Most dealership service departments live and die by the appointment calendar.
Customers fight for slots, no‑shows blow up the day, and service advisors spend half their energy defending timelines.
But Pohanka Automotive Group walked away from that playbook entirely over a decade ago.
Instead, all of the group's 23 stores embraced walk-ins, vowing never to turn away a customer regardless of the circumstances.
Driving the news: "Your car doesn't break on an appointment, so why should you have to come in on an appointment?" Tim Pohanka, the group’s vice president and executive manager told Daily Dealer Live hosts Sam D’Arc and Uli de’ Martino.
How it works: Operationally, the system rises or falls on what happens when the car hits the lane.
When customers pull in, advisors immediately set expectations about what the day looks like and what options they have.
If it’s a heavy day, or if the shop is light, they say so.
The point is: no surprises.
“If you tell them, ‘Hey, we’re busier today than normal,’ they’re going to work with you,” Pohanka said. “If you don’t tell them, their expectation is going to be different.”
To back that up, every store runs with a full loaner fleet along with ride-share agreements with Uber, Lyft, and shuttle providers. That allows advisors to keep their promise on convenience, even if a same‑day turnaround isn’t realistic.
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And behind the scenes, the group rebuilt how advisors are trained and paid to support the “no-appointment” approach.
They took the sales training manual and dropped it into service, swapping “sell a car” for “sell service.”
They also aligned advisor pay plans with F&I‑style compensation, with clear objectives and key product categories that must be discussed on every RO.
“Once we did that, we saw huge increases in our production,” Pohanka said. Advisors were no longer treated like tellers; they were treated like salespeople with real upside.
On the technical side, the group pushed hard into video MPIs through Xtime.
Consumers see what the tech sees, which builds trust and reduces friction on approvals.
The completion rate sits at 94% and helped drive a 0.4% lift in hours per RO year‑over‑year.
Meanwhile, technicians who refused to adapt were told plainly this is where the job is going, and they might not have a place at the store if they wouldn’t participate.
Looking ahead: Pohanka sees even more upside in standardizing how complex repairs get explained to customers, especially using AI to translate tech speak into plain language. That’s the next leverage point on top of video—not just “show” the problem, but explain it consistently across advisors and stores.
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