Building Trust Through Repair Authorizations

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to your Friday drive by on Service Drive Revolution. I am Chris Collins, and this is Christian.

Hello.

This is where we answer your questions. And remember, if we answer your question, we're gonna send you some swag. Notebooks, coffee mugs. Cool. Service Drive Revolution. Stuff that you can't really get. We don't really sell it anywhere.

It's private.

It's.

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So we break into the vault and we put a little package together. But more importantly, your question helps our industry. Because if you have that question, somebody else does, I'm sure, and it starts a fun conversation. So the number, write this down. If you're driving, just pull out your phone and put this in your notes. 8333 Ask SDR. That's 8333-Ask SDR. Dr. Let's go to the question for this week.

Hey, Chris. My name is Bob. I'm a huge fan of the show. I've been listening for many years now. I'm looking for some advice. Lady friend of mine called me and told me that her toddler has been chewing on electrical cords. And you know what, what I. What I suggest, and I told her she should ground him until he conducts himself properly. Any more advice on that would be great. Have a great day. Love the show.

Is this. Is this a tribute to Christian? Is this. Is Bob a dad joke connoisseur?

Oh, that was. That was dad joke. It was pun. There was a lot going on in that thing.

I love it, Bob, that you said lady friend. Yes.

Lady friend. My lady friend. Does your wife know about your lady friend?

Good one, Bob. Thanks. You definitely will get some swag, but I don't want to start. I don't want to start a situation where people are calling in jokes for you.

No, don't do that.

You can email Christian the jokes directly, and if they're good, he'll. He'll read them on the show.

We've done a couple of viewer listeners.

I thought he was gonna. I thought it was about rat damage.

Well, it does sound a lot like that.

Yeah, I thought that's what he. Like they were blaming the rat damage on the toddler. I was trying to, like, go along with it. That's. That caught us off guard. That's pretty good.

Bob.

Can we do another question in the queue?

Hey, Chris, just want to say I love your show. I love your book, the Millionaire Service Advisor. Thank you for all the advice you give for this industry. I really appreciate you. I got two questions regarding getting an amount. Authorization versus diagnosis. My questions are does demographics affect this method? And are you using this method with customers that you have built trust with versus first time customers? In my second question, let's say I get $500 approved from the customer to figure out his check engine light and let's say the repair exceeds $500 and he declines further repair. So when the customer arrives to pick up his car, I still have to charge him for diagnosis. So my question is, will the customer arrive expecting not having to pay anything? And how would you present the diagnosis charge to the customer without affecting our trust level or relationship? Because the car, he still needs to pay and the car is going to be leaving the dealership unrepaired. So those are my questions for you, man. Again, I appreciate you and all you do, man. Thank you.

The thing that I love about this conversation is this seems to be the thing that is the gift that keeps on giving. Repair authorization.

Okay, so let's, let's talk about this. Jimmy Carter, thank you for the question, by the way. And kind of like I said at the top of this, like, if you have the question, it means others have the question. So.

The first part of the question, whether you would use it on a new customer versus a customer that you have an established relationship with, I would, I would set that thought aside and I would just think about you. And I like, if you have an issue with your vehicle and you come to me, whether I have equity with you as far as a relationship or it's the first time, what you ultimately want is to get your problem solved. What I ultimately want as a service advisor is to understand how to best solve your problem. And so for us, the idea of diagnosis and the part and the labor to put the part in are things that, you know, are backstage in a sense. But to the customer who works in an accounting firm or is a high school teacher or works, you know, at Amazon or whatever it is, what they want is the problem fixed. And they need to know how much it is to fix the problem. So when, when we quote a customer diagnosis and we split these sort of things up, we're confusing the customer in a sense because they still don't understand really how the process works, nor is it their job to understand how the, how the process works. Right? Like if you compare this a little bit to if you had a broken foot and you go into the doctor and you didn't have health insurance, let's just say, for example, and you go to the doctor and then they say, well, we're going to have to diagnose your foot, and that's going to be this much. And then they do the X ray of your foot and they tell you that's going to be 700. And then, then they come in and they go, okay, well, you need a cast, and we need to reset it. So the cast is going to be $350, and the doctor resetting it is going to be $1200. And then we're going to need some shop supplies and whatever. And whatever. And like, you're like thinking in your head, okay, there was diagnosis of how much and then what and how do I. In. In. In a sense, all you wanted was your. Your broken foot set in a cast. And, you know, you wanted to be told how to best recover from that and don't walk on it for six weeks. Whatever. Whatever it is. Right. But you just ultimately wanted your problem solved and you needed to know how much. So, same scenario, you come into the doctor's office and you're like, I think I broke my, my leg. And they're like, okay, well, if, you know, if you, if you broke your leg, most of the time that's going to run around $2,200, give or take. But we're going to give ourselves $2,200 to work with if, you know, if it's something different. And in their head. And then you don't need to say this, but in their head they're thinking, you know, what if it. What if the bone shattered and we got to fracture? All that stuff, we got to go in there, we got to put screws in. But they can kind of tell by the fact that you're not, you know, writhing in pain or, you know, that it's not pointing the other way or it's flapping around. Yeah. So they can, you know, you kind of have a general idea. It's the same thing for us in our industries. We have a general idea what things are. Right. So when a customer comes in with a problem and they say, hey, you know, I turn on my AC and it's only blowing warm air. Well, we know on that model that most of the time that's probably the. The compressor. It might be. Another thing is the evaporator. We know that most of the time that is an evaporator. And that evaporator runs about $2,000. And so $2,000 with, I don't know, 150 in diagnosis or whatever it is, we know that that's going to be around $2,200. So the time of need for the customer, we want to Present kind of the bigger picture for two reasons. One is we want to save the customer time. So if we go back to the, hey, there's diagnosis and then we're going to call you with another price and we have to do this communication back and forth that has to line up with, if you're an advisor, you're writing other customers, you're updating other customers, the tech has to pull the car in and out, right. Sometimes in situations like this, the tech might need to put something on the car. Like, you know, for example, codes. Like it says there's three codes on a check engine light. And you know, we kind of know that the codes all come from the fact that it needs an O2 sensor, but we don't know until we put the O2 sensor on there that the other codes are going to clear. So in that situation, you might have to call the customer two or three times and the customer is going to get decision fatigue because it's kind of like, hey, like, you know, I, I had set my mind to that. It, you know, I thought this sort of thing is a thousand and now we're at a thousand and you're telling me it's another 500. And it just kind of appears like we don't know what we're doing in a sense. And it, we do lose trust in the over communication with the customer. So whether the customer has a relationship with us or not, what we're trying to do here is we're trying to save the customer time and we're trying to fix their problem with the least amount of resistance and air as we can. So back to what I said is if I said to you in the doctor's office, hey, you know, if you, if your leg is broken and we need to put a cast on it and reset it, which is the common thing. But we don't know until we get in there and do. The X ray runs about 2250 bucks. Now if it's going to be more, we'll let you know. If it's less, it'll be less. We've just kind of, we're just establishing a point of this is kind of the, the normal average for what we're, what we're talking about. But I'm also saying, like, hey, it could be more, it could be less, right? But if it's more, I'm going to give you a call and I'm going to let you know. Now we get in there, we do the X ray on your leg and it's 20 to 50 I already quoted the diagnosis in my original amount. So then to the second part of your question is if you quoted 500 and it didn't include the diagnosis, next time QUOTE 700.

You.

You didn't quote it right. Like you want to go for the higher number. And what I'm looking for from the customer was if the customer says, well, I don't have health insurance. I don't have 22, 50 bucks. I want to know that before I go do the X ray and I reset their leg, right? I mean, so I want to know that a customer only wants us to diagnose. So if I say, hey, most of the time this ends up being your AC compressor, and that runs about two, you know, $2,000 with diagnosis, everything. And the customer says, no, I just want you to diagnose it. I'm going to take it to my technician. Now, I. Now not only do I have the ability to sell that additional work, but I know how to prioritize that. I know where the customer's at mentally. I also am saving my technician from spending three hours diagnosing something when the customer's gonna take it to their technician anyways. Now, that doesn't happen that often, but when it does, it, you know, it kind of screws the technician over in the sense that diagnosis kind of implies that we're also gonna do the repair. I mean, that's how our technicians are gonna make time. And we're, you know, we're here to kind of try to make, make our technicians efficient and make them as profitable as they can within, you know, ethics and reason. So, you know, long winded answer here, but a great question. And for, for anybody who doesn't understand what we're talking about, because you're just kind of joining the conversation, as we've, we've been talking about for a little while now, a way advisors can not only improve the customer experience, but.

Create an easier scenario to fix. Fix the vehicles and save the technicians time is at the time of write up, doing something we call repair authorization. And just kind of having a general idea and giving yourself an amount of money to work with instead of quoting diagnosis. So say you come in and you have a check engine light on. And I know on that model that it tends to be an O2 sensor, and that tends to be, you know, $1,000 with diagnosis. I would say at the time of write up, hey, you know, Mr. Smith, I'm going to give myself $1,000 to work with. Oftentimes it's an O2 sensor, but I don't know until we get in there. If it's more, I'll give you a call. And if it's less, it's going to be less. And then you shut up and the customer will be like, okay, or could you just check it out and give me a call? That's fine too. But we know where the customer's at. It isn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't shy away from this technique because a customer isn't comfortable with it and they want you to give them a call. Now we know where they stand. We. We understand more the customer's mindset and how they think, and we can serve them better. It's information. We're collecting information. We're not doing anything unethical. We're not trying to pull, you know, the. The wool over anybody's eyes. But if that RO goes into the shop with a thousand dollars on it, and the tech can throw an O2 sensor on there, retest the system, and know if it, you know, if it's more, that does save everybody a lot of time, and it builds confidence with. With the customer. So. Great question, Mr. Jimmy Carter.

And Jimmy also did. I had it written down here. He'd also wondered if demographics played a part in whether or not this was more or less effective. I would say that I've seen it work in all brands, Jimmy. So I think that probably when I start. Started to see repair authorization working, it was in the luxury side, but I've seen it work on Kia, Hyundai, gm, all that stuff. It's really about. It's the relationship and the getting of information. I think that that's a main part of it. I would also say to my experiences on the callback in those rare times when you say, let's say that you've got an authorization for $1000 and it's 1200, I rarely see the customer balk at that because in their head, they've already gotten kind of authorized a thousand. And you're like, well, it's 1200. In their head, they're like, well, it's only another 200 bucks.

Yeah, I would always call them. But that. That gap between a thousand and two hundred isn't. Isn't. Isn't that hard. But I also would keep in mind, next time, I would quote 1200.

Yeah, we learned.

This is a learning process for you. So if you quoted the 500 and it ends up being 600, next time, quote 600. But you got to call the customer and get that. You don't want to surprise them when they show up. You got to get that authorized.

Yeah. The two things that the two best things, though, the information we collect from the customer, understanding about what their goals are and the streamline of the repair process. So valuable.

Great, great question. I hope everybody has a great weekend 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. 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.