MileOne Autogroup is focused on developing strong, consistent internal processes in its service department, according to Randy Brobston, its Director of Customer Information Center. The consistency paid off with the dealership group of 50-plus stores earning the top rating in the 2026 Pied Piper Service Schedule Effectiveness study.
“We have good teams working together,” Brobston said. “We have good processes in place and a great marketing team, great tech team and great customer service call center. We have processes that we follow across the board.”
Driving the news: The Pied Piper study looked into the scheduling effectiveness at the 31 largest dealer groups, measuring how easy it was for customers to make a service appointment via the phone or website.
On the website experience, the dealerships were scored on whether the customer was able to make an appointment on the website for a specific time and date, the average number of days for the earliest appointment, whether the customer received a confirmation email or text, and whether there was a clear way for the customer to modify their appointment.
For the phone study, it also included the measures of setting specific appointment times and the earliest appointment date, along with the number of seconds until speaking with a service associate, and if a customer was placed on hold for over two minutes.
“When we’re inventing this kind of measurement, we do it through the eyes of a consumer,” said Fran O’ Hagan, CEO of Pied Piper. “When you pick up the phone to call, what you are looking for is for it to be quick and for you to get an appointment that isn't too far out. That's really the only thing you're looking for. But there are some things that the dealership can do that you're not looking for that go above and beyond being proactively helpful.”
Reducing friction: The top-performing dealership groups had scores above 75, with MileOne at 80 and Group 1 Automotive at 79.
At the best dealerships, customers reached a service associate by phone within one minute 65% of the time, and only 7% had the call end without being able to set an appointment.
On the website, the best dealerships were able to get a customer an appointment within a week 93% of the time, and 86% of the time followed up with an email or test confirmation.
Importantly, 95% of the top performers provided a clear way for customers to modify appointments.
“Prior to measuring it, you would think what would be the value of having the percentage of time you can set an appointment through an online service scheduler. Isn’t it 100%?” said Cameron O’Hagan, Pied Piper Vice President of Metrics and Analytics. “But it’s not. In some cases, more than 1 in 10 customers for some of these dealer groups are failing somewhere along the line, preventing them from doing it. It’s uncovering a lot that without seeing the numbers, intuitively you wouldn’t bother really checking on.”
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AI gaps: The Pied Piper study noted AI helped with routine scheduling, but there was break downs the consumer needed additional help.
Around one-third of transfers from AI to service associates went to voicemail, were disconnected, or put the customer on hold.
And instances were pointed out where the exchange of customer information failed, creating frustration for the consumer.
“AI does a nice job if you just need an oil change. But if you call up and you get an AI chatbot and you say I need an oil change, but also I have this recall and how long is it going to take? Should I plan on staying there, or do I need a loaner car? Then the AI says, ‘I have no idea, and I have to transfer.’ That’s 90 seconds into the wasted time before it ever fails,” Fran O’Hagan said.
“If you look at the dealer groups that are at the top of this list, somebody might look at that and say, well, are they at the top of the list because they use AI. There are several of them that are in the top five that don’t use AI at all.”
Takeaway for dealers: To highlight the need for dealerships to tighten up their service scheduling procedures, Pied Piper pointed out that four major independent service center brands, Midas, Pep Boys, Firestone, and Meineke, outperformed dealers on service call quality, fewer scheduling failures, and less time to reach a service advisor.
“If you talk to execs at dealer groups, they’re interested in parts and service. That’s where the money comes from,” Fran O’Hagan said. “The ones that are the top performers, they’re fixated on hanging onto the customers when they come out of warranty. They know, the moment that customer has trouble and they call Pep Boys, they’re gone, and they’ll never see them again.”
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