Your Service Customers Are Already Leaving. Here's the Math.

Cox Automotive published its 2025 Service Industry Study in November 2025. The number that matters most: in 2023, 72% of people with a car two years old or newer took it back to the dealership they bought it from for service. By 2025, that number was 54%. An 18-point drop in two years, on your newest, most loyal customers.

Zoom out and it's worse. Dealerships handle 12% fewer service visits than they did in 2018. Industry-wide, the dealership share of all service visits has fallen to 29%. Cars aren't disappearing. They're just getting fixed somewhere else.

It's not the price

Here's the part that should actually bother you. Dealership repairs average $261 a visit. Independent shops average $275. Dealerships are cheaper, on average, and still losing the business.

Cox's own data says why: 45% of customers who are unhappy with dealership service point to surprise costs and poor communication, not price itself. A bill nobody saw coming, and nobody heard from the shop until it was already done. That's the same silence that shows up when nobody picks up the phone during peak hours, just a slower version of it. Either way, it's not a pricing problem. It's a "nobody told me what was happening" problem.

Why this is bigger than the service lane

A customer who services at the dealership is 74% more likely to buy their next car from that same dealership, according to the same study. So every customer who quietly drifts to an independent shop isn't just a lost oil change. They're a cooling trail on the next sale too, and by the time that shows up in a sales number, the actual cause happened two years earlier and nobody connected the two.

What this actually costs you

Run this with your own numbers, not a stock example. Cox's data puts total dealership service and parts revenue at over $156 billion in 2024, across roughly 270 million repair orders. Divide one by the other and you get an average RO of about $577 industry-wide. If your store has lost even a slice of that same 12-point share since 2018, multiply your own RO count by your own average ticket and see where you land. It's not a guess once you have your own numbers in front of you, it's just multiplication.

The customers most worth chasing back

Not every lapsed customer is equally worth the effort. Three groups matter more than a generic "we miss you" blast:

Declined and deferred work. A customer who said no to a repair last visit didn't say no forever. They said no that day, for whatever reason that day. A follow-up a few weeks later, tied to the actual line item they declined, closes a meaningfully different conversation than a generic reminder.

Recall and warranty-expiry customers. These are the customers with the most concrete, specific reason to come back, an actual open recall or a warranty clock running out, and the least reason to feel like they're being sold to. A recall notice isn't marketing. It's information they need.

The one-visit-and-gone customers. The ones Cox's data is really describing, the newer-vehicle owners who showed up once and never came back. They're not angry. They just never got a reason to think of you the second time.

What actually fixes it

None of this requires guessing who to contact or building a spreadsheet from a DMS export once a quarter. Kimoby Grow triggers follow-up automatically off the same customer and vehicle data the rest of Kimoby already has: a declined line item, an open recall, a warranty clock, a season change. The message goes out tied to the actual reason, not a generic "come on back," and it comes from the same platform that already has that customer's texts, their last video inspection, and their repair history, so the follow-up doesn't read like a form letter.

Source: Cox Automotive, 2025 Service Industry Study (published November 2025).

FAQ

Why is dealership service retention dropping?

Cox Automotive's 2025 Service Industry Study found dealership service retention among owners of newer vehicles fell from 72% in 2023 to 54% in 2025. The leading causes customers cite are surprise costs and poor communication, not price, dealership repairs average less than independent shops.

How do dealerships bring back service customers who haven't been in for over a year?

The customers worth prioritizing are usually declined or deferred work, open recalls, and warranty-expiry customers, since each has a concrete, specific reason to return rather than a generic reminder. Automated follow-up tied to that specific reason, through a tool like Kimoby Grow, converts better than a blanket win-back campaign.

What tools do dealerships use for recall and service reminder campaigns?

Kimoby Grow automates recall notices, warranty-expiry reminders, declined-service follow-up, and seasonal campaigns like tire season, triggered off the same customer and vehicle data the rest of the Kimoby platform uses.

Does losing service customers actually affect vehicle sales?

Yes. Cox Automotive found customers who service their vehicle at the dealership are 74% more likely to buy their next vehicle from that same dealership, so service retention functions as a sales pipeline, not just a fixed-ops metric.

What does Kimoby Grow do?

Kimoby Grow is the marketing and retention module of the Kimoby Service Lane OS. It automates declined-service follow-up, recall campaigns, warranty-expiry reminders, tire season campaigns, and CSI follow-up, all pulling from the same customer and vehicle data as the rest of the platform.