The list of weighty tasks a professional service advisor has to be able to perform well is quite extensive and when reviewed, creates an exhausting array of seemingly impossible accomplishments.
Some of the more crucial skills needed include the ability to sustain a friendly but empathetic problem-solving attitude, maintain an aggressive pace, be up-to-date on vehicle functions and technical aspects, and type expertly. He or she must also demonstrate phone skills, people skills, estimating skills, memory skills, learning skills and the skill to be skilled in the first place. Whew!
While teaching a training course recently, I was discussing how important the analysis portion of vehicle write-up is and how "problem confirmation and location" can only be conducted at the vehicle with the customer present. Everyone lamented the fact that the computer had taken the place of the customer's vehicle as the center of attention during morning repair order write-up times.
When we were discussing how to collect the mandatory information (what, where, when, who, how long), we performed the function both at a standard desk and then at an actual vehicle during the role-playing sequences. While going through this questioning process at the vehicle, we were able to examine the actual concern, attempt to duplicate it and explain the functions of many of the vehicle's components.
My experience is that service customers are looking for a "car doctor" and we had better be able to demonstrate our doctoring abilities if we are serious about maintaining long-term relationships. It's no secret that when customers abandon the dealership, they consistently tell us in focus groups and mail responses that they were looking for someone they could trust. It would not be difficult to ascertain from that observation that many don't trust dealer people.
The kicker of this training course is that all 14 service advisors and two service directors absolutely agreed that write-up at the vehicle is far superior and necessary. However, under the current cattle-drive process of customer write-up, there's no reasonable way to get to the vehicle with the customer to spend time analyzing their concerns. The perfect service lane melody would have to be Rawhide, commonly known for its whip-cracking sounds and connection to the famous Blues Brothers movie hit.
That's where service lane controls play a role in creating the kind of environment that a professional service advisor can maintain effectively. No matter how dedicated a service advisor is to detailing, and even better, finding a customer's problem, the advisor cannot achieve those goals if an aggressive, in-a-hurry group of customers is gathered like vultures waiting for prey around a prison-like computer and desk.
Here are a few
recommended service lane controls:
1. A greeter to immediately recognize and instruct arriving service customers. A good greeter will keep customers where they can serve their own best purposes, at their vehicle.
2. Directional and instructional signage beginning at the entrance of the property. Just be sure to answer a couple of simple customer questions: Where do I go? What do I do? (This also helps the customer with the "who am I?" syndrome.)
3. A real honest-to-goodness appointment system that actually controls arrival times and the shop's pre-load of production hours. Make sure your appointment system has a word track so everyone says the same thing!
4. Expand the Early Bird write-up system to a 24-hour write-your-own repair order plan. Why does a customer bringing in a vehicle for a 7500 mile service need to see a service advisor anyway, while a customer with a real problem is hustled through the system to make room for this person?
5. Assign every customer to his or her own service advisor. Make that service advisor responsible for his or her own group of customers and provide the customer with a trained professional that they can learn to trust and remain loyal to in the future, when the real money is spent.
Let's be real, taking control of the service lane environment isn't rocket science and it's probably little more than the exercise of common sense. Unfortunately, in my most recent service advisor class, not one service advisor said they were in control of their morning environment-but they certainly became excited about the probability of getting control.
In case you had trouble receiving the service and parts workshop averages from my column in the February issue, please try to this fax number, (205) 663-1965. Just make a request on your letterhead and we will forward the calculations by fax. We had so many requests that our fax line stayed jammed! You can also make a request at our web site at npinc.com by using the "contact" button.