U.S. franchise dealerships generated 5.5 million Google reviews in 2025, up 25% year-over-year, according to Widewail’s annual Voice of the Customer report.
But the analysis of those reviews revealed that communication failures and honesty concerns are now hitting sales departments as hard as service.
By the numbers: In Q4 2025, communication was mentioned in reviews for both service (48.7%) and sales (48.4%) departments.
Over three years, negative reviews mentioning price stayed flat around 20%, even as average new-vehicle cost rose.
Negative wait-time mentions dropped, but positive sentiment about wait times overall also fell (around 9%).
The reason: Widewail CEO Cuyler Owens attributes a lot of the change in sentiment directly to staff turnover.
What they’re saying: "The trust and appreciation within the dealership for salespeople is really diminishing," Owens told CDG News. "Over the last three years, we've gone from an 8% honesty question in negative reviews to 12%. A lot of that is turnover of the salespeople."
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The problem: Sales staff are cycling out every six to nine months, leaving stores with undertrained employees who lack product knowledge and professionalism. Customers interpret inconsistent answers as deception, even when it's just inexperience.
"[Dealers] need to make sure that [their] teams and staff are saying the same thing at the same place to the customer the same way every single time. With turnover, that's really difficult to get to," Owens explained.
Between the lines: Reviews can now affect AI-driven search.
ChatGPT and other LLMs pull from third-party sites like Yelp, DealerRater, and Carfax to surface dealer recommendations, but they don’t often leverage Google reviews.
"They don't look very frequently on Google because it's a competitor," Owens said. "Having a diverse strategy where you're on multiple different sites will give you a broader context for those models to search and serve up content."
Bottom line: As sales turnover accelerates, inconsistent messaging is eroding trust and feeding the AI systems that increasingly influence where customers shop. Dealers that invest in sales training, tighter process discipline, and review visibility across multiple platforms will likely protect both their reputation and customer demand.
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