How to Reduce Your Fixed Ops Staff Workload

How much of your service advisors’ day is spent actually advising?

If you’re like most dealerships, the answer is not enough, and it’s costing you more than you think.

With a shortage of top talent, your advisors are your most valuable players. They’re the face of the dealership. So why are they spending up to 30% of their day just on the phone, handling basic status updates and chasing confirmations?

It’s like having a top-of-the-line GT3 RS and only using it for grocery runs. You’re wasting its horsepower on tasks that could be handled more efficiently by the right auto dealer tools.

This inefficiency leads to advisor burnout (and turnover), costly mistakes, and a poor dealership customer experience.

How to Resolve Your Fixed Ops Staff Overload

The goal is to free up your best people to do what they do best: build relationships and solve problems.

Dealerships that use dealership texting software for service updates have seen inbound calls drop by as much as 60%. Imagine what your team could do with that time back.

Here’s a quick plan to get started:

1. Automate the Big 3: Start by automating the three biggest time-wasters: appointment confirmations, “your car is ready” notifications, and post-service CSI requests. This alone will reduce bottlenecks in your fixed ops department and clear up hours of manual work each week.
2. Add the Personal Touch: Use automation to send advisor introductions via text the morning of the appointment. It sets a professional, personal tone without your advisor lifting a finger and is a core part of a modern dealership engagement system.
3. Keep Them in the Loop: Set up automatic in-service updates. A simple message saying, “Your vehicle is now in the bay with our technician” prevents the customer from calling and asking for an update, dramatically improving customer communication.

I know what you might be thinking: “My team and customers are used to the phone.” But this isn’t about replacing them. It’s about giving them a tool that handles the grunt work so they can have higher-quality conversations when they are on the phone.

Arvin Merino, the Service Manager at Honda & Toyota of Seattle, was feeling this exact pain. By automating the manual grind of recall management and follow-ups with Kimoby, his team could finally get ahead and focus on the customer in front of them.

The Payoff

Stop asking your team to do more with less. Give them the tools to work smarter, not harder. When you let automation handle the noise, your advisors have more time to focus on complex ROs, your CSI scores improve because customers are always informed, and your shop runs smoother. That’s how you scale without burning out your best people.

Ready to see how it works? Book a quick, no-BS, demo and we’ll show you exactly how to automate these tasks in your shop.