Short YouTube episode (Drive By segment) where Chris Collins and Christian answer caller questions from service advisors about connecting with customers who seem disengaged or rushed. Advice for individual advisors includes using intentional, confident openings (compliments, quick walk-arounds) to pause hurried customers and gain control of the interaction. Broader organizational issues are raised: high ticket volumes and leadership-imposed processes can prevent rapport-building, and hosts recommend staffing adjustments and leadership changes when workload prevents quality service.
Chapters
Foreign.
Welcome to the big show on Friday. This is what we call a drive by where we answer your questions because you call into a hotline, the hotline, the number is 8333-Ask-SDR. That's 8333-Ask-SDR. And we will answer your questions right here on the show. So let's go to the first question.
Hey, Chris, My name is Dan. Just made a transfer from an independent shop a month ago to my local Toyota dealership. I've been watching and following along for a while and had no problem being a customer collector at the independent shop that I was at. I loved it and it came so naturally because of my natural curiosity for people. However, I'm struggling in the dealership more than I would have imagined I would be with, connecting with these customers. Most of the customers are in a rush to get out of the car and get away from you. It's unbelievable. They've almost been trained that way by the current advisors that are there. It's like a McDonald's drive through for them. How can I change that? What can I do about this issue?
So, Daniel, in my experience, and I don't know, Chris, Joan, what you think, but in my experience, you can still gain control of that customer and retrain them. So if you're walking up to the car and they're getting out or they're in a hurry and you're just like, hey, how's it going today? Oh, I love your car. Find some common ground, something to compliment them on. They'll stop whenever you, when you kind of build rapport that way they have to stop and think, they have to stop and absorb what it is you're doing and then you can just grab control. Hey, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to walk around the car, you know, check it for bumps and bruises. You can kind of go into your process at that point. So how you open and how you gain control is based on your charisma and how, how, how authoritatively you can do it because you kind of, you gotta have some authority too.
Yeah, you have to act with intention.
Now Christian walk up and he'd go, hey, did you, you know, the other day I was driving through a construction site and I saw a sign that said end of construction. Boy, these kids, they'll protest anything.
Yeah, it's funny how less funny it is when you retell it.
I'm not as funny as you, but.
No, I don't know if that's it.
I was trying to help him Build rapport, right?
So like, if I was trying to give him an example, what I might say is, so I was at the restaurant the other day, one of these ones downtown, you know, the fancy ones that they have. Downtown, downtown, and go in there, get seated. It took 15 minutes for the waiter to come up to the table. Waiter looks me right in the eyes and says, sorry about your weight. And I'm like, oh, and you're gonna call me fat?
Yeah. So you just walk up to a customer that's in a hurry and you say, went to one of those fancy restaurants downtown. What if, what if he's in like rural Iowa or something? They have restaurants one to those fancy restaurants in.
So replace, replace fancy restaurant with Cracker Barrel.
Good question. Thank you so much. Let's go to question number two.
Hi, my name is Jesse. I'm a service advisor at a Hyundai dealership. I find myself having a lot of trouble trying to build relationship with customers because there's this expectation to be writing up, writing up, writing up. So in short, I really have no time to build a relationship and have them trust me. I noticed that that is the biggest issue when it comes to any kind of diagnosis or comeback is that there's not a relationship of trust with the customer. So I guess my question is, how can I maneuver this and really capitalize on the situation? Do I have any options to really up the quality of my service when I've got a process imposed on me from management that is.
Well, we're just riding up a lot of cars and I don't really have an option.
What's causing the problem here is just the leadership, not valuing the relationship between the advisor and the customer and slowing it down enough that we can follow up, that we can connect.
Because the fact that they're selling a lot of cars is great. You're going to have tons of traffic, but you got to add more advisors and there's just a point of diminishing return on how many customers you can follow up with. Right. Do a good job and at the end of the day go home and feel like, hey, you know, I, I helped some people today. And that felt good. Because what happens too is like as an advisor, if you're just writing 25 a day, writing 25 a day, you kind of start to feel like you're not making a difference or doing anything positive. You're just moving, you're just transacting people through, but you're not really helping anybody.
So 14 hour days.
Well, but he's working three three.
So he's doing three 14s. I just.
Three 14s could be, you know, I. I personally wouldn't want it, but there are people that like it. I'd rather do four tens.
What's funny is I think I know what dealership this is. Wow.
I think that for most advisors, though, mentally so. So if they open at seven, they close at nine o' clock at night. I've got to guess that after riding the average out, let's say it's 26. It's roughly two tickets per hour.
You've got to be mentally spent by three.
So the times that I ran three 12s, it takes the advisors two days to recover. So they don't actually feel like the schedule benefits them.
Yeah, they just are trying to get back to where they were.
Personally, Jesse, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't work in that environment. It's not for me. Like, is it the person or is it the situation? Right.
I always think it's so funny when they're like, I don't know what to do. And the fact in staying there is the only option, you know. If we go to 10 stores, how many of them need advisors?
Nine.
Yeah. It's getting there.
Good advisors.
Yeah, good advisors.
Good ones that talk like, you know, he is. That care about customers and want to connect. You're saying all the right stuff.
That's right.
Your heart's in the right place.
Yeah. There's a lot of great places for you to work. And to me, I don't know, maybe it's just because I didn't have the capacity that I've seen other people that can write 20 tickets or 25 tickets and it's great to them. To me, I just. It was purgatory.
14 to 16 was kind of where I landed, but 10 was better, I would say. Just seeing kind of in conclusion that I would probably go somewhere else and that, you know, it's a failure in leadership because you have all this traffic. The sales department's doing this incredible job. Just build a bigger. A bigger pipe, get more texts and more advisors. Because I would guess the average transaction there is terrible.
Oh, I bet it's 80 bucks.
Remember, eight three, three, three, ask SDR. Thanks everybody that called in today. We appreciate it.
Swag.
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 so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 asksDr 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.
