A 12-month pilot with several major AM100 dealer groups has led to the launch of a dedicated used car customer satisfaction index service.

Web-based JudgeService provides dealers with an end to end customer contact and monitoring tool which enables groups to assess used car sales and satisfaction across different dealerships, marques and sales teams, plus to encourage and promote positive customer testimonials using social media.

It has been developed by a team including former Motors.co.uk executive Dale Woodley and was piloted with Benfield Motor Group, Lookers and Perrys Group.

Andy Bruce, managing director of Lookers’ franchised dealerships, said: “We have found that using JudgeService has given us an invaluable insight into how our used car customers perceive our service quality.

“The response rates give us meaningful data which is reported in a way that allows clear understanding of the customer experience and lets us focus on what we do well and where we can improve.

“It also provides us with a mechanism to explore how we might start to influence the ever increasing trend of third party testimonials.”

Dale Woodley, sales director at JudgeService, said while CSI systems are well developed in the new car industry, the used car market has fallen behind when it comes to the effective monitoring of sales performance.

“We know from our own market research that on average only half of all used car customers are contacted after a sale and yet used cars offer far higher profitability levels than new vehicles. This means dealers risk ignoring half of their most profitable customers," Woodley added.

JudgeService plans to integrate new cars and aftersales into the CSI service this year.