Find out how long your store takes to reply to a lead
The average dealership takes nine hours. Nearly a third never reply at all. We shop your store as a real buyer, track every response for five days, and send you a scored report like this one.
Your team is never told. Results are never published by name.
ClearlineMystery shop report
Clearline Motors | Sales lead response
An after-hours lead waited 11 hours for a human response.
The first reply arrived the next morning, then follow-up ended after one attempt. The clearest opportunity is overnight coverage plus a sustained contact cadence.
First human response
0:00hoursWednesday at 9:14 AM
after a Tuesday 9:55 PM lead
Overall score
0 / 100Below the average storeDay-one attempts
0Next morningFive-day attempts
0No later contactChannels used
0Email and textObserved sequence
What happened
- Tue 9:55 PM
Lead submitted. Information requested on a 2026 CR-V Hybrid through the dealer website.
- Tue 9:55 PM
Automatic confirmation. A generic message acknowledged that the dealership was closed.
- Wed 9:14 AM
First human contact. An email arrived from Tyler, 11 hours and 18 minutes after submission.
- Next 5 days
No further attempt observed. Contact stopped after the initial response.
Peer comparison
Where Clearline Motors stands
Compared with every dealership that has taken the same test. Further left is better.
Recommended priority
Cover the overnight response window, then continue follow-up beyond the first reply.
Private and confidential
The store above is fictional. The numbers are from a real shop.
Your report
Everything your store did with the lead, minute by minute
Not a survey and not a sales deck. A record of what actually happened after a buyer reached out, scored the same way we scored the benchmark.
The sequence, timestamped
Every auto-reply, email, call, and text in the order it happened, with the gaps measured.
Where you stand on four measures
First response, day-one follow-up, five-day follow-up, and channel mix, each shown relative to the 200+ stores we have shopped.
One priority, not a list
The single change that would move your score most, stated plainly enough to hand to your BDC on Monday.
The benchmark
We have shopped more than 200 dealerships. Most of them lost the lead.
Our published April 2026 study tracked 53 of those stores for five days after one real lead. The numbers below come from that study. Your report shows where your store lands against them.
0 hrs
Average first response
Median was 11.5 hours.
0%
Never responded
Nearly one in three stores.
0.0
Follow-ups in five days
Most sales need five or more.
0%
Used a single channel
Only 13% mixed email, phone, and text.
Time to first human response
Share of 53 dealerships in each bucket
- Under 5 min13.2%
- 5 to 15 min7.5%
- 15 to 60 min3.8%
- 1 to 12 hrs24.5%
- 12+ hrs20.8%
- No reply in 5 days28.3%
Green marks the five-minute window where buyers convert at the highest rate. Amber marks stores that never replied.
The top 10 percent of stores responded in under three minutes. The bottom 10 percent took nearly 17 hours. That is not a performance variance. It is a different operating philosophy.
How it works
Two minutes from you. Five days from us.
- Day 0
Tell us about your store
Your website, a contact for the report, and which channels to test. About two minutes. Your team is not told the shop is coming.
- Days 1 to 5
We shop you as a real buyer
One inbound lead with purchase intent for a specific vehicle. We log every reply, call, text, and voicemail, and note the ones that never came.
- Day 6
Your report arrives
The full sequence with timestamps, a score against 200+ stores, and the one fix that would move it most. Yours to share with your team.
Built for dealerships across major automotive brands
Questions
Before you request a shop
Is it actually free?
Yes. The shop and the report cost nothing, and you do not need to book a demo to receive it. We run these because the data shows us where dealerships lose leads, and most stores want to know how they did.
Will my team know they are being shopped?
No. The lead looks like any other inbound inquiry. Keep the shop to yourself so the results reflect a normal Tuesday, not a test.
How long does it take?
We confirm your request within one business day, track responses for five full days, and send the report shortly after the window closes.
Do you publish the results?
Never by name. Any aggregate findings we share are anonymized across every store we shop, the same way our published study was reported.
The lead you lost last night is not coming back. The next one can.
Request your free mystery shop and see exactly what a buyer experiences when they reach out to your store.
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