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Yeah that's a common thing I've heard from some of our service managers too, often based on an experience or anecdote from 5+ years ago and they've completely written off service schedulers ever since.

Every service scheduler has different functionality and some of it depends on their integration depth with your dealership's DMS.

I would recommend finding one service manager that is open to working with you on configuring it in a way that allows them to manage shop capacity while maximizing stall/tech efficiency. It's a lot easier to say "it worked for Bob over at the GM store, here's how he set it up" vs "the software vendor says it will work."

By not having an online service scheduler, at worst you're losing the customer to a competitor who does, at best they're hopefully calling your dealership and suffering through a 5-minute phone tree where their call may get dropped several times.

Service advisors are constantly busy. Any way you can decrease their inbound call volume, the better. Their time should be focused increasing the number of hours per RO through upselling needed maintenance and getting customers to approve the work.

xTime is my personal favorite service scheduling solution.