Can writing less ROs be more Profitable?

Can you help me here? So Automotive News had an article. And how would you pronounce this, this writer's name?

Urvaksh Karkaria wrote an article in Automotive News talking about how last year's inconvenience of COVID Yep. Increased service satisfaction numbers. So service departments had higher customer satisfaction during the pandemic. And it's saying because of lower RO count, spending more time being more accommodating, picking up cars, all that. Right. All the stuff that we know. Isn't that funny?

Weird.

Weird. But hey, maybe our industry's stepping up in a time of need.

Yeah, I would say so. A lot of lessons to be brought.

Out of that article. Brings me to the question of the day.

Okay.

How many ros should a service advisor write?

Well, I have a formula in my head. I feel like you go up to the advisor and you ask them, you say, okay, Chris, how many ros do you think you can write a day?

25.

Okay, I'm going to divide that number by three. You can write eight ros.

I love that. That's your formula. Is it always by three? What if they say 12?

Four. You're gonna ride four ros, but we're gonna have good quality.

Oh my gosh. How good would those ros be? They'd be perfect.

It's so fun.

You know, you have the highest hours pero the best satisfaction.

It'd be amazing. Right.

So depending on the car line.

Yeah.

It's anywhere between 10 and 14.

Yeah. You could make a case at somewhere less than 10, but 10 to 14 is.

Now if you have a quick lube.

You'Re a moron.

Because you probably have your least talented advisors riding the most cars and it's a chase to the bottom. They don't make enough in gross to cover their pay.

Right.

You can't keep them around. You have the turnover in quick lube techs after two years is something like 60%. It's out of control.

And.

And the quick lube advisors don't even pay for themselves.

It's a talk about broken systems.

That's broken systems and money losing opportunity. It is a money losing opportunity. So in our system, we like to spread the ros out amongst all the advisors, spend more time with each customer whether it's an oil change or not. Still pet the dog, get to know them, build trust. Think about it is that opportunity with the oil change is usually where we lose the retention and they never come back. Let's actually make that an experience that they enjoy. They feel like we care they feel like they can trust us where their friend and not just run them in and out like cattle.

Right? Yep.

It's. And it doesn't have to take any more time. You can still do it in 30, 45 minutes and do it the right way. But you can't do that if you got these poor kids riding 25 a day just stacked up and you're thinking, well, they're just oil changes. Yeah. Look at all that opportunity going through your hands. Like, literally, these cars go through the Quick Lube, they're leaking oil, they need tires, Their brakes are metal to metal, and nobody's saying anything. And I know a lot of you listening are like, nope, not in ours. We.

It's happening.

Hogwash. It's happening everywhere.

Hogwash.

I wanted to say something else, but I don't want this to be an explicit show. This is a family show, Right.

Always has been.

Clearly.

Speaking of families. So I was with my kid the other weekend, and he was reading, and he's like, can you give me a bookmark? And I just. Shame overcame me because he's 8 years old and he still thinks my name's Mark.

Pretty good. Thanks.

It's funny.

So why do you think people think advisors can write too many? Why do they? Why are we not focused on the experience and the end result, the average per ticket, the quality of the experience with the customer.

Well, I think that in general, most service departments or leaders of service departments, maybe even general managers, are thinking the same way. They're equating dollars to cars, and that is absolutely not how it should be. But they're thinking, the more cars I get in, the more money I'll make.

It's exactly the opposite.

It is exactly the opposite. But their belief is that they got.

To get more cars. Here's the thing. If you can't have great satisfaction and a high average per ticket with less cars, by God, you're not gonna do with more cars. I don't know. Like, it doesn't even make sense. It doesn't make sense to you either. You're just not paying attention.

Yeah. The other thing that the pandemic brought was. Is like you were saying with the way that we split, Quick Lube brought.

The microchip vaccine.

Yeah, microchip. Johnson Johnson vaccine. Exactly. So we're happy to have that for a few days. But the thing that I noticed was whether it was an oil change or an engine repair, those service centers were very happy to have that customer there. They finally, for the first time, saw both types of ros. As equals. Yeah.

Think about it. The advisors are behind plastic.

It's less personal, but it was more personal.

Yeah. The customers were valued because. Cause the alternative is that the store's.

Closed and the customers had an appreciation for us that they probably didn't have. Great. So the secret is.

Slow down your RO account. Have a realistic expectation. Don't run all your customers through a quick lube with your least talented techs and least talented advisors thinking that that's a recipe for success. I don't care who the manufacturer is that's lying to you about that. It doesn't work. You want to slow the process down, spread it out amongst the advisors. You're going to. You're going to have higher average per tickets. You're going to have less comebacks because we're actually fixing it while they're there and not waiting for two weeks for the hose to pop or the tire to go or whatever. Right. So we're going to avoid comebacks and we're going to build trust and customers are going to come back and our retention is going to go up. Slow it down. If we learned anything from this pandemic is we can slow it down and have a higher average per ticket. Right.

There's no doubt.

Let's go to your questions. I remember, if you call in and we play your question on the big show on the service driver revolution.

We will send you some swag. And the phone number. Get ready to write this down. The phone number. If you have a question. 8,000, 333, ask SDR. That's 8,333 ask SDR. And it doesn't always have to be about the service drive. If you want to know my thoughts on the salary cap in the NFL, you need relationship advice, parenting, whatever it is, feel free to call in. The one thing I don't know a lot about is the cryptocurrency.

Oh, I'm learning. I just signed up over the weekend.

People want to talk a lot about that.

Yeah.

I keep getting texts from people. You buy in cryptocurrency. I know people that have made a lot of money in it, but I'm not in it. I don't know about it. I'm spending my time doing other things.

Yeah, there's other things to be done.

I'm sure you can make money. And if you know what you're doing. I personally, my personal opinion about cryptocurrency. I don't like it.

Hogwash. No.

I think the dollar, the American dollar, should be preserved. At all costs. And I don't think we should be letting people do. Were you trying to explain any sort of other currency besides the dollar?

Didn't you say that you feel like all cryptocurrency is actually based around the dollar anyways?

Until it isn't.

Okay.

I don't know when that is.

Me neither. But I wouldn't allow it if I was president. There's something you'd never hear me say if I was president.

Oof. Can you imagine all that brain damage.

For 400,000 stuff that comes with that? No, thank you.

You can't even go to the bathroom without somebody protecting you, right?

There'd be so much stuff out of my past that I didn't even remember happened that would come out.

Oh, yeah, I'm not electable for sure.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so. 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 hi, I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.