Service departments risk losing an average of $853,000 a year by failing to answer customer calls and schedule service appointments.
That is one of the key finding in Numa’s 2024 Industry Trends in Auto Service & Repair report. The artificial intelligence (AI) platform company detailed how missed opportunities from high inbound call volumes is costing auto dealerships money. The findings pinpoint service gaps during peak demand and provide actionable strategies for owners, GMs, service department leaders, and OEMs to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.
“This data highlights the incredible opportunity for dealerships to run customer service operations and BDR teams more efficiently,” said Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO and co-founder at Numa. “Our goal is to help dealerships to become AI-native and operate as a dealership of the future.”
600 Dealers Surveyed
Numa’s platform integrates AI agents into every aspect of dealership workflows, from recovering missed calls and scheduling service appointments to streamlining team communication and managing customer expectations. Founded by the team behind Location Labs, Numa has to date raised $48 million and works with over 700 dealerships across the U.S. and Canada.
Insights from around 600 franchise dealership service departments found dealerships miss about 158 appointment calls per month, with those in the 75th percentile missing 216 calls. At an estimated $450 per Repair Order (RO), missed appointment revenue can reach $1.17 million annually for a single dealership.
Mondays and Tuesdays are the busiest days for appointment bookings, with over 52 percent of weekly incoming calls placed by the end of Tuesday. Morning hours (8–11:30 a.m.) were the most missed calls as dealerships struggle to manage call volume during peak hours. Over the 2024 reporting period, half of all appointment calls were made during this time.
When to Deploy Assets
Looking to provide better service, dealerships have seen a steady increase in both call volume handled by AI agents and average call duration with almost 16,500 annual AI-handled calls per dealer and 16 percent greater call durations over two years from 2022 to 2024. Numa’s analysts believe this reflects growing customer comfort with AI and improving AI performance.
The company latest insights underline the urgency of dealerships adopting technology to address operational inefficiencies in the auto service industry. Many dealers will have an intuitive grasp of these concepts and, for some, this data may be instinctual. But now with hard empirical data, dealerships can have more confidence in making decisions based on these trends.
To combat these issues, Numa’s suggest adjusting staffing levels during peak booking hours (8–11:30 a.m. every day) and early in the week (Mondays and Tuesdays) to reduce customer wait times and improve operational efficiency as well as offer and proactively promote shorter wait times, even when customers reach out to schedule appointments. Smooth demand and increase shop utilization by shifting scheduling demand to late afternoons or later in the week.
