Our 2027 Automotive CRM Research Report is out, and this year I wanted to do more than score the platforms. Dealers deserve to hear what their CRM partners plan to do about the problems we found, in the companies’ own words.
So we did two things. We surveyed 416 approved dealership leaders on how their CRM really performs, and we invited the CRM and AI companies covered in the report to respond. Seven of them sent perspectives, and they make up Section 10 of the report.
Here’s which platforms dealers rate as the best dealership CRMs in 2027, and what each company says it’s building next.
416 approved dealership leaders
7 CRMs scored on their own
17 categories rated
7 company perspectives
Who took the 2027 dealership CRM survey
The Pasch Group 2027 State of Automotive CRM Survey ran online from August 2 to October 7, 2026. We received 535 responses and kept 416. Every response was checked against the respondent’s registration and dealership email before we approved it. We threw out 100 partial surveys and 13 that failed review, and counted seven near-identical responses from one dealer group as one.
I care about that step, because a CRM survey is only worth something if the people answering actually choose CRMs. These do. 78% make or strongly influence the CRM decision, 34% are dealer principals, group executives or general managers, and 20% run the Internet or BDC department. 80% work for multi-rooftop groups, and 32% sell more than 6,000 new and used vehicles a year.
Seven platforms had at least 20 approved responses, enough to score on their own:
- DriveCentric (141 responses)
- VinSolutions (103)
- Tekion CRM (39)
- Reynolds FOCUS (36)
- DealerSocket (33)
- CDK Elead (32)
- DealerBuilt Oplogic (25)
How dealers rate their CRMs in 2027
Here’s the surprise: dealers are more satisfied with their CRM than the industry chatter suggests. The average overall score is 7.9 out of 10, 70% would recommend their CRM to another dealer, and 76% know of no plan to replace it.
| CRM platform | Responses | Overall satisfaction | Likely to recommend |
|---|---|---|---|
| DriveCentric | 141 | 9.0 | 89% |
| DealerBuilt Oplogic | 25 | 8.5 | 88% |
| Reynolds FOCUS | 36 | 8.2 | 69% |
| Tekion CRM | 39 | 7.9 | 77% |
| VinSolutions | 103 | 7.7 | 61% |
| DealerSocket | 33 | 6.3 | 44% |
| CDK Elead | 32 | 5.6 | 31% |
| All respondents | 416 | 7.9 | 70% |
DriveCentric leads or shares the lead in 13 of the 17 rated categories, including ease of use, its mobile app and customer support. DealerBuilt Oplogic is the most consistent runner-up and leads outright on value for price, training and reporting. Reynolds FOCUS and DealerBuilt Oplogic share the lead on account management.
At the other end, CDK Elead and DealerSocket score below the industry average in all 17 categories. That should be a wake-up call for two of the best-known names in automotive retail.
One caution before anyone prints a banner. Five of these platforms have fewer than 50 responses, so their scores carry margins of error of up to about a point on the 10-point scale. Read small gaps between them carefully.
And the satisfaction is narrowly earned. 64% say their CRM has clearly improved lead follow-up consistency and 63% lead response time. Only 15% credit it with higher vehicle gross profit, and just 9% with better service retention. The CRM is doing the lead job. It isn’t running the customer relationship yet.
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The 2027 Automotive CRM Research Report has the full category table, platform-by-platform strengths and weaknesses, the switching playbook and the proposed Automotive Agent & Consent Standard. 86 pages, free.
What do dealers want from their CRM next?
We asked two open questions: what new features dealers want from their CRM company, and what they would add to the 2027 roadmap if they had 30 minutes with its CEO. AI won both by a wide margin. The five most common requests:
- AI agents and automation, about a third of all requests. Dealers want AI that handles lead follow-up, appointment setting and aged-lead re-engagement, and writes every activity back to the CRM.
- Better reporting. One set of numbers they can trust.
- Open integrations. Stop blocking third-party partners, and offer open APIs and MCP access.
- Better texting, calling and email, including real-time message threads.
- Simplicity and speed. Fewer clicks, and a platform that’s been rebuilt, not repainted.
The complaints line up with the wish list. The top frustration, at 19% of answers, is reporting that’s weak, inaccurate or inflexible. One dealer put it perfectly:
“I can go to 4 different places within the CRM … and get 4 different sets of metrics.”
A dealer in the 2027 survey
After reporting come integration and DMS sync problems (15%), duplicate records and poor data quality (12%), an outdated platform (12%), and poor support and onboarding (11%).
Do dealers who use CRM AI like their CRM more?
They do. Nearly half of dealers (49%) say staff use AI-enabled CRM features every day, and another 10% several times a week. In those stores, overall satisfaction averages 8.5, 79% would recommend their CRM, and only 10% are looking to switch. Where staff never use it, satisfaction falls to 6.4, 42% would recommend, and 32% are looking.
DriveCentric users make up half of the frequent-use group, so we re-ran the numbers without them. The pattern held. To be clear, this is a correlation, not proof that AI causes satisfaction: dealers may use AI more because they already like their CRM. But it’s consistent enough that every vendor should be tracking weekly AI use by role as a retention measure.
AI agents are a different story. 61% of dealerships don’t let employees build AI agents at all. Among the 102 that do, 59% say integration between systems is the biggest barrier, and only about a third are confident their customer data is ready for AI. Our companion study, AI and Dealership Staff: Finding the Right Balance, covers the people side of getting this right.
One in seven dealers is shopping for a new CRM
4% of dealers say a CRM replacement is planned, and another 10% say one is being discussed. That varies a lot by platform: 38% of CDK Elead users, 27% of DealerSocket users and 23% of VinSolutions users, compared with 6% of DriveCentric users and no Tekion users.
Better AI is the top reason to switch (73%), ahead of a simpler interface (63%), better automated data hygiene (58%), better CDP integration (55%) and better reporting (55%). Lower software cost? Only 30%. DriveCentric is on 58% of the shortlists, Tekion on 28% and Fullpath on 23%, and the most common past move dealers reported was VinSolutions to DriveCentric.
Two-thirds of the dealers in the market expect switching to be difficult, and they’re right to be careful. That’s why the report’s switching playbook starts before the first demo, with 13 questions to ask a new vendor, minimum contract standards and a Dealer Data Exit Checklist. Write your next CRM contract for the day you leave it.
The lowest score in the survey: clean customer data
Dealers rate automated data hygiene 8.9 out of 10 for importance. Then they rate their CRM’s ability to keep data clean at 6.7, the lowest score in the entire survey. 54% don’t know how often hygiene services run on their CRM data, and 21% say their CRM doesn’t offer it at all.
That gap gets more dangerous every month. 60% of dealers say the CRM should be the primary system of record for customer relationships, and every AI agent you add runs on whatever data that system holds. When agents send texts at machine speed, one bad consent record can turn into a TCPA problem.
That’s why the report is built around five controls every CRM has to govern before any customer contact: identity (who is the customer?), consent (are we allowed to contact them?), context (what just happened?), cadence (how often are we talking to them?) and pricing (what offer are we allowed to communicate?).
What seven CRM and AI companies say they’re building
Scores tell you where a platform stands today. I also wanted dealers to hear where each company says it’s going, so we invited the CRM and AI platforms covered in the report to explain how they’re responding to what we found: unified customer data, consent and communication governance, and the move to AI agents.
About these perspectives: each company submitted its own, and Pasch Group edited them for factual accuracy only. Product plans, dates and figures are the companies’ own and can change, and including them isn’t an endorsement. The full versions are in Section 10 of the report.
DriveCentric
Engagement platform
9.0/10Dealer rating
From CRM to engagement platform: becoming the dealership’s operating system
DriveCentric says it has moved beyond traditional CRM into an engagement platform: the system of record for customer relationships, the system of context for AI and the system of engagement across the dealership, with the DMS staying the financial system of record. Its line is “One Customer. One Platform. Every Department.”
- Expanding its Service Engagement Hub, native customer data platform and native AI, with Service and Service-to-Sales agents linking the two departments.
- Extending into loyalty, vehicle acquisition, service operations, voice, and a personal AI assistant for every dealership role.
- An Agent Hub where each agent is configured and coached like a new hire, measured like an employee, and held to the dealer’s consent and communication rules.
The company reports doubling its R&D budget and earning ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certification.
Rated by 141 dealersDriveCentric profile
DealerBuilt
Oplogic CRM
8.5/10Dealer rating
One retail platform tomorrow
Oplogic, DealerBuilt’s variable operations CRM, already combines sales and service CRM, texting, video, equity mining, telephony and AI features around one customer profile and one conversation thread. The bigger plan is the DealerBuilt Enterprise Retail Platform, which brings its DMS, fixed operations and variable operations onto one modular platform.
- Agentic AI for campaigns and BDC, plus governed MCP access, by NADA 2027.
- Webchat, voice and next-best-action later in 2027.
- Fixed operations on the new platform by NADA 2028 and variable operations by NADA 2029, with dealers free to run the whole platform or pick modules.
“Our vision is to bring all solutions and platform features into our new DealerBuilt Enterprise Retail Platform infrastructure, with a foundation of customer profile, data, communications, API, Agentic AI, governed MCP, and a Builder API for those who want to build solutions for themselves.”
Max Longin, CEO, DealerBuilt
Oplogic, rated by 25 dealersdealerbuilt.com
Reynolds and Reynolds
FOCUS CRM
8.2/10Dealer rating
A seamless CRM
Reynolds sums up its CRM goal in one word: seamless. The latest FOCUS rests on three tenets: a new mobile-first interface, a unified customer profile across the dealership and enterprise, and Rey, its agentic AI assistant.
- Rey is one agent across the whole dealership rather than separate agents for each task, so it works from the full customer record, including service history and the other vehicles in the household.
- Instead of reporting lead counts and closing ratios, Rey is designed to suggest which leads go to which salesperson, what will move a deal forward, when to call and what voicemail to leave.
- The mobile interface drops linear data entry: a salesperson can log what the customer shares and scan the driver’s license later.
FOCUS, rated by 36 dealersFOCUS profile
VinSolutions
Cox Automotive
7.7/10Dealer rating
Building a consumer engagement platform
VinSolutions argues that access to customer data is now a baseline expectation, and that CRMs will be separated by what they know beyond the dealer’s own records. It places Cox Automotive’s market signals, such as shoppers researching vehicles, owners checking their trade-in value and service histories that suggest a purchase, inside the CRM customer record.
- A two-week release cycle, with more than 400 enhancements in the past year and native video scheduled for November.
- One customer record powered by Fullpath’s CDP, with identity resolution to cut duplicates and merges an administrator can make without a support ticket.
- AI agents starting with lead response and appointment setting, following the dealer’s consent and communication rules, with conversations visible to managers.
- A growing set of APIs and dealer access to their own data.
Rated by 103 dealersVinSolutions profile
CRM by Solera (DealerSocket)
Solera Dealer Solutions
6.3/10Dealer rating
Built, not bought: a dealer-controlled CRM
Solera says it’s reinvesting to build the next generation of CRM rather than defend the current one. In 2026 it added conversational AI lead response, AI lead scoring, AI Sales Coach and Sales Radar, which turns equity signals into campaigns, plus Analytics 3.0 for enterprise dealer groups.
- A CDP-centric CRM built in-house, where every workflow, from sales and BDC to service, F&I and marketing, reads from and writes back to one customer record.
- That CRM becomes the front door to Solera DealerOS, bringing CRM, DMS, service, marketing, inventory, titling and the connected vehicle onto one record.
- One consent record every system honors, AI activity the dealer can see and audit, and a seat in the standards discussion the report proposes.
“We expect to be judged on what we ship, and we welcome that. Next year’s survey will show whether we delivered.”
Scott Knupfer, Vice President, Enterprise and OEM, Solera Dealer Solutions
DealerSocket, rated by 33 dealersDealerSocket profile
CDK Global
CDK CRM
5.6/10Dealer rating
Intelligence that works where dealers work
CDK’s stated vision for CDK CRM is a front-office system that works alongside dealership teams to show who needs attention, why they’re an opportunity and what to do next. It starts with CDK Built-in CDP, which builds unified customer profiles across the CDK Dealer Xperience Platform and shows them inside the workflows staff already use.
- AI in the CRM today through AIVA, its AI Virtual Assistant, a My Day AI summary, writing assistance and a new mobile app, with an agentic AIVA that gives dealers control over audiences, goals, cadence, tone and channels.
- Next, an Agentic CRM: agents built around equity opportunities, service-lane opportunities, follow-up and first response, with employees keeping control of customer relationships.
- A planned activation layer that adds audiences, campaigns, agents and attribution inside the CRM, measured by agent-assisted and agent-influenced outcomes.
CDK Elead, rated by 32 dealersCDK CRM profile
CarEdge
AI buyer’s agents
What 100,000 AI agent inquiries show about dealer readiness
CarEdge’s AI agents shop dealerships on behalf of consumers. In six months they sent 101,404 inquiries to 37,975 dealerships in all 50 states, asking whether a vehicle was available and for the out-the-door price.
- 45% produced an out-the-door price, and 26% never got a reply.
- Getting a number took a median of 10 messages and 9 hours.
- 42% of first written quotes came in above the advertised price or with dealer add-ons, a median of $1,501 more.
- More than 1,000 dealerships answered with their own AI assistants, and they were only slightly more likely to give a price (55% versus 50%).
CarEdge’s prescription: one confirmed pricing source, identified and scoped access for agents, and a consent-first handoff into the dealer’s CRM. It expects the stores that answer with one honest, itemized number to win agent-driven buyers.
Not a CRM, so not scored in the surveycaredge.com
Notice the pattern? Almost every company now claims the unified customer profile, governed AI agents and open access. Good. Now hold them to it. Test each one against the data-access, export and portability questions in Section 4 of the report, and ask to see it working in a store like yours before you sign.
What should dealers do now?
- Measure AI use by role, every week. Then put your first agents where demand is highest: 27% of dealers say automated lead response and appointment setting would create the most value.
- Connect service and F&I before you add agents there. Only 21% of dealers have service advisors working in the CRM every day, compared with 98% for used-vehicle sales.
- Make every vendor answer the 13 demo questions, including the seven above. Data ownership, full exports, API access and portable consent flags belong in the contract, not the sales pitch.
- Ask every agent vendor how it checks consent, cadence and pricing before it contacts a customer. The report proposes the Automotive Agent & Consent Standard (AACS) to make that checkable, and we’re inviting CRM, CDP, DMS and AI platform leaders to a working session on it at DMSC 2027.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best dealership CRM in 2027, according to dealers?
Dealers rated DriveCentric highest, with an overall satisfaction score of 9.0 out of 10 from 141 approved responses. It leads or shares the lead in 13 of 17 rated categories. DealerBuilt Oplogic is second at 8.5 and leads on value for price, training and reporting.
How many dealers took the 2027 CRM survey?
535 dealership leaders responded between August 2 and October 7, 2026, and 416 approved responses are included. Each one was checked against the respondent’s registration and dealership email.
Which companies contributed to the report?
Seven: DriveCentric, DealerBuilt, Reynolds and Reynolds, VinSolutions, CRM by Solera (DealerSocket), CDK Global and CarEdge. Their full perspectives are in Section 10, Industry Editorials.
Is the 2027 Automotive CRM Research Report free?
Yes. It’s an 86-page PDF, free from Pasch Group. Download the 2027 Automotive CRM Research Report.
How does it compare with last year’s CRM report?
Last year’s report, Dealership CRMs Must Evolve or Get Left Behind, surveyed 463 qualified dealership leaders and challenged vendors in five areas, from expanding beyond sales to leading on AI. This year’s report opens with a scorecard on those calls and uses last year’s survey for comparison.
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Read the full 2027 Automotive CRM Research Report
Every rated category, a SWOT for each platform, the companies’ full perspectives, the CRM switching playbook and the AACS proposal, in one free download.
