The service drive is full and the phone is on hold
It's 8:15 Monday. Advisors are writing up cars in the lane, and the desk phone has been ringing since before the doors opened. CDK puts the average service hold at 9.3 minutes, on a line 61% of your customers still expect to book through.
The short version
4 things that decide this
- 01CDK's own analysis found 61% of customers still book service by phone, and the average service hold runs 9.3 minutes.
- 02Numa's read of more than 600 franchise service departments puts the average store at 158 missed calls a month, and vendor data should be read as exactly that: one vendor's own numbers, not an independent audit.
- 03The BDC covers sales leads first, which means the service line is the one left ringing while advisors write up cars in the lane.
- 04An answered service line books into Xtime, myKaarma or the DMS scheduler with the right op-code, texts a confirmation, and can answer "is my car ready?" from the RO. Safety and recall judgment stay with an advisor.
Monday, 8:15, and the drive is already full
Your service drive is stacked before you've had coffee. Two advisors are walking cars, writing up concerns, checking loaner availability, all while trying to keep the line moving so the next car can pull in. The desk phone starts ringing at 8:00 and doesn't let up. Nobody's ignoring it on purpose. There just isn't a free hand.
Your BDC exists for exactly this kind of overflow, except it's covering sales leads first, because that's where the sold car and the commission live. Service waits its turn, and its turn is often nine minutes on hold before anyone hears a real voice. If you've ever called your own dealership's service line to see what a customer hears, you already know this isn't an exaggeration.
Mondays make it worse. Weekend problems, a noise someone noticed on a road trip, a warning light that came on Saturday, all land on the same morning, on the same phone line, at the same time your advisors are already stretched.
This isn't one store's bad morning
CDK's own data on dealership phone behavior found that 61% of customers still book service by phone rather than online, and that the average hold time on a dealership service line runs 9.3 minutes. Nine minutes is plenty of time for a caller to decide the shop down the street is worth trying instead, especially when that shop happens to answer on the second ring.
Numa, a vendor in this space, reads call data across more than 600 franchise service departments and puts the average store at 158 missed calls a month. That's vendor data, worth reading as Numa's own read of its own customer base rather than an independent study, but it lines up with what CDK's numbers already suggest: the service line is where dealership calls go to wait.
Structurally, it's the same cause as the 8:15 scene above. Your BDC is a shared resource, and service competes with sales for it. Sales usually wins that competition, because a sold car is the bigger number on someone's dashboard. Your service caller waits, and waiting on hold is not a neutral experience. It's the moment a customer decides where their next service visit happens.
An answered service line does four things
Picture the version that answers in two rings during exactly the hours your advisors can't. It takes the customer's name, vehicle and concern, and books into Xtime, myKaarma or the DMS scheduler with the right op-code and advisor rotation, the same way your advisor would if the phone weren't already three calls deep. A confirmation text goes out before the caller's even off the line.
Add "is my car ready?" answered from the live RO status, which on a Monday is often the second-most common call after new bookings. You get a real chunk of the afternoon back for advisors who'd otherwise be fielding the same question on repeat.
What it doesn't do matters just as much. Safety and recall judgment go to an advisor, every time. Nothing answering your phone should ever tell a customer a car is safe to drive or that a repair can wait, and a caller who asks for a person gets one immediately, not after a script finishes.
The retention leak behind the missed call
A missed service call doesn't just cost you one repair order. Cox Automotive's 2025 study found that only 54% of owners with a car two years old or newer still return to the dealer for service, down from 72% in 2023. A customer who gives up on hold and books at an independent shop nearby doesn't necessarily come back next time either. The habit breaks once, and it tends to stay broken.
That's the real cost of the 8:15 phone problem. It's not the call itself. It's the customer who quietly stops thinking of your service drive as the default place to bring their car, one hold-time at a time.
- Answered in two ringsDuring the hours your advisors are in the lane
- Booked with the right op-codeXtime, myKaarma or the DMS scheduler, advisor rotation kept
- "Is my car ready?" answered from the ROSame record your advisor would check
- Safety and recall calls routed to an advisorNever a software judgment on drivability
A caller who asks for a person gets one immediately, not after a script finishes.
Some of the systems we have shipped
Questions this raises
01Is Numa's 158-calls figure reliable?+
It's vendor data: Numa's own read of call activity across more than 600 franchise service departments in its own customer base, not an independent audit. Read it as a directional number rather than a precise average for every store, and treat CDK's 9.3-minute hold-time figure as the better-sourced half of the picture.
02Why does the BDC cover sales before service?+
Because a sold car is the number most dealerships measure a BDC against, so sales leads get first claim on a shared team's attention. Service calls end up as the overflow that waits, even though the CDK data shows most customers still expect to book service by phone.
