Pied Piper launches continuous retail performance monitoring for dealers
Pied Piper Management Company is rolling out a new subscription-based service designed to give multi-location retailers real-time visibility into missed sales leads, unanswered customer inquiries and service-scheduling failures.
The Austin, Texas-based company announced its Sales Lead Handling Effectiveness (LHE) and Service Scheduling Effectiveness (SSE) programs Aug. 17. Rather than relying on monthly or quarterly performance reports, the services independently evaluate customer interactions daily or weekly and alert local management when a problem is identified.
For powersports dealers, the approach could offer another way to identify customer-handling issues before they lead to lost sales or service business.
“Traditional monthly reports demand attention regardless of performance, and tell you what happened in the distant past,” says Fran O’Hagan, founder and CEO of Pied Piper. “Our continuous monitoring quickly alerts clients only when something goes wrong, preventing the next lost customer instead of simply documenting the last one.”
How it works
Pied Piper evaluates customer interactions across telephone calls, online chats, and website contact forms, as well as subsequent follow-up by phone, text, and email. When an evaluation identifies a failure, the local manager receives a text message with a 90-second audio Performance Alert explaining what happened. When interactions are handled properly, management receives no alert.
At the end of each month, managers receive a three-minute audio Executive Briefing highlighting performance, trends and areas that may require attention. Individual evaluations, historical results and detailed reports also are available. The company also offers Piper Answers, an interactive AI assistant that allows managers to query measurement results, compare locations, benchmark performance and identify potential improvement opportunities.
Pied Piper says the independent monitoring is intended to uncover problems that may not be visible in a dealership’s existing CRM, phone or AI systems. For example, a CRM may show that a lead was delivered even if the customer never received a useful response. Similarly, a phone system may record a successful transfer even if the customer ultimately reaches voicemail or is disconnected.
The company says the issue becomes increasingly important as retailers incorporate AI into sales and service operations, particularly when customer interactions are handed off between AI tools, employees and other systems.
“Management naturally assumes that established processes, employees and technology are working together as intended,” O’Hagan adds. “The most common reaction when independent measurement reveals otherwise is, ‘We just didn’t know.’”
Subscription pricing
Pied Piper said daily monitoring is available for $259 per location per month, while weekly monitoring costs $99 per location per month. Customers select the locations, inquiry types and measurement frequency they want monitored, with no software installation or lengthy implementation process required, according to the company.
The programs are available to manufacturers, franchisors, dealer groups and other multi-location organizations. For powersports retailers, the technology offers a potential way to move lead and customer-service accountability from periodic scorecards to ongoing monitoring, with management intervention focused on issues that require immediate attention.
