More than half of dealership shopping happens outside standard business hours. 54.06%, to be exact. Which means the cost of a website update sitting in a queue, or a sold unit still live on your site, lands during the hours nobody at your store is watching. Dealers told us that. Repeatedly. This is what we did with it.
This started with a harder question.
A year ago, we stopped asking the comfortable questions. Instead of “Are you happy with Dealer Spike?” we started asking a harder one: where are we letting you down?
That question comes with an obligation to be ready for the answer.
We pulled the answer from three places. The support cases you submitted. The feedback you gave your account teams was direct, often blunt. And our new Dealer Advisory Council, the group of owners and operators who agreed to tell us the truth even when it stung.
Across more than 6,800 dealerships, the same three themes surfaced again and again:
- Support
- Response times
- Consistency
These changes are happening because we heard you, and your feedback is what started all of this progression. You told us, and we listened, and I mean that literally.”
Ronnie Coulam, Director, Sales, Dealer Spike
This was not one dealer’s complaint. It was a pattern across the board, and we own it. None of it was a surprise, and all of it was fair.
It’s a commitment, not a tagline.
What came out of that is what we’re calling the new Dealer Spike. It’s worth being precise about what that is and what it isn’t. It isn’t a new logo. It isn’t a tagline swap or a fresh coat of paint on the same experience. It’s a raised standard, written down as commitments we’re willing to be measured against.
We’re raising the bar for a lot of different things that you told us matter the most.”
Ronnie Coulam, Director, Sales, Dealer Spike
Here’s what that means in practice.
1. Support that owns the outcome.
We’re starting with 24-hour resolution on standard website updates and troubleshooting, backed by an 80% service level agreement and a 90% Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) target. Behind the numbers is the part that matters: you reach a Customer Experience Expert who owns your issue, explains what’s happening in plain terms, and stays with it until it’s resolved. You aren’t passed off three times. You don’t repeat your story to someone who’s never seen your account.
2. New models online before your competitors know they exist.
A maximum of 48 hours to publish new tier-one powersports OEM models, three days for tier-one marine, plus daily automated tracking of OEM sites for new releases. When a model drops, you’re not scrambling to update your site by hand. It’s already showcased.
3. Real-time DMS integration.
We’re the first in the space to offer a real-time Lightspeed sync, which means zero-click inventory publishing straight from your DMS. Take receipt of a unit in back, and it appears on your website immediately. Sell it, and it comes down immediately. No manual re-entry, no overnight batch, no phantom listing quietly collecting leads on a unit that’s already gone.
4. Uptime you don’t have to think about.
99.97%. Your dealership stays open for business online during every hour you’re closed in person, which matters more than it sounds when most of your traffic arrives after you’ve locked up.
5. Discoverability built in.
Built-in SEO that works out of the box, tuned for how shoppers search now, including AI-powered and agentic search. When a buyer asks an AI assistant about your dealership, the answer should come from your real inventory, financing, and contact pages, not a guess.
Five commitments, one outcome. More leads, and more units moved off your lot. That’s the only commitment that matters in the end, so we put a number on it too: new dealers are backed by a 30% lead increase guarantee. We’re accountable to that figure the same way we’re accountable to the other four.
Here’s what that looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.
Strip away the language, and here’s the version that matters to your week.
You submit a website change on Monday afternoon, and it’s handled by Tuesday, not next week. A new unit hits your lot, and it’s live and findable before your competitor has finished photographing theirs. A shopper finds your listing through an AI search summary at 10 p.m., sees an accurate price and real photos, and reaches a form that works. And when something goes wrong, you know exactly where to go, and the expert who picks it up can see your account history without you having to recite it.
That’s the bar, in the language of a normal day.
And if you want a yardstick to judge us by, use your own. Our research with dealers found that the top-performing stores don’t grade a technology partner on its feature list. They grade it on five things: reliability, so no lead goes missing. Simplicity, so your team works in one place instead of five logins. Proof, so the reporting you see matches your CRM and your call logs. Control, so you can edit your own listings and access your own data. And speed, with clear escalation and predictable response times.
That list didn’t come from us. It came from dealers. We decided to build it.
The work started long before the announcement did.
None of this is a promise about next year. The support commitment has been in motion since March. Our CSAT scores have increased sharply since then, and our time to resolve has dropped just as sharply. Dealers noticed before we said anything about it publicly.
Getting there took unglamorous work. We expanded the support team and added leadership capacity. We fixed handoffs between teams. We tightened response times. We put names and ownership behind accounts instead of leaving issues to live in a ticket queue. And we invested more than $1 million in AI-powered innovation, aimed squarely at the fundamentals rather than novelty: getting your units found, your listings complete, and your shoppers answered.
Our new brand promise means faster support, dedicated experts, and a platform built around your feedback.”
Hayley Hollen, Senior Manager, Brand and Customer Marketing, Dealer Spike
The timing isn’t accidental. 2026 is a stress test for this industry, not a reset. Teams are leaner. Tool stacks are heavier. In that market, you don’t need a partner who adds to the complexity. You need one who removes it. That raised the stakes in order first.
Here’s what comes next.
The new Dealer Spike came with a second commitment, and it’s one you can watch us keep in real time. Every quarter we’ll get on a call and walk through what launched, what’s in motion, and what’s on the roadmap, including the parts that aren’t finished yet.
The first of those sessions covered a lot of ground:
- Real-time Lightspeed inventory sync, lead capture that writes straight into your Lightspeed customer record.
- A new inventory manager and inventory analytics, showrooms, announcement builder – all easily managed from the CMS.
- AI Product Expert now answers a shopper’s questions about a specific unit right on your site, so fewer buyers leave to search elsewhere. AI Search lets shoppers describe what they’re looking for in plain language instead of hunting through filters, giving buyers who don’t know the spec terms can still find the right unit.
- A new customer portal where you set your own case priority, check invoices, and manage cases.
Also introducing Price Box, with the complete advertised price broken out by freight, setup, and documentation fees, coming soon.
Final remarks.
We are making a commitment you can measure and a sincere promise to our customers to bring you solutions that increase your leads and help you sell more stuff. You asked us to raise the bar, so we wrote down exactly how high we set it. Hold us to it.
Watch the webinar for a firsthand look at every commitment and a live demo of the tools, including dealer questions we answered on the spot.
