The 5 Magic Buttons Every Service Advisor Wants

I saw a story on Reddit last month. A service advisor asked his peers on r/serviceadvisors:

“You have a Magic Button. Press it five times a day to finish any task instantly. What do you pick?”

The top answer wasn’t “fix the cars instantly” or "write the repair orders.

It was: “Make the customer calls for me.”

Not because calling is hard. Because calling is interruption. And interruption is a different kind of exhaustion than work. (Oh, and because people are sometimes hard to deal with. A text message never asks to speak to your manager.)

There’s a thing that happens in service drives that doesn’t show up on the balance sheet. A tech can bill eight hours in a day. An advisor can handle twenty cars. But between those numbers sits a tax nobody measures: the cost of switching tasks.

When you’re writing an estimate and the phone rings, advisors don’t just lose the two minutes of the call. They lose the five minutes before, thinking “Should I start this or will I get interrupted?” And you lose the five minutes after, trying to remember where you were.

This is why the Magic Button answers were so telling.

One advisor said he’d use all five presses on “delivering bad news.”

Not because bad news takes long. Because bad news carries emotional weight that lingers.

You hang up the phone and carry the customer’s anxiety into your next three conversations.

The 5 Most Wanted Magic Buttons (And What They Cost You)

#1: “Do all the customer calls”

“I hate calling customers, I hate calling back customers that leave you 5 voicemails a day despite you specifically instructing them to WAIT FOR AN UPDATE”

Advisors hate playing phone tag. They leave a voicemail. The customer calls back at the wrong time. The dance continues.

We have a tendency to confuse contact with communication. We think “good service” means answering every ring. But the people actually doing the work know better. They know a customer who calls five times isn’t hungry for conversation. They’re hungry for certainty.

The calls happen because the customer is floating in a black box, wondering if their car is safe, the price, if they’ll get to work tomorrow.

The fix: Text them first. Give them certainty before they ask. With 90% of customers preferring texting over calls for service updates, you’re meeting them where they already want to be.

#2: “Instantly get a relentless customer to approve a decline”

Advisors dread calling with big bills. Customers feel trapped. They say “Let me think about it” because saying no to a human is hard. The car sits. The day ends.

But here’s the thing about human nature: People need room to wince.

When you text a photo of worn brake pads, something subtle happens. You give the customer privacy to think. They can wince at the price, show their spouse, Google the part, and say yes. All without the awkwardness of hesitation played out in real-time.

The advisor gets an approval. The customer gets dignity. Both get what they wanted, which was never the conversation. It was the resolution.

The fix: Send photos/videos and digital estimates by text. Let them reply “YES” in their own time. Dealerships using Kimoby’s video MPIs get approvals 10x faster than traditional phone calls.

#3: “Instantly writing the ‘3 Cs’ story for a warranty claim”

Warranty companies want a story: What broke? Why? How did you fix it? Writing this takes 15 minutes.

But there’s a buffer capacity problem. When advisors spend their day answering the phone, they don’t have 15 minutes of deep focus left at 6 PM. So they rush the notes. Then claims get denied. You pay for the job twice.

The fix: When you move the conversation from phone calls to text messages, you get a paper trail for free. The customer texts “it makes a grinding sound when I brake”. That’s the Condition recorded. The tech writes “brake pads are worn to metal”. That’s the Cause. The advisor text “replaced pads and rotors”. That’s the Correction.

#4: “Instantly getting parts to answer the phone”

“I hate wasting time on hold!”

If advisors spend 30 minutes a day on hold. In a shop with 6 advisors, that’s 15 hours per week of selling time lost to hold music.

We think of waiting as “part of the job.” But waiting isn’t free. The math sneaks up on you because it doesn’t look like a line item. It looks like a busy shop that somehow never hits its numbers.

The fix: Text the parts department. They answer when they can. You read it when you can. No one waits for no one.

#5: “Make them wait for an update” (The Reverse Button)

“Had one customer… would call every like 40 minutes to 2 hours, always super nice so we put up with it”

Some customers call every 40 minutes. They’re nice people. They kill your rhythm anyway.

There’s a psychology concept called “buffer capacity”.

How much chaos you can absorb before you break. Every industry thinks theirs is unique. Nurses think it’s patient load. Pilots think it’s weather.

Service advisors know it’s the voicemail from the nice customer who calls “just to check.” By the third call, you’ve lost an hour of focus. Not from the calls themselves, but from the anticipation of calls.

The fix: Automatic updates at each step. When customers know what’s happening, they don’t need to ask. The anxiety disappears before it becomes yours.

The Cost that Doesn’t Show Up on Your DMS

Service advisors manage 15-20 ROs simultaneously. They live in an asynchronous world. But their primary customer communication tool, the phone, is brutally synchronous.

They were hired to fix relationships and sell service. Instead, they became phone operators and note-takers.

This creates hidden tax in your shop:

The lesson of the Reddit thread isn’t that advisors are lazy. It’s that they’ve identified something we forget about work: the tool shapes the stress.

Henry Ford didn’t just make cars faster. He removed the decision fatigue of craft production. The Magic Button is the modern version. It removes the question:

“Should I answer this, or will everything fall apart?”

The Real Magic Button

Here’s what the Reddit thread proves: Service advisors don’t want better phone systems. They want to eliminate the low-value phone calls that prevent them from handling high-value work.

That’s exactly what two-way business texting does with measurable ROI:

For #1 (Phone Tag)

Instead of: Calling → Voicemail → Waiting → Interrupting current RO → Voicemail…

You get: “Your Camry is in progress. I’ll text you when done.” (Customer receives a text with written confirmation → Anxiety eliminated → No interruption)

Result: Advisors protect their workflow blocks and customers get better service.

For #2 (Bad News/Upsells)

Instead of: Awkward call → Emotional confrontation → “Let me think about it” → 24-hour delay…

You get: “Found additional wear on brakes. $2,400 total. Photos attached. Reply YES to approve.” → Customer processes privately → Written approval in 12 minutes, not 24 hours

Result: Higher close rates on recommendations. Text message response rates hit 45%, while voicemail callback rates languish around 4.8%. Dealerships using Kimoby report a $348 lift per RO.

For #3 (Documentation)

Instead of: Remembering what happened → Finding time to type → Incomplete 3 Cs story → Warranty denial…

You get: Every text conversation automatically logged as timestamped communication record

Result: First-time warranty approval rates improve, no “documentation debt” at end of day.

For #4 (Hold Time)

Instead of: Waiting on hold → Getting interrupted → Losing your place → Starting over…

You get: Send text → Parts/warranty responds when available → Written response you can act on when ready

Result: Recover 6-8 hours per week per advisor of unsold capacity.

For #5 (Anxious Customers)

Instead of: “Wait for my update” → Customer calls anyway → Interrupts new write-up…

You get: Automated status updates at inspection, approval, and completion → Customer feels informed → No calls

Result: Service drive rhythm stays controlled; advisors handle 2-3 more write-ups daily.

Conclusion

Advisors don’t want to avoid customers. They want to avoid the performance of customer service.

Real service happens when the advisor has enough mental room to actually care about the car.

Consider this: 78% of car owners think they’re paying too much for repairs, and 56% claim they’ve paid for a repair that they don’t need. Trust problems don’t get solved with better phone scripts. They get solved when customers can see the worn brake pads themselves, review the estimate in private, and approve work without feeling pressured.

The data backs this up: 52% of consumers agree that as digital experiences with brands become more personalized, their satisfaction improves. And here’s the kicker: 54% of consumers would buy from a dealership that offers their preferred experience, even if they didn’t offer the lowest price.

Maybe the Magic Button isn’t magic at all. Maybe it’s just giving people the space to do their job without the constant threat of interruption.

Want to see how text messages can make your service lane more efficient? Book a demo.