In this episode of What The Prompt?, host Michael Rodriguez sits down with Dave Anderson, founder of Evenflow AI, to unravel one of auto retail’s biggest pain points: the unpredictable, inefficient world of dealership service scheduling. If your service department feels constantly overwhelmed and you suspect you’re leaving hours (and profit) on the table, this conversation will feel uncomfortably familiar—and very hopeful.
The Problem: Unpredictable Demand and Wasted Potential
Service departments have long been described as operating in “controlled chaos.” As Dave Anderson points out, it’s the result of complex variability: “Monday’s busier than Tuesday, but not every Monday. 9:00am is busier than 11:00am, but not every 9:00am. Customers no-show, walk in, arrive late, or come early.” This constant unpredictability makes it hard to match service demand to real technician capacity.
Traditional scheduling makes this worse. Appointments are usually booked based on the customer’s initial request—often something simple like an oil change. But on an older vehicle, that oil change almost always turns into a multi-service visit. If you load your day around “light” work, you’re setting your shop up to be overwhelmed once the real work is written. As Dave explains: “I have 100,000 miles on a Honda Odyssey and I book an oil change. It’s extremely unlikely I’m leaving with just that oil change. If you load the shop on the oil change, you’re mismatching demand to capacity.”
Why this matters for dealerships:
- “Controlled chaos” hides massive revenue leakage in fixed ops.
- Mismatched demand and capacity burns out advisors and techs.
- Shops become reactive instead of operating to a plan.
Mismatched Schedules and Spoiled Technician Hours
Another core issue is scheduling to advisor convenience instead of technician productivity. Customers prefer mornings, so stores often overload early time slots and leave soft spots later in the day. The result: crushed mornings, idle afternoons, and “spoiled tech time” where technicians are waiting on work.
Dave likens it to airlines flying with empty seats. Every unfilled technician hour is pure lost revenue: “I sort of conservatively say that the average dealership gets 70% of their revenue potential. The only pushback I get is: ‘You’re wrong, we only get 60 or 50%.’ So there’s significant opportunity lost.” In real terms, most stores are leaving at least 30% of fixed ops revenue on the table.
See How Much Service Revenue You’re Leaving on the Table
Want a quick read on your own “controlled chaos”? Use our 5-minute AI Service Readiness Scan to benchmark your current scheduling, capacity use, and unsold hours.
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No heavy lift. No tech overhaul. Just a clear picture of where AI could unlock margin in your shop.
The Solution: Capacity-Aware Scheduling with Evenflow AI
Evenflow AI attacks the problem with what they call “capacity-aware scheduling.” Instead of simply filling the calendar, the platform matches the flow of customer vehicles to the actual, real-time production capacity of your technicians.
It’s built around predicting true demand—not just what was requested, but what will actually be needed based on vehicle history, labor times, and technician proficiency. Dave likens it to an optimally packed Tetris board: all work fits together with no gaps (wasted time) and no overloads that blow up the day’s flow.
Under the hood, Evenflow blends optimization algorithms, prediction models, and rule-based logic to automate what service managers mentally juggle every day. Integrated to the DMS and tuned to each store’s realities, it adapts instead of forcing a one-size-fits-all model.
Operational impact for service leaders:
- Smoother days with fewer bottlenecks and fire drills.
- Higher hours per RO and dollars per RO without adding headcount.
- A schedule that actually reflects how your shop produces work.
Real Results: Revenue Lift and Easier Days
When dealers lean in and align Evenflow with the way their store actually runs, the results are consistent. As Dave shares: “We can get over 20% revenue improvement. Most of that is from a unit production perspective— higher hours per RO, dollars per RO, and you’re getting that 20% lift.”
Importantly, this isn’t about cramming more appointments into the day. It’s about balancing the flow of work so technicians and advisors aren’t slammed at certain times and idle at others. Performance records get set on days that actually feel easier for the team.
From Chaos to Flow: A Typical Transformation
Many stores start from the same place: constant bottlenecks, frustrated guests, overloaded advisors, and underutilized techs. After implementing Evenflow, service managers describe a noticeable shift. Days feel calmer. Customers get clearer expectations. Techs see steady work instead of spikes and gaps.
By matching technician hours, advisor time, and customer arrival patterns, managers finally get the tools to design their days instead of just reacting to them—and the revenue uplift follows.
Why It Matters Now: Protecting Margins in a Changing Market
As vehicle margins compress and EVs reshape service patterns, dealers can’t afford to waste the highest-margin product they have: technician time. One dealer summed it up for Dave with a simple line: “I sell two things: cars and technician time. Technician time is my product I can get high margins on.”
Before you hire another tech or pour concrete for a new bay, tools like Evenflow help you get full value out of the capacity you already own—especially critical given today’s technician shortage.
Looking Forward: From Reactive to Proactive Service
Evenflow’s roadmap goes beyond scheduling. As Dave explains, the next frontier is tying marketing and recall campaigns to actual shop load—filling slow days, not cramming busy ones. The goal is to smooth demand, see bottlenecks before they happen, and move fixed ops from reactive to proactive.
Ready to Move Your Shop Beyond “Controlled Chaos”?
If your service department feels stuck in chaos and you know dollars are slipping away in unsold hours and mismatched schedules, now is the time to act. As Dave Anderson puts it: “If I wait another week, I lose another week’s worth of money. It’s like leaving the gate with empty seats on the plane. Why wait?”
Optimizing service capacity is no longer just about survival—it’s about setting a new standard for customer experience and profitability.
Talk to Evenflow AI
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Or catch the full conversation with Dave Anderson on What The Prompt? for more real-world examples and use cases.
