8 Ways Service Managers Overreact

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is kind of fun.

Okay, let's just, we'll start with a couple easy ones. But the premise here is that a lot of times we tend to overreact to things that we should not overreact. And we throw the baby out with the bath water. We throw out everything. Instead of just fixing the one issue.

Right.

Or not giving up on it or.

Whatever it is, completely dump the whole project. Right.

So a couple that, that I've seen a lot is places that don't take checks anymore because somebody bounced a check.

Yeah. That's horrible, isn't it?

So you know, even with big fleet customers or whatever, that's always really funny to me.

Yeah, especially too like with the, with check o matic and stuff like that. There's so many ways to try to protect yourself. But like if you get one out of 500 bounce checks, I'd be surprised. Like it doesn't, it's not very common. But man, talk about making it harder to do business with you. That's a little bit of a trick when you say you can pay. No, you can't use, you can't do that. No checks from the business. It's a little bit of a nightmare.

And then Amex.

Yeah, Amex Discover. I remember people dump and Discover because they had an issue with Discover before too.

So the thing with Amex, whenever I would go in to fix a service department, especially in like a Mercedes, Rover, BMW, like a higher end service department, the advisors would always say like it's a huge complaint that we don't take Amex and our customers hate it. And I always just raise the price.

Yeah. Because I think that's one of the things that's a detractor on Amex is that the fees are higher.

Yes. But do customers come in and ask the label? Like most customers don't even know they're buying tires, they're buying a water pump, they're buying a service, whatever it is. But if it, I can make more money by just raising the price and absorbing the Amex into it and letting the consumer pay for it. Right.

Makes sense to me.

It's an easy fix. But it always seems like.

You'Re losing that, that brand recognition too. Also. Right. Because people that have their Amex black card, they want to be acknowledged for that and they don't get to show off by throwing it out there.

Right.

You know, all my friends that have Amex black cards, they like, they can't wait to pull it out.

I'll take Care of this.

Yeah, I got it. Black card.

And they show it to you for, like, two minutes before they actually handle it.

Oh, it's sitting there on the table forever.

Oh, is that mine?

It's funny. Okay. You had one software upgrade.

Yeah. So it was actually a little bit of a continuation of what you were talking about. So a really good example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater would be that we have all these beautiful software upgrades that customers can come in. We do software upgrades, and on one car, we have an issue with the ecm. And then we're like, nope, we're not doing software upgrades anymore. We can't do it. We can't afford it. That's throwing the baby out with the bath water is completely throwing away a revenue stream because of one bad issue.

Yeah. Then a big one that I've seen a lot is accessory sales. So we'll accessorize something. Like, we'll put wheels and tires on something or will modify something, and then either the. Especially in a car dealership will sell it without accounting for it. Right. Or the customer wants to buy, but they don't want the wheels, and you don't have a tech there on Sunday to take them off or whatever it is. And instead of just writing a wheel for it to be done on Monday, you. You just. No, we're not. We don't want that.

No, no. Thank you.

Meanwhile, in most markets, if you sit in the service drive and just look at the cars coming in, probably half of them have some sort of upgraded wheels or something to personalize.

Yeah, they're modifying the cars. Whether the dealership chooses to participate in it or not, they're doing it because it's an identity of themselves and everything like that. Especially some of the brands that you mentioned, like BMWs, people love to personalize those. And then Jeeps, I think Jeep is probably one of the more personalized brands out there. Like, people are doing really cool stuff to Jeeps, and the dealers just are kind of. They're not taking place, taking part in it. Like, it just doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah, they'd rather they go to an independent and get a lift kit or whatever.

Yeah. And again, it's probably just because of one car that had some sort of warranty issue because there was aftermarket parts on it and they didn't want to deal with the hassle, so they just got rid of it.

Yeah, that's the other thing that's easy to fix is have them sign a release for the warranty.

Yeah. As Long as the customers know. I think that that's the big thing. And, and don't kid yourself. A lot of the customers know if they modify their car, there could be concerns about warranty later on down the road. They're not idiots. I remember when I worked as a service manager in a Chrysler store, people would come in all the time with the lifted Jeeps. And what do they do with their Jeeps on the weekend? They'd go out and they go in mud bogs. Well, this is Florida. So they'd go out and then they'd drive around in big, big mud puddles and then they'd come in and their differentials would be full of mud and oil and everything like that. And then we'd be like, well, you're going to have to replace this part and it's not under warranty. Are you sure? Or like, yeah, we're pretty sure. But if you want to see all the caked up mud underneath your vehicle, that's okay. Go ahead and take care of it.

Like they know, they're aware customers that do those sort of things like to their Jeeps and modify them are more loyal. And you're in their club. And so by not doing it and them taking it to the local independent that does the lift kits, you're kind of like saying, we don't care about you.

Yeah, but they embrace you as part of the club. They do way better job of making it a tribe because it's a lifestyle. Totally a lifestyle.

Then extended warranties, that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

So what we're talking about there is that you have an extended warranty come in and there's a problem with collecting payment or authorization or something like that. And then you just go ahead and make the decision. We don't take any aftermarket extended warranties. That's another thing too, where I've seen dealers where they will not take extended warranties that send a check as opposed to doing a credit card payment. Like they completely do away with that revenue stream too. Like they're just making it harder to get money is what they're doing in.

Those cases, in my experience. So I've never ran into. But maybe you have. I've never ran into an extended warranty that didn't do a credit card anymore. So most of the time when that rule's in place, I just say no car leaves until we're paid.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, the advisor's gonna be on the phone for an hour to get paid, but it's still worth it. And you can delegate that to warranty or a cashier or something too.

No car washes because we broke an antenna.

This is probably dating. We're dating ourselves a little bit here.

Because I don't know if I heard that not that long ago.

Okay, so in general, because this is.

What happens is the service director, whatever goes to nada. They get sold a car wash by a bunch of buffoons. At the nada. They buy the car wash and then it breaks a couple antennas and then they're like. Like we're not washing cars anymore.

Most of the time those car wash sales people like, I don't know, it's always better to wash them by hand. It's more efficient.

Oh, for sure. And it looks a lot better and everything like that too. It's also a really nice differentiator. It's not enough. I don't think always that the dealerships wash the cars, but when you're saying that you're hand washing cars, that just says I care. So I'm a big fan of that. But yeah, that's. It's the antenna. It's the one scratch that the car wash does. Like, that's what makes people not wash cars. Another thing that I think that I've noticed, and maybe you've seen this too with our clients that are in cold weather states is that like they start out with a car wash, they won't wash it below 20 degrees and then something happens and then it's 30 degrees.

Then they don't wash cars anymore.

Right. And it's got to be between 70 and 74 degrees in order for them to use the.

Never is in Illinois except for two.

Months a year, July 18th through the 23rd.

Another one that's funny is when they drop off with a shuttle. So a service department will drop customers off, but they don't pick them up. It's kind of like we care half about this we're kind of half into. But beyond that, it's your problem. Like go around the office and beg somebody to drive you to pick up your car.

Help me, please.

Because one time a shuttle driver got stuck in traffic at 4 or something and was late picking up the customer.

Yeah, we can't have that. Just do away with it. We'll get you out of here, but we're not bringing you back.

And then valet too, right?

Yeah. So the valet thing, I've seen people completely go away from the whole valet system because they'll have one valet pickup that doesn't go right. Like where the customer doesn't meet them or whether they don't get there on time because of traffic or whatever and they'll be like, we're not doing valets anymore. We had this angry customer. Like they get to the GM or whatever and complain about the valet service and then they come down with the hammer and be like not doing it anymore.

Like I know there's some we're missing on our list so do us a favor just cuz Christian and I like to laugh at this sort of thing. Post in comments a situation where either you're guilty of or you've worked in an in a department where they threw the baby out with the bath water.

I want to we it was fun compiling that list. I wasn't like we got to go take that trip down memory lane. Exactly right.

But post it in comments we love and if you post a good one, we'll, we'll send you some service Drive Revolution.

Well, I've got a question for you. What do you get when you cross a refrigerator and a stereo?

What do you get when you cross a refrigerator and a stereo?

Yeah, I don't. I don't think. I know.

Drawing a blank. Eventually you're gonna get one of these, right? Cool music.

The refrigerator cools the music.

Yeah.

You didn't laugh.

It's a little bit of a letdown. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333-ASK SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.