The UK's customer experience benchmark for automotive.
Carblah is the UK's automotive experience aggregation engine. Up to 500,000 recent consumer reviews, refreshed daily, across every major brand, retail group and individual dealership. One unified, real-time view of what customers actually experience. Not what surveys claim, not what mystery shoppers report, but what customers say.
Retail Group Index
- 1Howards Group
- 2JCT600
- 3TG Holdcroft
- 4Vantage
- 5Toomey
- 6Cars2
- 7Eden
- 8RRG
- 9Ray Chapman Motors
- 10Drive Motor Retail
- 11Renault Retail Group
- 12Richmond Motor Group
- 13Yeomans
- 14Arbury
- 15W R Davies
- 16Snows
- 17Arnold Clark
- 18Vertu Motors
- 19Caffyns
- 20FRF Toyota
Brand perception, or customer experience?
Carblah is the UK's largest automotive customer experience benchmark. It is not brand perception, and that distinction matters. Brand perception is synthetic, coached and increasingly irrelevant in a market where customers trust their own experiences far more than marketing narratives. Customer experience is the real battleground, in an era of electrification, supply constraints, shifting retail models and rising customer expectations. Star ratings are gamed and everyone already has them. Take care of customer experience and brand perception takes care of itself.
One brand's network
82% of reviews were five-star, yet only 75% carried positive sentiment. The star hides the story.
Carblah measures the truth of what customers live through, not the fiction of what they are encouraged to say. That is why its insights drive real commercial outcomes.
What Carblah is
The aggregation engine
Up to 500,000 recent consumer reviews, refreshed daily, across every major brand, retail group and individual dealership. 2,700 retail locations, 90% of new and used car sales. The first single, unified, real-time view of what customers experience.
Sentiment AI
Advanced sentiment AI interprets the language inside every review: the tone, the emotion, the context, the pain points, the praise, the patterns. Raw text becomes structured insight into how customers feel about cars, brands, dealerships, service departments, EVs, finance processes and aftersales.
The Carblah platform
Our consumer-facing product collects real reviews about real cars by real people, giving you up-to-the-minute product information alongside the aggregated market view.
The methodology
A composite score that blends rating and sentiment, weighted by review volume. Academically aligned, and at a scale that gives statistical confidence. Surveys and mystery shops sample a moment. Carblah reads the whole market, every day.
Hidden patterns in customer experience. The things traditional surveys never detect.
Carblah exposes what sits underneath the star rating. Seven questions every OEM and dealer group should be able to answer, and most cannot. This is the depth that turns insight into advantage.
Where your brand is strong
Strengths to protect and replicate across the network.
Where your network is inconsistent
The branches whose behaviour sits apart from the rest.
Where customers are confused
Processes, products and messaging that leave people unsure.
Where friction is costing you sales
The points in the journey where customers walk away.
Where competitors outperform you
The experiences rivals deliver that yours does not.
Where your EV messaging lands or fails
How the electric transition reads in customers' own words.
Where specific models delight or disappoint
Model-level sentiment, not a brand average.
Built for both sides of the forecourt
Precise, prioritised, commercially relevant recommendations. Clear, actionable direction that leadership teams can use immediately.
Benchmark every brand you own
Against the market and your rivals, through the Manufacturer Index. Track brand perception shifts as they happen.
See your entire retail network
Branch by branch, ranked and scored monthly. Dealership variance within your network, and regional differences.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor strengths and weaknesses. How Hyundai, Kia or the whole field compares.
Opportunity Reports
Model-specific sentiment, EV adoption barriers and pain points in rival models, for product planning and sales training.
Manufacturer Index
Your brands against the field
Your national ranking and award tier
Through the Retail Group Index.
Every branch scored
Dealership variance across your network, the regional differences, and the tail that drags the group average.
Best-practice identification
Across your network and the industry, including aftersales friction points and where EV messaging lands or fails.
Executive Action Lists
Precise, prioritised, commercially relevant recommendations. The specific branches, operators and behaviours to fix.
Retail Group Index
| Rank | Group | Award |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Howards Group | Diamond |
| 2 | JCT600 | Diamond |
| 3 | TG Holdcroft | Diamond |
| 4 | Vantage | Diamond |
| Rank | Group | Award |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Toomey | Gold |
| 6 | Cars2 | Gold |
| 7 | Eden | Gold |
| 8 | RRG | Gold |
| 9 | Ray Chapman Motors | Gold |
The data, and the proof
Public-index views. The branch-level detail behind them is what subscribers see.
The National League
| 1 | Omoda | 86 |
| 2 | Chery | 83 |
| 3 | Jaecoo | 80 |
| 4 | Leapmotor | 78 |
| 5 | GWM | 75 |
| 6 | Changan | 73 |
| 7 | Dacia | 71 |
| 8 | Geely | 68 |
| 9 | BYD | 65 |
| 10 | MG | 62 |
34 brands, ranked on customer experience, not stars.
Branch distribution
Every branch, ranked. Most sit below the national average.
Three tiers · negative review rate
A decent top, a weak middle, a poor bottom. The prize is closing the gap.
- Composite score · rating blended with sentiment, weighted by volume
- Sentiment · the words, not just the star
- Daily refresh
- 12-month rolling window
- Coverage · 34 brands, ~98 groups, 2,000+ branches
Subscribe to the depth. From the index to the executive action list.
Six products, priced on enquiry. Carblah serves any organisation that relies on accurate, real-world automotive experience data. Choose the product that fits your question.
Who we work with
- Car manufacturers (OEMs)
- Car retail groups
- Car finance firms
- Leasing companies
- Automotive corporate lenders
- Universities
- Think tanks
- Metropolitan and regional authorities
- Market analysts
- Investment firms
- Advertising agencies
- Consultancies
- Training organisations
- Product development teams
- Mobility providers
- Fleet operators
- Insurance companies
- Telematics firms
Benchmark
Index Access
Your position in the national benchmark
- Manufacturer and/or Retail Group Index
- Your ranking, tier and trend
Insight
Branch Insight
Every branch, scored monthly
- Branch-level distribution, top and tail
- Recurring themes
- Named best practice
Insight
RecommendedExecutive Action Lists
Insight, not data
- Precise, prioritised, commercially relevant recommendations
- The specific branches, operators and behaviours to change
- Delivered as an action list, not a report
Intelligence
Competitor Analysis
The whole landscape
- Market-wide comparison on experience, networks and cars
- Direct rivals or the full field
Intelligence
Opportunity Reports
Product and sales intelligence
- Pain points in rival models
- For sales training and product development
Intelligence
Platform / Data feed
The engine, connected
- Ongoing access to scored data
- Portal, export or API for your own teams
How it works
Step 1
Set your scope
One scoping conversation: brands, groups, branches, competitors. Monitoring begins immediately.
Step 2
We monitor daily
The aggregation engine reads and scores every new review.
Step 3
You get monthly insight
Index position, branch distribution, themes, named best practice. Sentiment AI reads the tone, the emotion and the pain points behind every review.
Step 4
Executive Action Lists
Precise, prioritised, commercially relevant recommendations. The specific branches, operators and behaviours to change.
We provide insight, not data. Not another report for the shelf, a plan to act on.
Carblah is not a one-off report. It is a continuous intelligence partner.
As new reviews arrive daily, Carblah updates your insights, tracks your progress, monitors your competitors and alerts you to emerging trends before they become problems.
Shape strategy using real customer voice, not assumptions.
Carblah gives OEMs and dealer groups the evidence to move from reactive management to evidence-based leadership. The same daily review stream supports seven strategic workstreams.
- Product planning
- Retail network development
- Training and coaching
- Brand positioning
- EV transition strategy
- Aftersales transformation
- Customer experience design
Truly transformational. The real commercial opportunity is transformation.
Every automotive network is disparate: different standards, different behaviours, different levels of execution. That inconsistency quietly erodes margin. When best practice is identified and spread across every branch, the bottom line reliably moves by double-digit percentages. Add industry best practice on top of that, and the uplift is greater still.
When a network works this way
- Recruitment sharper, because expectations are clearer
- Customer care stronger, because friction points are removed
- Servicing more consistent, because behaviours are aligned
Carblah gives you the intelligence to drive that transformation.
What a subscriber sees
This is a live, monthly, branch-by-branch view. Yours would look like this.
Monthly report · Sample network
Network position and branch spread
Top five branches
The tail
One recurring theme in the bottom tier. Fix it there and the group average moves.
“Sales team were friendly, but the handover ran late and no one walked me through the finance paperwork.”
“Booked a service online and they had no record of it when I arrived. Sorted eventually, but it cost me an hour.”
“Easiest car purchase I've made. Kept me updated at every step and the collection was spot on.”
Customer experience is the battleground now. If you're not using Carblah, what are you using?
Are you going to keep operating at today's level, or at your true potential? If not this, what else will you do to understand what your customers want?