If advisors miss calls because they are writing customers, more phone training will not fix it. That is a capacity problem, and the calls belong with a service BDC or an outside call center. If calls are answered but handled badly, train. Your call log, sorted by hour and by call type, tells you which.
One Advisor, Two Jobs
At 7:40 on a Monday the advisor has a customer at the car, two more in line and a phone that has rung four times. Both jobs want the same person in the same ten minutes. The write-up needs eyes on the vehicle and a real interview about the concern. The caller wants a time on Thursday and will not wait long for it.
Something gives. Either the phone rolls to voicemail, or the advisor picks up, says "service, can you hold," and the customer at the car watches the walkaround turn into a signature. The J.D. Power 2026 U.S. Customer Service Index Study (51,228 owners of one- to three-year-old vehicles) names being met at the vehicle on arrival and keeping customers informed of service status among its top performance indicators. An advisor cannot do either with a handset on one shoulder.
So the question is not whether advisors should be good on the phone. They should, and service advisor phone skills covers how. The question is whether the phone should be their job during the hours when the lane is.
What the Service-Call Studies Show
Four published sources describe the problem. Each has limits, and none of them is your store.
- Most service customers still call. In a CDK Global survey published in April 2025 of more than 2,500 service customers, 64% booked their appointment by phone and 19% booked online. Customers who were put on hold waited 8.2 minutes on average and gave Net Promoter scores nearly 20 points below average. This is what customers recalled in a survey, not a measured call log.
- Some callers cannot book at all. Pied Piper's 2026 Service Scheduling Effectiveness study, a mystery shop of 6,538 service requests across 33 auto brands and four independent chains, found 16% of callers were unable to schedule a service appointment by phone. The barriers it named were endless hold, phone-tree or AI loops, transfers to voicemail and inflexible information requirements. Callers reached a service advisor in 66 seconds at the average dealership against 38 seconds at the independent chains. A mystery shop measures scheduling attempts by shoppers, not your customers' real calls.
- A small share hang up on hold. CallRevu reported in September 2026 that 2.47% of fixed operations calls on its platform ended with the caller hanging up on hold in the first half of 2026. That is one vendor's platform data, and the full report is gated.
- Service is most of the phone traffic. The Invoca Automotive Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report 2026 puts service at 55% of calls to manufacturers and dealers, ahead of parts and sales. Also vendor platform data.
Read together, they say the service line is the busiest line in the building and a meaningful share of callers have a bad time on it. They do not say why. The why is in your own log.
Our Bias, Stated
Pinnacle sells all three fixes discussed here. Our service advisor training covers phone, text and email communication and includes reviewing recorded phone calls. We offer service BDC training as a separate program for in-house phone teams. And BDC On Demand, our outsourced call center for dealerships, lists inbound service calls, appointment confirmations, recall notifications and declined service follow-up among its call types. We gain whichever way you go, which is a reason to trust the method below more than our opinion.
Three Options, Compared
| Option | What it fixes | What it does not fix | What it needs from you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Train advisors on the phone | Calls that are answered but end without an appointment, a clear concern or a next step | Calls nobody can physically answer during write-ups | Recorded calls, a standard, a manager who reviews a few each week |
| In-house service BDC | Coverage during the rush, outbound work that advisors never get to (confirmations, recalls, declined work) | Poor write-ups and weak inspection presentation in the lane | Enough call volume to fill the seats, a manager, scheduler rules that protect shop capacity |
| Outside call center for scheduling and overflow | Peaks, lunch, absences, and volume too small or too uneven for a full seat | Anything needing knowledge of the car in the shop | Scheduler access, capacity and transportation rules, a named person to take transfers |
The comparison of a sales BDC and a service BDC explains why the service side is its own job with its own measures.
Read Your Own Call Log
You need two weeks of data and about three hours.
- Pull every inbound service call for two weeks from the phone system or call tracking, by hour of day. Mark each as answered by a person, sent to voicemail or abandoned.
- Pull write-ups per hour for the same days from the DMS. Lay the two side by side.
- Pick 40 recorded calls at random. Sort them by what the caller wanted: an appointment, a status update on a car in the shop, a price or advice, parts, something else.
- Listen to 15 of the answered appointment calls. Did the advisor get the concern in the customer's words? Offer a specific day and time? Ask what else the car needs?
Those last three behaviors are close to what Pied Piper's phone shop scores: whether the caller was offered a specific date and time, and whether the dealership asked about additional service needs.
What the Log Tells You to Do
Missed calls stack up where write-ups stack up
This is capacity. No amount of training lets one person be in two places. Move appointment calls off the advisors for those hours, to an in-house team if the volume fills a seat all day and to an outside team if it does not. How many repair orders one advisor should write works through the same arithmetic from the lane side.
Calls are answered, and nothing gets booked
This is skill. The advisor answered questions and let the caller go. Phone training with recorded-call review fixes this, and a BDC staffed with untrained agents would repeat it.
Half the calls are "is my car ready?"
This one is self-inflicted. Customers call for status when nobody told them. Proactive updates at agreed times are a lane behavior, taught in advisor training, and fixing them removes calls instead of rerouting them. Hiring people to answer status calls treats the symptom.
Outbound work is not happening
If appointment confirmations, recall calls and declined service follow-up depend on advisors finding a quiet hour, they do not happen. That work suits a phone team, inside or outside, because it can be scheduled.
The Calls That Still Belong to an Advisor
Whoever books appointments, some calls must reach the lane: a diagnosis question, a price beyond the posted menu, a warranty question, anything about a vehicle already on a lift. A phone team needs a clean way to hand those over, with the customer's name and concern already taken, to a person who will pick up. Outsourcing service calls draws that line in detail, including the scheduler access an outside team needs.
It is rarely either-or. Stores that move scheduling to a phone team still need advisors trained on the calls that remain, and on the status updates that keep customers from calling in the first place.
When Neither Is the Fix
Answering faster does not add shop capacity. In the Pied Piper study the earliest available appointment was 2.9 days out at the average dealership and 1.3 days at the independent chains. If your first opening is next week, a better-answered call ends at the same no. Look at technician count, dispatch and the appointment template first.
The same goes for a store with three calls an hour and one advisor who is simply not picking up. That is a management conversation, not a purchase. The guide to reading an advisor's numbers helps separate the two, and the rest of the decision is in the Service Advisor Training Resource Center.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should service advisors answer the phone at all?
Yes, for calls about cars they are working on and questions only they can answer. The case for moving calls is about new appointment calls during write-up hours, when the advisor is with a customer. Outside those hours, a trained advisor on the phone is fine.
How many calls justify an in-house service BDC?
There is no magic number. Add up the minutes of appointment calls, confirmations, recall and declined-work calls in a week. If that fills a seat for most of the day, a dedicated person makes sense. If it comes in bursts around the morning rush and lunch, overflow coverage fits better than a full-time hire.
Will customers mind booking with someone who is not their advisor?
For a routine appointment, a caller mostly wants a time that works and a sign that the concern was understood. For a car already in the shop, they want the advisor who has it. Split the calls on that line and tell customers who they will hear from.
Does a service BDC replace advisor phone training?
No. A BDC takes scheduling and outbound calls. Advisors still make the hardest calls in the building: presenting inspection findings, quoting additional work and explaining a delay. Those calls decide what gets approved and how the customer feels about the visit, and they stay with the advisor.
Can we try an outside call center on only part of the phones?
Yes, and it is the sensible way to start. Send only overflow, or only the hours when your log shows missed calls, and compare booked appointments and abandoned calls with the two weeks you already measured. Ask any vendor how its agents get your capacity rules.
Summary
Train when calls are answered and handled poorly. Move the calls when advisors cannot physically answer them, to an in-house service BDC if volume fills a seat and to outside overflow if it does not. Fix status updates in the lane before staffing for status calls. And check shop capacity first, because a well-answered call for an appointment you cannot offer is still a lost customer. Two weeks of your own call log will tell you which of these you have.
