Staying consistent on reviews and responses during a summer volume spike is easier said than done. Anyone who has worked a busy service drive in July knows that.
NADA Academy instructor Jennifer Suzuki put it plainly on the Dealer Driven Podcast — the morning service rush often feels like a “rat race”. When the drive is slammed, the fundamentals slip. Updates don't go out. Review requests get skipped. And as Suzuki noted, the complaint she hears most from customers is a familiar one: "No one's communicating with me. I keep having to call in."
That's the gap the data is picking up on.
A couple of things that tend to come up when dealers talk about this:
Getting ahead of the inbound call: When customers don't know what's happening with their car, they call. That call takes an advisor off the floor. Last year, Affinitiv's team at NADA made the case for Video MPIs as one way to address this — sending customers a visual update before they feel the need to follow up. It's a direction a lot of operators are moving, and it speaks directly to the communication gaps that tend to surface in Q3 reviews.
Watching advisor load, not just customer satisfaction: Cathy Palochko of Quantum5 made an observation on the Dealer Driven Podcast worth sitting with: "You can't have a great customer experience unless you start with a great employee experience." When advisors are stretched thin, the follow-through that drives positive reviews tends to be the first casualty, and Q3 is when that pressure peaks.
The groups that came through last summer with stronger numbers held their process together when volume was highest. That tends to be where the separation happens.
With summer coming, these things are worth looking into before volume picks up:
-
Is your review request process automatic or manual? If it depends on an advisor remembering to trigger it during a packed afternoon, that's a gap you should close before Q3.
-
Who owns a negative review that comes in on a busy Friday? If the answer isn't clear, you should be establishing that now.
