparatively stable.

At the same time, Sales roles are experiencing higher turnover across consultants and managers.

We are monitoring both trends closely heading into 2026. Because when staff-related sentiment begins to separate by department, operational pressure rarely stays isolated.

How do you maintain a 4.9-star rating across 55,000+ reviews?

That kind of scale usually introduces volatility. More volume. More exposure. More opportunity for sentiment to swing.

At West Herr Auto Group, the lift didn’t come from chasing higher scores. It came from building consistency into the process. Reputation management became operational, not reactive.

The outcome: negative sentiment reduced to 4%. Nearly three times lower than the industry average.

This isn’t about a tactic. It’s about structure. When engagement is consistent, sentiment stabilizes.

Read the full case study.

See you next week - Jake, Marketing @Widewail