MONTEREY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 2, 2025--
BMW Motorrad dealerships ranked highest in the 2025 Pied Piper PSI ® Service Telephone Effectiveness ® (STE ® ) Powersports Industry Study, which measured the efficiency and quality of customer attempts to schedule service appointments by telephone. Following BMW were Kubota, Triumph, Polaris Off-Road and Harley-Davidson.
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Pied Piper submitted service calls to 1,531 powersports dealerships representing 27 brands, then evaluated the telephone interactions. Each brand’s overall STE Score is a combined average of its individual dealer performances. Scores range from 0 to 100 and include over 30 differently weighted measurements tracking the best practices most likely to generate service revenue and customer loyalty.
BMW Ranked Highest: Consistency in Challenging Conditions
“BMW has consistently been ranked among the top three performing brands during the three years this annual study has been conducted,” said Cameron O’Hagan, Pied Piper’s Vice President of Metrics and Analytics. “ This year they have achieved the top position due to that consistency.”
BMW led the 2025 STE study with an average STE score of 50 – the same score BMW achieved in both 2023 and 2024. The following are examples of behaviors which set BMW dealers apart from the industry average when customers call for service:
Why Should We Care About a Customer’s Service Telephone Experience?
“ Well-run service departments focus on building customer loyalty, and the first opportunity to drive that loyalty is a customer’s phone call to schedule an appointment,” said O’Hagan. “ Powersports customers who struggle to schedule service vote with their feet by moving to another dealership or independent shop. In extreme cases, due to most powersports purchases being discretionary, if ownership becomes frustrating, many customers will begin to question whether it’s worth the effort and may sell the vehicle and become sour with the brand. ”
The industry’s average STE score improved one point over the past year, reaching an average score of 44, one point higher than 2024 but trailing the 2023 high watermark average score by two points.
Performance varied substantially from dealership to dealership, with a minority of dealerships clearly benefiting from their superior processes. 16% of dealerships nationally achieved STE scores over 70, by providing an interaction with their service customers that was speedy, efficient and proactively helpful. In contrast, customers for 11% of the dealerships hung up their phone having completely failed in their attempt to schedule service. The business implications between those two extremes are substantial.
Powersport Industry Performance Lacking in Key Areas
Customer expectations for scheduling service aren't set by the powersports industry. Nearly all powersports customers also schedule service for their cars and trucks, and over the past few years the auto industry has significantly improved the service scheduling experience for their customers.
Industry’s Greatest Opportunities for Improvement
“ The cliché is true: sales sells the first; service sells the rest,” said O’Hagan. “ Dealerships that prioritize a superior service experience gain in both sales and service.”
Turn “Just Drop it Off” Into a Positive – 41% of powersports customers are told to “just drop it off,” where the vehicle will wait—often outside in the elements—for an undetermined number of days, before the dealership will get to it. This demonstrates little concern for a customer’s time or expectations. However, this “drop it off” mentality can be transformed from a frustration into a positive experience by also offering an appointment. For example: “ I can schedule you two weeks from today, or if you prefer, you’re welcome to bring it in and we’ll try to get to it sooner. ” Framing it this way respects the customer’s time and shows that the dealership is organized and responsive—turning a traditionally negative interaction into a loyalty-building moment.
Understand What Customers Are Really Experiencing – In the 2025 study there were 14 brands which improved their STE score over the previous year. The brand with the greatest improvement was Kubota, with a six-point gain since last year, moving from a tenth-place ranking in 2024 to second in this year’s study. Kubota dealers nearly doubled their rate of setting appointments, occurring 58% of the time in 2025 compared to 31% of the time last year. Kubota dealers also drastically cut the rate of insisting “just drop it off” from 62% of the time in 2024 to 38% of the time this year. The key to this improvement was showing dealers what their customers actually experienced when calling for service.
2025 Brand Performance Compared
Performance varied substantially by brand, as shown by these examples:
Why Was This Study Conducted?
“The first service interaction that drives loyalty and service revenue is a customer’s initial phone call to schedule an appointment,” said O’Hagan. "Because these phone calls often go unnoticed in daily operations, they’re frequently neglected — and without clear visibility, improvement becomes difficult."
For more than 15 years, Pied Piper has independently published annual industry studies that rank the omnichannel performance of brands and dealer groups. These studies track how industry performance changes over time and let clients understand how their own performance compares.
Pied Piper clients order ongoing Prospect Satisfaction Index ® (PSI ® ) measurement and reporting – internet, telephone or in-person – for their dealerships, as tools to improve and maintain omnichannel sales and service effectiveness. Pied Piper clients have found that the key to driving dealership improvement is showing what sales and service customers are really experiencing – which is often a surprise.
About Pied Piper Management Company, LLC
Monterey, California - based Pied Piper helps brands and national retailer groups improve the omnichannel sales & service performance of their retailers.
Pied Piper’s PSI process applies data science analytics to determine the omnichannel sales and service best practices most likely to drive unit sales and loyalty. PSI then uses a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning and human actors to measure and report how effectively retail locations follow those best practices.
Other recent Pied Piper PSI industry studies include:
Learn more, request a presentation of industry study results, or request PSI measurement and reporting at www.piedpiperpsi.com.
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This press release is provided for editorial use only, and information contained in this release may not be used for advertising or otherwise promoting brands mentioned in this release without specific, written permission from Pied Piper Management Co., LLC.
Source: 2023-2025 Pied Piper Powersports Service Telephone Effectiveness Industry Study (USA)
Source: 2025 Pied Piper Powersports Service Telephone Effectiveness Industry Study (USA)
ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.
But he'd be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that started because of federal officers the president already has sent to the area — one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen.
The law, which allows presidents to use the military domestically, has been invoked on more than two dozen occasions — but rarely since the 20th Century's Civil Rights Movement.
Federal forces typically are called to quell widespread violence that has broken out on the local level — before Washington's involvement and when local authorities ask for help. When presidents acted without local requests, it was usually to enforce the rights of individuals who were being threatened or not protected by state and local governments. A third scenario is an outright insurrection — like the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Experts in constitutional and military law say none of that clearly applies in Minneapolis.
“This would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we've never seen,” said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. “None of the criteria have been met.”
William Banks, a Syracuse University professor emeritus who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, said the situation is “a historical outlier” because the violence Trump wants to end “is being created by the federal civilian officers” he sent there.
But he also cautioned Minnesota officials would have “a tough argument to win” in court, because the judiciary is hesitant to challenge “because the courts are typically going to defer to the president” on his military decisions.
Here is a look at the law, how it's been used and comparisons to Minneapolis.
George Washington signed the first version in 1792, authorizing him to mobilize state militias — National Guard forerunners — when “laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.”
He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes, including liquor levies and property taxes that were deemed essential to the young republic's survival.
Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter “insurrection or obstruction” of laws. Nunn said the early statutes recognized a fundamental “Anglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs” except “as a tool of last resort.”
The president argues Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Customs and Border Protection officers. Yet early statutes also defined circumstances for the law as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement.
There are between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, compared to Minneapolis, which has fewer than 600 police officers. Protesters' and bystanders' video, meanwhile, has shown violence initiated by federal officers, with the interactions growing more frequent since Renee Good was shot three times and killed.
“ICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,” Nunn said. “But what they're doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior” that goes beyond their legal function and “foments the situation” Trump wants to suppress.
“They can't intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,” he said, adding that the Constitutional requirement for a president to “faithfully execute the laws” means Trump must wield his power, on immigration and the Insurrection Act, “in good faith.”
Courts have blocked some of Trump's efforts to deploy the National Guard, but he'd argue with the Insurrection Act that he does not need a state's permission to send troops.
That traces to President Abraham Lincoln, who held in 1861 that Southern states could not legitimately secede. So, he convinced Congress to give him express power to deploy U.S. troops, without asking, into Confederate states he contended were still in the Union. Quite literally, Lincoln used the act as a legal basis to fight the Civil War.
Nunn said situations beyond such a clear insurrection as the Confederacy still require a local request or another trigger that Congress added after the Civil War: protecting individual rights. Ulysses S. Grant used that provision to send troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who ignored the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights statutes.
During post-war industrialization, violence erupted around strikes and expanding immigration — and governors sought help.
President Rutherford B. Hayes granted state requests during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed, leading to dozens of deaths. Grover Cleveland granted a Washington state governor's request — at that time it was a U.S. territory — to help protect Chinese citizens who were being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed.
Federal troops helped diffuse each situation.
Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes that federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed — and Minnesota leaders say their cities would be stable and safe if Trump's feds left.
As Grant had done, mid-20th century presidents used the act to counter white supremacists.
Franklin Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit — more than double the U.S. forces in Minneapolis — after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials asked for FDR's aid after riots escalated, in part, Nunn said, because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police.
Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent authorities to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied U.S. civil rights law and fomented violence themselves.
Dwight Eisenhower enforced integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith's admission and then pre-emptively to ensure no violence upon George Wallace's “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” to protest the University of Alabama's integration.
“There could have been significant loss of life from the rioters” in Mississippi, Nunn said.
Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace's troopers attacked marchers' on their first peaceful attempt.
Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated. The same thing happened in Los Angeles in 1992, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked.
Riots erupted after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force despite video showing them beating a Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush for support.
Bush authorized about 4,000 troops — but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. He promised to “restore order” yet directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation, and two of the L.A. officers were later convicted in federal court.
President Donald Trump answers questions after signing a bill that returns whole milk to school cafeterias across the country, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
