Are Monkeys Running The Asylum?
Chris Collins and Christian answer a service manager frustrated by older technicians resisting new technology and customer-service practices. Collins says the fix is leadership: set clear expectations, hire people who fit your values, and move experienced techs into mentoring or specialty work instead of forcing change on unwilling people.
Chapters
Foreign.
Everybody. And welcome to Service Drive Revolution. In your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your question. What is on your mind? And I want you to think about something. When you call in and ask a question, think about all the people that you're helping that are scared to ask the question or hadn't thought of the question yet, but they're gonna run into it. So you're doing a big favor by calling in and asking great questions, not stupid questions. Great questions.
Wanna know what's on my mind?
Why do.
Is this a joke?
Why do. Why do scuba divers always fall backwards into the water?
Why do scuba divers.
I don't know why?
Well, if they fell forwards, they'd still be in the boat.
That sound very funny.
I believe that the crew disagrees with you.
No, they laughed at me saying it wasn't funny.
Oh, maybe.
One person got that at least.
What's going on, Christian? You having a dry smoke?
A little slump. Little slumpy slump.
Christian told one earlier off camera that, whoo. It was a lot like the norm moth joke, but not.
Not funny.
In the end, there was no. Because the light was on at the end.
Yeah. Oh, that's so true. So number is 8, 3, 3, 3, ask SDR. That's 8, 3, 3, 3,. Ask STR. If you call in a question and we answered on the big show, we will send you some swag. So let's go to this week's question.
Hi, Chris. I'm. I'm a huge fan of service drive revolution.
But I am not a service advisor or service manager. The service manager for a bigger chain.
But I want to change my shop. My biggest problem, a lot of old school text who can't get with the new school technology. New school customer service. I have a master tech who can't figure out that without customers, he doesn't make hours. Can you help me out? Thanks.
Thank you for, for the question. Now I've been, I've been.
Posed this question many times in many different ways. But the first thing that comes to mind when I hear that question is who's in charge?
Oh, that's a great comment.
When somebody will ask me like, hey, Chris, how do I get my advisors to do walk arounds? Or how do I get my technicians to do inspections?
Who's in charge? That's, that's my question. Because whatever your expectations, whatever your goals are your boundaries as a leader, you're going to then go out and attract the people that will help you get to that. And it's really hard to be in the business of changing people. Like, Tony Robbins is in the business of changing people, and his batting average is terrible. Like, if 10 people go through one of his things, maybe one of them has changed. He has a very low batting average. Right. So you don't want to be in the business of trying to change people. What you want to be in the business of is collecting the right people that think the way you do have the same values and want to go to the same destination that you want to go to. But when somebody says, like, how do I get my people to do this or that? And things that would be, you know, considered in, in a lot of circles is just part of doing the job. Like, it's not. Like, if you say, like, how do I get my advisors to do walk around? It's like, well, that's a part of the job. Like, it's a requirement not to would be a better question. Right. Like, and so your, your expectations and what you're willing to accept might be the, the cause here. And we're trying to treat the symptom. The symptom is that we have a technician that's allowed to make a decision that a customer isn't important or that the outcome for the customer isn't important. The quality for the customer, the value that we provide the customer isn't important because they're in a bad mood or they don't feel like it, or they just don't see things the same way. It's kind of a ludicrous scenario, in a sense. I wouldn't treat the symptom. I would try to figure out why you're allowing that to happen. And why aren't you spending more time recruiting technicians that want to do it and that care about customers. Because.
Sometimes if you try to change people like that, they.
I don't know, you just look back in the end and you're like, I don't, I don't know. They were telling me the whole time they didn't want to do it. Yeah. And I'm trying to get them to do it. And so I. The way that I approach these sort of things is I go out and recruit technicians that want to do it the right way. And I surround that person with those texts. And then at some point, that technician, let's call him, you know, Terrible Tom, Terrible Tom is going to come to a crossroad and he's going to make a decision. He's coming our way or he's going his own way, but.
He'S not going to set the standards or the tone for what it is we're trying to accomplish so.
Well, there was also another part in there besides the whole that tech doesn't like a customer.
The part where he said service, drive revolution. But it was kind of a little under. Like.
It was nice that he did that, but he didn't really like.
You can't go halfway on that thing. You have to go.
Is that the part you're referencing?
No, but he was saying that he can't get the older text to learn the new technology. So I do want to say that there's a place for that. It's no different, I believe, than you or I trying to master technology in relation to like a 16 year old. They're just on a different level and they grew up a different way. But what I would say is that it doesn't mean that there's not a lot of value to some of those older technicians. It makes me think of this guy that I had work for me that he was really not good with the new vehicles. He wasn't really good with technology. And it was a Volkswagen store and there wasn't really. He wasn't an expert at electrical diagnosis or anything like that, but he was really, really good at fixing VW buses. So what if instead of actually trying to make sure that those techs are doing everything you want in terms of technology and the newer stuff, could we make sure that they're actually doing their best work, which could be the older stuff? There's a place for that. I don't know. I just think that like a technician that's got years of practice and maybe, maybe they don't work on vehicles, but they could start to mentor techs on how to maximize flat rate. Like there's a lot of other uses for that person other than just saying, here's the new stuff, you need to learn it today. I don't know. I just think that we sometimes pigeonhole the older technicians as not knowing. But the truth is that they have the IQ and perception of doctors and lawyers. These are intelligent people and they can do a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
Sometimes we'll make those guys use car techs or whatever. But.
If the lack of empathy and care for the customer is there, it'll be the same no matter what they're doing.
Yeah, those were two different things is what I kind of heard.
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your question. I hope that that helps. I'm sure it's a little.
A little hard to take, but it sounds like we're treating the symptom not the cause. And I would treat the cause and the cause that you're allowing it to happen because your expectations are somehow off or low in that sense. But thanks for the question. Remember the numbers 8 3, 33 Ask STR and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. 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 sa.
