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Widewail is hosting a live walkthrough of their Q1 2026 Voice of the Customer Report, drawn from 1.2 million Google reviews across 18,000+ U.S. franchise dealerships. The data reveals a paradox: repair quality improved and sales held steady despite affordability pressure, yet service communication negativity hit an all-time high. Thirty of 32 OEM nameplates saw reputation declines, making this a critical watch for dealers trying to understand where customer sentiment is breaking down.
Jon Berna announces LVL Up Auto, a vendor management platform built specifically for car dealerships, covering features like vendor tracking, Collections for organizing vendor lists, 20 Groups for peer collaboration, and a live automotive vendor news feed. The platform has since been rebuilt from the ground up as a headless system with an MCP server, allowing it to run inside AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude rather than requiring a separate login — and the site is now being cited by AI in vendor-related queries, which the community celebrated as a major validation.
