What Retention Actually Requires: Derek Simonds of Numa at the Fixed Ops Roundtable

Numa EVP Derek Simonds joined Ted Ings' Fixed Ops Roundtable at The Niello Company's Porsche Sacramento location, sitting down with Tully Williams, Fixed Ops Director at The Niello Company, for a candid conversation about the mechanics of retention, why communication is the variable that most directly determines whether a customer returns, and how Numa's LiveCSI capability is changing how service managers catch at-risk customers before they're already gone. The conversation covers data from across nearly 1,500 dealerships, a finding from a major OEM that illustrates the gap between technician efficiency and bay efficiency, and a specific framework for understanding the customers that cost the most — the ones who never complain and never come back.

Introduction

The Fixed Ops Roundtable, hosted by Ted Ings, is one of the industry's most grounded conversations about what actually moves the needle in service operations. No aspirational product pitches. No theory without stakes. When Ted shows up with a camera, the people he brings to the table are the ones doing the work.

This episode was filmed on location at The Niello Company in Sacramento, California, a dealer group with close to 71% retention across their stores, with top-performing locations running at 75%. That's not an accident. It's a managed, measured outcome, and Tully Williams, Fixed Ops Director, knows exactly what drives it.

Derek Simonds, EVP of Automotive at Numa, has been in the car business long enough to know that the problems in a service lane are almost never about the wrong technology being present. They're about the right information being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or not existing at all. His conversation with Tully and Ted covers ground that most vendor conversations sidestep: the silent defector, the bay efficiency gap, and why the phone is not a communication problem — it's a workflow problem dressed up as one.

The episode runs about nine minutes. Every minute is useful.

Key Takeaways

• Retention is repeat and referral, and communication is the mechanism that drives both. Tully Williams framed it directly: "We're in the repeat and referral business, and that really drives retention." The Niello Company tracks it closely enough to hold specific stores to 75%.

• The customers who never complain are the most dangerous. Derek introduced Numa's "silent defection" category: customers who are upset, say nothing, and simply don't come back. Across nearly 1,500 dealerships tracked over 18 months, 97 out of every 1,000 customers fall into this category. Only 33 out of 1,000 are the visible heat cases.

• Complaining customers are actually a gift. Because they tell you the problem. Silent defectors tell no one at the dealership, and then tell everyone else.

• LiveCSI monitors every communication for signs of risk in real time. Every phone call, text, web chat, and voicemail is analyzed by AI looking for potential defectors before they leave the building.

• The best stores resolve 65% of heat cases and silent defectors, and 70% of those resolved customers have another repair order within six months.

• Good communication beats a bad repair. Bad communication kills a good one. Derek and Tully both landed on this: customers who experience a bad repair but receive excellent communication throughout will come back. Customers who receive a good repair but poor communication often won't.

• Advisors aren't failing because they don't care. They're failing because they're overloaded. The advisor who doesn't send a status update isn't negligent. They have a customer every 15 minutes, a technician waiting on an authorization, and another customer walking in the door. The system is the problem.

• Communication drives bay efficiency. Derek cited OEM data showing a major, successful brand running at 80% technician efficiency on an eight-hour day but only 40% bay efficiency. The gap is communication.

"We're in the Repeat and Referral Business"

Tully Williams doesn't talk about retention as a metric. He talks about it as a business model.

"I believe that we're in the repeat and referral business, and that really drives retention."

At The Niello Company, this is operationalized. They're tracking close to 71% retention as a group, with specific stores managed to 75%. That's not a passive outcome. It's the result of identifying the specific failure points that break the retention cycle and working backward from them.

The biggest one, in Tully's assessment, is the phone.

"One of our biggest fallbacks is we have this communication. We do an unbelievable job not answering the phone."

That observation is delivered with the self-awareness of a Fixed Ops Director who knows the root cause isn't indifference. It's structure. When advisors are in the lane, writing up vehicles, managing technician authorization requests, and greeting arriving customers simultaneously, the phone is the fourth priority. And in a business that runs on repeat and referral, losing the fourth priority means losing the first two.

For a deeper look at how communication failures create the specific wait time and routing problems that cost service departments appointments every day, see The Calls That Leave: Why Dealerships Need a Phone System That Actually Handles Calls.

Silent Defection: The Category That Costs the Most

Derek introduced one of the most useful frameworks in the episode: the distinction between visible heat cases and silent defectors.

"We have this category that we call silent defection. Those are the people that never complain, but they're upset and they just don't come back."

The data behind that category comes from Numa's LiveCSI, which has been tracking customer sentiment across nearly 1,500 dealerships for 18 months. What it found reframes how most service managers think about customer risk.

"When we track this over the last 18 months across over almost 1,500 dealerships, what we see is that 33 people out of a thousand are actually what we consider a case. 33 people out of a thousand — so 33 out of a thousand are the screamers. They're the ones that are like, I'm going to sue you. Those are the heat cases. What you don't see is that 97 out of a thousand fall into that silent defection category."

Thirty-three are loud about it. Ninety-seven say nothing.

Tully's response cut to why this matters:

"If they complain, that's almost a gift from car gods, because we can then resolve the problem."

The visible heat case is manageable. The service manager hears the complaint, intervenes, and has a path to recovery. The silent defector offers none of that. They leave having said nothing, and the first sign they were ever dissatisfied is their absence.

Derek named what happens next:

"These are what we call embers. They're simmering. They're the ones that are going to burst into flames as soon as they get out of there. And who are they going to tell? Everybody."

For more on how heat case detection and real-time monitoring work together to catch these customers before they walk out, see The 3 Communication Pillars of a High CSI Dealership.

LiveCSI: Monitoring Every Communication for Risk

The mechanism Numa uses to address the silent defection problem is LiveCSI — a real-time analysis of every customer communication across every channel.

"Every single communication, whether it's a phone call, text message, web chat, voicemail, whatever it is — our AI is actually analyzing that and we're tracking that, looking for those potential defectors."

When signals of risk appear, the system escalates to the appropriate people inside the dealership in real time, not after the customer has already left and filled out the OEM survey.

Derek was direct about what that escalation is and isn't supposed to do:

"What we do with the AI is we're monitoring that communication and we escalate those to the appropriate people inside the dealership so that they can take care of it."

Tully reinforced exactly where the human has to take over:

"What I always get worried about is AI trying to resolve the problem. AI needs to help us. 'Hey, this person — you need help with.' And then let the people that do it, our great service advisors, our managers that are on the street every day making those real relationships. That is to be the key issue. And that's where you help the best."

AI as a detection and routing system. Humans as the resolution layer. That distinction is what makes the model work.

When it does work, the numbers are significant. Derek shared what top-quartile stores are achieving:

"The highest performing stores, the top quartile, are 65% resolution on e-cases and silent defection. And we see 70% of those people have another RO within six months."

Sixty-five percent of customers who were on the verge of leaving, recovered. Seventy percent of those recovered customers back in the service drive within six months. That is not an abstract retention improvement. It is a direct, measurable revenue outcome.

For a full breakdown of how Numa's LiveCSI connects to CSI scores and OEM reporting across single and multi-rooftop operations, see From Underwater to Above Average: How One COO Fixed CSI Across 9 Brands.

Good Repair, Bad Communication: The Finding from OEM Research

One of the most striking moments in the episode came from Derek's summary of OEM research.

"We've done a ton of work with OEMs over the last 12 months, and it's blown my mind. You can have a good repair and bad communication — guess what happens? They don't come back. You can have a bad repair with good communication — they will return."

The logic holds because customers can't evaluate the technical quality of a repair. They can't tell if the brake job was done correctly or if the parts used were the right specification. What they can evaluate — what they experience directly — is how the dealership treated them throughout the process. Did someone call when they said they would? Did the car take as long as estimated? Did anyone reach out after pickup to make sure everything was right?

The repair is the product. The communication is the relationship. Customers leave or stay based on the relationship.

Tully made the same point from the floor level:

"We have to be the one to initiate it. Once that car is here, it's our responsibility, period, to communicate with them."

And he named the specific failure point that creates silent defectors:

"We could go back and find where they called in or they complained and nobody responded to them."

A call that went unreturned. A text that sat unanswered for 18 hours. A customer who came in with a question and left with a concern. These are not dramatic failures. They are the ordinary, daily gaps that accumulate into the 97-out-of-1,000 silent defection rate.

For a practical look at how proactive communication prevents these gaps from forming, see Seizing the Moment: Getting in Front of Proactive Service Updates.

The Advisor Overload Problem: Why It's Not a People Problem

Both Derek and Tully were careful to name something that gets lost in most conversations about service communication failures: advisors are not the problem.

"The advisors are not bad people. Not doing a status update because they're a bad person. They're doing it because they got a customer every 15 minutes. They got a technician sitting there going, 'Tully, did you sell a job? I got the car going down in the bay, Tully. I can't do anything else.' And you're like, oh my God, I got to sell a job."

Tully described the cascade that follows:

"So then I try and get a hold of that customer. Now I'm playing phone tag. And I'm like, I need to update them. And what happens? Another customer walks in to get written up. And then they call back and they go in the phone tree. The technician takes the car off the rack, goes back in the parking lot, and the next car's in. The odds of getting a job done today are nil to none."

A missed communication created a chain of failures. The customer couldn't be reached, the authorization couldn't be obtained, the technician had to move on, the revenue opportunity was lost. That sequence costs fixed ops money every single day, in every service drive that's operating without automated communication.

Derek connected this to the bay efficiency data:

"We're working with one of the major OEMs, and the thing that blew my mind is that today, year to date, they're at 80% technician efficiency on an eight-hour workday, and they're at 40% bay efficiency. When you look at that number and you equate it back to communication — communication drives efficiency."

Technicians are working hard. The bays are underutilized. The gap between those two numbers is the authorization that didn't come through because the advisor couldn't reach the customer, because the communication system didn't work.

Tully framed the solution in the most straightforward terms of the entire episode:

"If we can get them down to eight to ten ROs a day, max out, then the communication is better. Products like you help us out. We have a much better result. And guess what? They actually make more money for them and their families because people are going to say yes."

Fewer ROs per advisor. Better communication per customer. Higher approval rates. More revenue. The math runs the right direction when the communication burden is taken off the advisor and handled by a system built for it.

For a closer look at how reducing the communication load on advisors changes daily workflow, see How AI Reduces the Communication Load on Dealership Service Advisors.

Conclusion

This episode of the Fixed Ops Roundtable is nine minutes long and covers more ground than most hour-long industry panels. The reason is simple: everyone in the conversation is working from data, not theory.

Tully Williams knows The Niello Company's retention numbers well enough to hold individual stores accountable to them. Derek Simonds has 18 months of LiveCSI data from nearly 1,500 dealerships telling him exactly how many customers are leaving silently every month, and exactly what the top-quartile stores are doing to recover them. Ted Ings asks the questions that get to the operational reality underneath the statistics.

What the conversation ultimately establishes is that retention is not a feel-good concept. It is the most direct measure of whether communication is working. Customers who feel informed, acknowledged, and valued return for service, buy their next vehicle at the selling dealership, and tell people they trust to do the same. Customers who experience silence — who called and weren't called back, who texted and waited, who picked up their car and never heard from anyone again — make a different decision. And they make it quietly.

The silent defector is the most expensive customer in the service department. Not because of what they cost in a single visit, but because of everything they represent: every future repair order, every vehicle purchase, every referral that never happens because the communication cycle broke down somewhere between when they called and when anyone responded.

LiveCSI catches those customers before they leave. Communication systems close the loop. Advisors, given the right tools and manageable workloads, build the relationships that keep customers coming back. That's the system Derek, Tully, and Ted describe — and it's the one that moves the retention number.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is silent defection and why is it a bigger threat than visible heat cases?

Silent defectors are customers who are dissatisfied but say nothing about it. They simply don't return. Numa's LiveCSI data from nearly 1,500 dealerships over 18 months found that 97 out of every 1,000 customers fall into this category, compared to only 33 who express visible dissatisfaction. The reason silent defectors are more dangerous is that they provide no opportunity for recovery. The customer who complains gives the dealership a chance to resolve the issue. The one who leaves quietly takes that chance away — and then describes their experience to people they know.

What is LiveCSI and how does it identify at-risk customers?

LiveCSI is Numa's real-time customer sentiment monitoring capability. Every inbound communication, phone call, text message, web chat, and voicemail, is analyzed by AI for signals that indicate a customer is frustrated, dissatisfied, or at risk of not returning. When those signals appear, the system escalates the contact to the appropriate person inside the dealership in real time, while the customer is still reachable and the situation is still recoverable. The AI's role is detection and routing. The human advisor or service manager handles the actual resolution.

Why does good communication save a relationship even when the repair goes wrong?

Customers cannot directly evaluate the technical quality of a repair. What they can evaluate is how the dealership communicated throughout the process — whether they were kept informed, whether timelines were honored, whether anyone reached out after pickup. When communication is strong, customers interpret problems as isolated incidents at a dealership that cares. When communication is poor, even a technically correct repair leaves the customer with the impression that the dealership doesn't value their time or their business. Derek's OEM research confirmed this directly: good repair plus bad communication leads to defection; bad repair plus good communication leads to return visits.

Why do service advisors miss calls and skip status updates if they know it matters?

The issue is not motivation. It's workload. An advisor managing a customer every 15 minutes, with a technician waiting on an authorization and another customer walking in the door, is not choosing to skip communication. They are triaging in real time, and the phone and the status update lose to the physical customer in the lane every time. Tully Williams made this point directly in the roundtable: "The advisors are not bad people." The structural answer is reducing the number of repair orders per advisor to 8–10 per day maximum, paired with automated communication that handles the routine updates advisors can't reach.

What does the bay efficiency data reveal about the cost of poor communication?

Derek shared OEM data showing a major, successful brand running at 80% technician efficiency on an eight-hour day but only 40% bay efficiency. The gap between those two numbers represents technicians who are working hard but whose bays are underutilized because vehicles can't move to the next stage. The root cause is communication: when an advisor can't reach a customer for authorization, the vehicle sits, the technician moves to another job, and the bay stalls. Communication drives throughput, and throughput drives revenue.

What retention outcomes do top-performing stores achieve with LiveCSI?

The top quartile of Numa-deployed dealerships resolve 65% of identified heat cases and silent defectors. Of those resolved customers, 70% have another repair order within six months. That conversion — from at-risk customer to returning customer — represents the retained lifetime value of a service relationship that would otherwise have ended silently.

Watch the full Fixed Ops Roundtable episode with Derek Simonds of Numa and Tully Williams of The Niello Company: Derek Simonds of Numa with Tully Williams at The Niello Company