Widewail

The average new vehicle now costs $40,000–$50,000. Of course, buyers are frustrated by that. It's a lot of money. But here's what the data shows: price negativity in sales reviews has hovered near 20% for years, even as transaction prices keep climbing. If sticker shock were the only driver, that number should have moved. It hasn’t. Which means something else is compounding the frustration — the lack of context, hidden fees, and the gap between what buyers see online and what they hear at the desk. In this week’s REV, we break down three process shifts top dealers are using to close that gap and stop losing deals they shouldn't be losing. Check it out here 👇

In Q3, 100 of the top 150 auto groups saw their share of negative reviews go up. That's the expected story. Summer volume spikes, staff bandwidth shrinks, and the fundamentals — review requests, response times, customer updates — are usually the first things to slip. But seven groups were able to flip that script. Phil Long Dealerships, Bob Moore Auto Group, and Ken Garff Auto Group were among the few that improved across all four reputation metrics we track during the busiest quarter of the year. Star rating, review volume, response rate, and negative feedback — all moving in the right direction, all at once, in Q3. The data points to two things: they kept review volume steady when others pulled back, and they kept responding when most groups slowed down. Simple in theory. A lot harder when the service drive is slammed, and every advisor is stretched thin. This week's REV gets into what the Q3 numbers show — and what real dealers say about keeping the basics intact when it matters most.

Meet Melissa Terrell (aka MT), Widewail's first-ever Chief Operating Officer! Melissa comes to us from Dealerware, where she served as EVP of Customer Experience, working alongside dealerships, dealer groups, and OEM partners to modernize operations and elevate the customer experience. Her automotive experience has solidified her belief that the dealerships that will win are the ones that truly listen to their customers, and that kind of thinking fits right in here. As COO, Melissa will lead the scaling of Widewail's operations and help drive adoption of our Customer Intelligence Engine — turning real customer feedback into the insights that help dealers make smarter decisions and build stronger businesses. Outside of work, Melissa is a dedicated baker, gardener, and hiker who makes her own habanero jam (we're already hoping she shares). She's an avid road tripper, a baseball fan who's checked off more than 15 stadiums, and a lifelong Longhorns supporter. 🤘 We're so thrilled to have her leading the charge. Welcome to the team, Melissa. #WailOn

Dealerships received 5.5 million Google reviews in 2025 — a 25% jump in a single year. We analyzed every one of them. Communication shows up in nearly half of all complaints. That's not new. What is new is where those complaints are spreading. The service department has always owned the communication problem. Long repairs, shifting timelines, missed callbacks — the frustration had a predictable home. But that's changing. The gap between service and sales communication complaints has nearly closed, and the trajectory of the issue in sales is still climbing. Turnover explains a lot of it. Sales teams cycle through staff significantly faster than service departments do, and that gap has widened every year since 2022. New hires bring energy, but they also introduce drift; what a salesperson promises doesn't always match what service can deliver. Inside the dealership, that's a coordination problem. To the customer, it feels like deception. Over time, that perception shows up less as frustration and more as distrust. Widewail CEO Cuyler Owens puts the fix plainly: it's not better scripts, it's a no-surprises culture. Every employee, day one or year ten, needs to give the same answer to the same question. Cuyler joined Sam D'Arc and Ulisse de' Martino on Daily Dealer Live to walk through what the full dataset actually tells us, and what dealers can do about it.

Google reviews still matter. But they're no longer the whole game. In 2025, U.S. dealerships generated 5.5 million Google reviews — up 25% year over year. And yet a growing share of car buyers never open Google. They ask ChatGPT. They ask Perplexity. They ask Claude. Those tools don't run on Google reviews alone. Most large language models pull from Yelp, DealerRater, Cars.com — and if your reputation only lives on Google, you're invisible at the exact moment a buyer is building their shortlist. The dealers ahead of this aren't starting over. They're making three small adjustments: where reviews go, how they're requested, and how they're responded to. This week’s REV covers it all:

Getting cars through the bay faster is necessary, but it’s no longer a differentiator. Our latest data shows that while complaints about wait times are slightly down, positive mentions of speed have dropped even further. Customers expect you to be on time. They don't write 5-star reviews for the baseline. What drives 1 in 5 negative reviews today isn't the speed of the repair, it’s the silence. It’s the dead time spent waiting in the lounge or waiting for a callback. In this week’s REV, we break down why investing solely in speed misses a substantial piece of what drives positive perception. We also look at how operators are winning by completely restructuring how they manage the wait. Read it here: 

Credit card surcharges trigger one consistent concern inside dealerships: “Will our customers hate this?” Leaders imagine the worst-case scenario. The one-star post or the review that gets forwarded to the President. So we looked at the customer intelligence data. Across an 86-store study - a sample of over 50,000 reviews - only 0.2% of customers left reviews mentioning surcharging. The other 99.8%? They talked about the experience. Stores that rolled out surcharges with structured training didn’t see communication scores drop; they rose. Why? Because they didn’t just add a line item, they added transparency: clear scripting, visible breakdowns, and upfront explanation. As Cuyler Owens put it: “The rigor that was put in for training, for communications, for explaining [the surcharge] actually elevated communication scores.” When teams prepare for the conversation, customers respond to the clarity, not the fee. We joined Sam D'Arc and Ulisse de' Martino to break down the full findings on Daily Dealer Live. If you’re weighing surcharges, the risk may not be what you think. Full breakdown here 👇

Sales just lost its buffer. For years, the excitement of buying a car covered up communication mistakes. Missed calls. Slow follow-ups. Sloppy handoffs. Not anymore. Our latest data shows Sales and Service communication complaints are now identical: 48.4% vs. 48.7%. Price complaints didn’t rise. So what changed? Customers aren’t fighting the cost. They’re reacting to the silence. This week’s REV breaks down what’s actually driving the spike — and why the old excitement discount is officially over. Read the full post below.

There is a massive divergence happening between Sales and Service right now, and the data shows it’s starting to impact the customer. According to the latest NADA Workforce Studies, Service turnover has essentially flattened. Sales turnover, however, has climbed from 42% to 66% over the last few years. Now look at the reviews. We analyzed 5.5M Google reviews from 2025. 82% of positive Sales reviews mention the individual helping them.  Sales isn’t just influenced by staff. It’s defined by them. When turnover accelerates, expertise resets, communication thins, and perception shifts quickly. Service is built on repeat traffic and process guardrails. Sales is built on people. That difference matters. As we head into 2026, the staff-related sentiment gap between departments is widening. And once perception starts to split internally, it rarely stays contained. Full breakdown in the latest REV 👇

Most dealers see pricing as a hurdle. The top performers see it as a trust signal. This week’s REV reveals why Mullinax and Del Grande get 5x more positive mentions of price in their reviews than the bottom of the leaderboard: they show the final price upfront. No hidden fees, no back-and-forth. Just clarity. The takeaway? Price isn’t about being the cheapest. It’s about being the most trusted. See the full leaderboard and how transparency drives loyalty in the latest REV article.