After analyzing a year of service department performance data from dealerships across the country, one thing became clear: Some of the industry’s most common assumptions about profitability don’t tell the whole story.
While many service departments focus on increasing labour rates, the data revealed a different trend. The dealerships delivering the strongest results were improving technician productivity, increasing hours sold, and eliminating inefficiencies that limit service drive performance. To uncover the factors driving those results, check out the
Fixed Ops Golden Metrics Report.
The report’s findings highlight key performance trends and opportunities to improve service drive profitability.
Metrics That Matter
The dealerships in this study were grouped by location and repair-order volume so performance could be compared against similar operations.
Once grouped, we asked the following questions to provide a clear view of a service drive’s overall health:
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Are you selling enough labour hours?
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Are you maximizing the value of every repair order?
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Are you collecting the appropriate value for the work being performed?
These questions are answered through three golden metrics: Hours Sold, Hours Per RO, and Effective Labour Rate (ELR). By analyzing them together, the report uncovered an important trend: increasing labour rates alone doesn’t guarantee higher profitability.
Growth Comes from Efficiency
The report found growth opportunities for dealerships of every size and location. The data showed that increasing hours per repair order and maximizing available service capacity had a greater impact on profitability than simply raising labour rates.
Dealerships using tools that help technicians identify and quote additional work consistently generated more hours sold, higher effective labour rates (ELR), and stronger profits. By improving workflows and reducing bottlenecks, service departments can make better use of available capacity and drive sustainable profit growth.
The Takeaway
The biggest lesson from this year’s report isn’t that dealerships need to work harder. It’s that the highest-performing service departments equip technicians with the right tools to work efficiently, helping them outperform dealerships that still rely on manual processes and outdated workflows.
