And you don’t have to guess where the gaps are, your customers spell it out in their reviews:
One writes: “What is the use of an appointment? I arrived at 10:20 for an 11:00 oil change… 2.5 hours later, still waiting.”
Another: “I made an appointment to pick up my truck. I assumed I could pay and leave at 1 PM, not be kept waiting for over 2 hours. They disrespected my time. My time is just as valuable as theirs.”
In other words, miscommunication and operational friction turn expected speed into a visible failure. Appointment windows, callbacks, and timely updates aren’t optional.
How operators are reclaiming the clock:
- Tully Williams at The Niello Company knows that cars sitting for 14+ days drain profit. By standing up a dedicated Internal Advisor and a specialized technician team, he bypassed the usual "customer pay vs. internal" priority conflict.
The Result: They cut average turnaround time from 5 days down to 2.
- David Cerqueira at Benzel-Busch Mercedes-Benz uses video to eliminate the need for loaner cars. By providing updates every 15 minutes, giving them real-time visibility into their vehicle and reducing reliance on loaner cars. The store works to keep service visits under an hour.
The Result: MPI video creation hit 84%, satisfying OEM incentive thresholds and securing digital upsells immediately by showing rather than telling.
Throughout today’s article, our counterintuitive assumption is that getting fast is not a direct line to positive customer perception.
The operators who are winning (Tully, David) didn't focus entirely on speeding up. Tully restructured who does the work. David changed what the customer sees during the wait. Our customer quotes don’t complain about slow repairs. They complain about silence, broken appointment promises, and feeling forgotten. I’m proposing that investing in speed alone could be a losing bet for your reputation, or rather, you’ll be missing a substantial piece of what is driving positive perception.
The data shows customers aren't rewarding dealers for getting faster. Positive mentions of speed are falling. What they speak in public is the feeling of being forgotten. The operators pulling ahead aren't limiting their strategy to speed. They're eliminating dead time: the minutes where nothing is happening and nobody is saying anything.
