Discover the key insights from the 2024 Voice of the Customer Report, featuring YoY comparisons, topic trending, and cohort analysis to enhance automotive customer satisfaction.
The 2024 Voice of the Customer (VOC) Report is here, offering fresh insights into the automotive industry. With new features like year-over-year (YoY) comparisons and cohort analysis, this year’s report provides a deeper understanding of the trends shaping customer sentiment.
As we move into 2025, the updated VOC report highlights the evolving dynamics of the industry, giving you a clearer picture of where the automotive sector stands and how it’s shifting.
Here’s a breakdown of the top three updates that make the 2024 VOC report stand out:
One of the most notable updates to the 2024 VOC report is the inclusion of year-over-year (YoY) comparison data. This enhancement allows for a deeper analysis of performance trends over time across 32 OEMs and 27 of the most commonly mentioned review topics.
With this addition, the focus shifts from merely understanding current performance to identifying how the industry is changing and uncovering potential root causes behind these changes.
Sales Department Trends: In 2024, sales department positivity has declined by 3% YoY, while negativity has surged by 8.5% YoY. This indicates that dissatisfaction within sales is growing at a faster rate than in service departments.
Financing Department Concerns: A significant contributor to this trend is financing. Negative mentions appear in 7% of all auto reviews but jump to 15% within sales-specific reviews - a staggering 124% increase. Industry-wide, financing-related negativity has risen by 20% compared to 2023.
These insights highlight critical issues that might otherwise be overlooked. For instance, a 124% increase in negative reviews about financing isn’t an isolated anomaly— it’s an industry-wide problem that has intensified over the past year. Without YoY comparisons, dealers might dismiss such trends as isolated incidents. However, with this data, they can recognize systemic issues and take immediate action.
The growing dissatisfaction with financing presents an opportunity for dealers to address customer pain points directly. Potential strategies include:
The YoY data also provides valuable context for prioritizing resources. With sales department negativity outpacing service, dealers can focus their efforts on refining the sales process for 2025 rather than spreading resources thinly across all areas.
By addressing specific pain points within sales—like financing—dealers can make more impactful improvements that resonate with customers.
This level of analysis underscores the importance of tracking year-over-year trends, empowering dealers to stay ahead of industry challenges and deliver a better customer experience.
The 2024 VOC report introduces detailed topic trending, enabling quarterly tracking of customer sentiment across 27 specific areas. This feature sheds light on what customers are praising or criticizing most frequently, whether it’s staff interactions, financing, or product features.
By monitoring these topics over time, businesses gain a clearer understanding of how customer opinions are evolving and where adjustments may be needed.
Improved Wait Times: One of the most significant changes highlighted in the report is an 8.5% YoY decline in negative mentions of wait times—the largest decrease across all tracked topics. This improvement is largely driven by service departments, which saw a 7% reduction in negative feedback on wait times, compared to just a 1% drop in sales departments.
Stability vs. Change: While certain areas of the industry remain stable, others have experienced notable shifts. This dynamic view allows businesses to pinpoint where they are meeting customer expectations and where there’s room for growth.
Understanding which areas consistently receive positive feedback and identifying areas of concern is crucial for maintaining strong customer relationships. The decline in negative feedback on wait times suggests that efforts to streamline service processes are paying off. However, the smaller improvement within sales departments indicates an opportunity to further refine operations in that area.
The granular insights provided by topic trending enable rooftops to:
This level of analysis offers the strategy needed to adapt to shifting customer expectations and maintain a competitive edge in the market.
The 2024 VOC Report introduces cohort analysis, a powerful tool for breaking down data into meaningful categories. By segmenting information into groups such as sales, service, vehicle types (EV, hybrid, internal combustion engine), and luxury vs. non-luxury, the report provides a clearer picture of industry trends and enables more precise performance comparisons.
Price/Cost Feedback: Mentions of price/cost in reviews increased slightly by 0.3% in 2024, while negative mentions decreased by 1.6%. However, cohort-specific data reveals more nuanced trends:
Service Cost Challenges: Feedback about repair costs has surged significantly year-over-year:
These findings highlight a critical divergence: while sales departments are improving in price/cost feedback, service departments are facing mounting challenges related to repair costs.
Cohort analysis offers a granular view of customer feedback, enabling businesses to identify and address specific pain points rather than treating all negative feedback as one-size-fits-all.
For example, the rise in repair-related negativity underscores the need for dealerships to reassess service pricing structures or improve communication around repair costs. Positive trends in sales-related deals suggest that targeted promotions or financing options are resonating with customers.
By leveraging cohort analysis, rooftops can take targeted actions to address specific challenges:
Service Department Improvements:
Sales Department Opportunities:
Cohort analysis highlights areas of concern while helping dealerships allocate resources more effectively. With service department challenges on the rise, businesses can prioritize investments in training, technology, or customer support to address these issues head-on. Meanwhile, sales departments can continue capitalizing on their strengths to drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The 2024 VOC report provides dealerships and OEMs with the tools they need to see where they stand in the eyes of their customers. It goes beyond review volume and ratings to analyze the relationships between topics and benchmarks and compare cohort performance against industry standards.
Ultimately, the new report gives you a clearer view of how customer expectations are changing, which areas need attention, and where your dealership or service department can take immediate action to improve.
For businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve, this kind of insight is invaluable. Use it to sharpen your approach to customer service, refine your sales process, and focus on the areas that will make the most difference for your team.
Explore Widewail’s full (and free) 2024 VOC report here.
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