Expert Tips for Bridging the Tech & Service Advisor Communication Gap

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Welcome, everybody, to our Friday drive by where we answer your questions. We have some special guests today that are going to help us unpack your biggest concerns.

The number is 8333 ask str. 8333 ask SDR.

We have Coach hoagie. We have Chris Jones. Grant.

What's up?

The famous cliff from parts hold. World renowned man of mystery.

Yes.

There's James Bond and then.

Yeah, he's huge in Belgium.

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They were venturing out.

There's a. I think actually somebody in right now is European. Right. It's gonna ask a question.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

We're worldwide.

We are war on.

What's the. What's the number? If you have a question for parts.

Hold, 833 ask SDR.

Okay. It makes sense. It's logical.

Parts hold wasn't available.

Well, we.

I mean, we're. It's coming along. It's coming along.

Here we go. So we're gonna go. This week's. We have two questions on the show. So here's the first one.

Hi, my name is Mariah. I work out of left Colorado, and I've been watching you for over six months now. I started in dealership industry and now I've moved over to motorsports.

My question is how do you effectively communicate between your technicians and your service department for completing service work? So the dealership that I worked at before, we would have physical ros that the techs would turn back into us to call the customer for recommendations or if the work is complete. The dealership that I work at now only wants to go paperless, so there's a lack of communication in between when the techs complete a job and when they're recommending stuff. So I feel like we're losing out on a lot of profitability because of that disconnect. So I'd like to know any suggestions to bridge the gap between texts and service advisors for upselling and getting things out in a timely fashion.

Mariah on fire. I love the name Mariah. Do you guys want to know something about Mariah?

I'm excited. Yes.

I only ever once when I was a service advisor dated a customer and her name was Mariah.

Wow.

She was a Volkswagen. She had like a Jetta.

I dated her for a couple months and then all of the reasons why you shouldn't date a customer came to fruition.

How soon after the breakup did she come in for service? That's what I want to know.

Never came in again, of course.

Oh, that a boy. May.

I think she. I think she told me she was going to the competition. Like.

Oh, she wanted to dig in on you real bad. Like, this is what happened.

You made me go somewhere else during the breakup. Just so you know. I know we're not gonna see each other again, but that's gonna be permanently because I'm taking the car to another.

Business, and I was ready for that carbon scrape.

Okay.

So. Mariah on fire.

Oh, boy.

What?

How does Mariah handle the fact that in the dealership she worked at, she had paper ros. When the technician gave her the ro back, she knew it was done there. I think the idea of the paper created more.

In her mind, communication. Now they're paper free, and she's not sure when things are done, where they are, etc. How does she address that.

In a motorsports environment?

I think the one. The thing that stood out was that she's interested in profitability. She's wanting to be better. So that stood out just right away. But a couple of questions I would have. Right. Like, just thinking of it is what was the process like beforehand at the dealership level when they actually had the paper RO and then the process comparatively or no process, maybe.

Well, I think we got two things going on here. So just understand that there was a. Not only is there a transition of the process, but there was also a transition of the dealership for her. Right. And so she was in the automotive dealership world, switched to. To motorsports, which I think actually might be the most. It's fairly irrelevant in terms of the. The way that we fix this thing. So I would assume that in that place, if they've been doing electronic inspections and that whole process for six months, and the communication was poor for six months, it was probably bad before that too. Right, Right. So I think that's kind of what you're getting at. Right. Is that the electronic situation she thinks is the cause. Right. But it's not.

Right.

Yes.

Okay.

Just amplified.

All right.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Now, it's hard for us to give a lot of advice if we don't know the software, because most of the software that I've experienced, and I don't know if it's the same for you guys, has statuses, so you can go in and search what you have open by status. And so. But it's the same thing. It's. Everybody has to do their part in order. It's garbage in, garbage out. If you're not putting it in the right status, which might be the case.

Yep. And I would Say, in situations like this, too, something that's really important to get traction with this is to go, you know, go to the tax or whoever's maybe not participating and ask them what you can do to better communicate on your side. Right. So, hey, how can I help you? And it kind of starts the conversation and gives you a little bit of groundwork, you know, so collaboration first in a situation like this, because otherwise it's really hard to get traction with it. And. And then same thing if it's. Whether it's. You're going to the techs and you need them to participate or you need to go to your boss to establish a system. So this is going to happen. You got to go to the boss, go with the solution, come up with something, you know, that you think would work or that worked with you in the past, maybe part of the process when you were on paper ros to, you know, now transitioning to this. But come with the solution and then the other players involved that can help you make, you know, make this better. First ask them, you know, what you can do to help them out, to better communicate with them. I think it's key in this scenario.

That's great. And also, like, we kind of experience that, right? Because we deal with truck, we deal with car, we deal with motorsports. There's two ways to approach that where, like, let's say we're talking to somebody in truck where they will resist our input and say, oh, well, that's car. It won't work, or they will welcome it. And it's. It's. It's, you know, it's. It's not doing it as a challenge, offering it as a solution. And if you're really good, making it their idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, which is hard to do, but.

And I think part of it too, we see as we go around the dealerships is the more technology you input, I feel like the less people just forget. It's just all about, like, you know, setting an expectation like we've talked about. Like, just because you have new technology doesn't mean you can't have a cell phone number or you can't have some method of just basic communication of like, hey, text me whenever it's done or whatever. Like, you don't have to take out the window. Just basic, like, communication through, hey, are you done? Yes, I'm done. Or, you know, things like that. Just because you're adding technology doesn't mean that goes out the door.

Yeah, the last thing I would say there, too. Mariah on fire is there's nothing better than the good old fashioned paper dispatch log like keep of everything you write up and then you can go in there throughout the day and check who, where it's at, you know. But nothing beats the good old fashioned paper log of what you got going on and then carry over what carried over to the next day to the next log. And we have some logs like that actually that we.

It's one of our best selling products.

Yeah, well, no, I didn't. Yeah, we'll send you, we have the big ones, right Mariah, we'll send you a couple of those actually can we remember somehow in her gift bag of swag. Let's send her a couple of those.

Because those are the best. I mean I remember as an advisor myself, I had a, I had a director that he had come in and was really, really adamant about that logbook. And me as a veteran advisor at the time, I said yeah, you can get that out of here, I don't need that. But he made it a requirement. He's like no, I don't care logbook. And after about two months I made it really difficult on him to implement that. Looking back on it, after a couple months of me using it and seeing how much better organized I got, I had to go e crow and be like hey man, I really, I really appreciate this. It's really helped out a lot. So yeah, just something as simple as an old fashioned logbook, I mean it goes a long way.

Yeah. And there's something too about carrying over to the next day what didn't get done. And in motorsports there's going to be a lot of carryover. It's different than car in that sense, but it's still like you just know what you have going on, you know what you're capable of. Right. Because if you're carrying over 10, you know what you can take in. You just, you know, it's good. Thanks Mariah for the question.

Then I'm sorry to the other Mariah.

I think she's over it now.

Hi guys, it's Mike from Warsaw, Poland in Europe.

I really appreciate what you do. It's big fan watch a lot of your episodes and it's a very nice.

Library of knowledge, I would say. But I have a question. I'm pretty fresh service after sales manager actually. And.

I was wondering if you have any idea about this model of workshop where there is no master technician and service advisors communicate directly with the technician. So we much appreciate it. This is a quite interesting topic for me because we are trying to.

Test this model in our workshop.

So you guys know, because some of the manufacturers try to implement that here. Like they try like BMW for example wants you to have a diagnostic guy who basically diagnoses everything and then gives it to a technician which is like a hybrid of a shop foreman. We see that in truck. It's very common, Right. That there's a shop foreman. I think in Europe it's more common than, than it is here. So let's just go through the different models that you could have. So the first model would be having that shop foreman or master technician team leader, we would call them here also that dispatches the work. So somebody is handing the work out that isn't the advisor. Right. Then the other way to do it would be like a team thing where an advisor has three technicians and then they hand the work to their technicians. That does not work in a shop where you have 20 techs and the advisors could give work to anybody. You have to have, you know, you have to group it and usually three to one is the, the ratio to start. Right. Three to one. Am I missing anything with that? No, no, that, that tends to be my preferred way to do it is the 3 to 1, 4 to 1. And the advisor has their own group of technicians. And then you can do a super lateral support which is two advisors and six techs, which works also. It just depends. But yeah, it's very common for the advisors here to give the technicians work in a sense. Right.

I think the first thing with the work dispatching, I don't know how everybody else has, but I feel like in my career I've done it all right, like central dispatch, like all the different elements of it. And the first thing I like to tell people is there's never going to be a system that you'll find where it doesn't have something in it that makes it challenging. Right. I think everybody looks for the perfect shop set up dispatch system. Like the perfect way to do it. I don't think there's a absolute perfect way to do it. I think the most effective way to get the results that you want is the lateral support we talk about. I remember as an advisor I wanted to have my own team of technicians and I wanted to dispatch the workout myself.

Yeah.

Because if I had control over it, I don't have a tech who's very picky about who he gives a job to. So everybody, it's all because my job as an advisor, I just won't work out. Like I want work to go in and I Want work to go out as quickly as possible. And I feel like when you have a team to your point, one of. With three to four texts or two to six, I think that's the most. That's the most effective method for me.

Yeah.

In.

And I think the. Probably the biggest reason why is it's less steps.

Yes.

There's less layers. And the less layers, the more effective the system. Right. The less steps, the less people involved. And so, like, when I started off, I had a general dispatcher and just, you know, the. You could go in his office and you could see that those cars weren't going to make it in because you knew. Right. So then advisors would write waiter on their stuff that wasn't a waiter. And he knew the. The waiting room would be empty and there were 10 waiters. Yeah. And so then you would go to that guy. I remember the guy who was drunk all the time. He had. So it was funny because he would get there and he would make coffee, but he had a thermos. But I didn't know until later one of the other advisors told me the thermos had whiskey in it. So he's pouring the whiskey in his coffee, which makes total sense because he was a terrible human and very ineffective. But if I went to Joe, Joe the dispatcher, he threw my arrows in the alley once, no joke. I went to him and I said, hey, Joe, this car, when is it going to be done? He'd go, I don't know. Go ask the tech. And then you ask the tech and the tech goes, well, he gave me another car. So I don't know. And you just, you could spend all day doing that. When you have your own techs, if you, if you write up too many waiters or you make things a waiter, you're. You're only screwing yourself. Like, so it's just a more authentic, you know, honest way of getting work done. And you also have way more of an ability to tell the customer the truth because in dispel. Like you would tell customer, well, we'll have it. We'll get it looked at tomorrow morning. I know your appointment was from. And then tomorrow morning, it doesn't even make it in. And it's like you're just a victim of circumstance. The more layers that they, that they, they put in between.

Well, it's, it's. And it's also an easy excuse for the advisor if somebody else is dispatching the work. If something doesn't go out. Oh, the dispatch, he's. I gave it to him. I Don't know where it went.

It's out of my hands.

Yeah. So it's like as an advisor, I just, I, I wanted the control. And I feel like if I have the control over the shot, over the work that gets dispatched to my guys, I feel like it was either going to fail or succeed on my call. So I was controlling in that way.

Yeah. I remember distinctly being in a service department that they would bring in 75 appointments every day. Like that's. They weren't per advisor, they were just 75 appointments. And then you wrote whatever. If they asked for you, you got it, but you wrote whatever came in. And then of those 75, 20 something of them wouldn't make it in the shop. Right. So we were booked out two plus weeks. So people wait two weeks and then, you know when you're writing them up by 8:30, that that car isn't going to see the shop today. And then they came out with this new thing which was called Customer Satisfaction Index.

Wait, what?

All right, and so now all of a sudden you get one, you know, you get one back in the. And they say, well, I made an appointment two weeks ago and they, they, they don't perceive the experience as being excellent. They perceive it to be a one.

Yeah.

And now all of a sudden learned helplessness kicks in and all your childhood trauma and it's a downhill spiral from there. Yeah. But I remember distinctly that's when, that's how old I am. I was at the beginning of, see, like it was a new idea that we're gonna, we're like what? You're gonna survey the customer like what the customer gets, what we give them. You're gonna ask them how they felt.

Anybody talk to Joe and Dispatch about this? Because I'm pretty sure he doesn't care.

Absolutely.

So then we're on the front lines and no, you know, you, you got nothing. Yeah. None of the systems behind that. And then they, you know, then it's part of your pay and the whole thing. Right. So, yeah, it's funny, I think one.

Of the, when people make the transition from, you know, central dispatch or some of the other different systems to lateral support, I think a good illustration of it being less steps or less layers or whatever you want to say is a common feedback you'll hear from them is, man, thank God I only have one advisor to communicate with now. Or the, or the advisor saying, oh man, this is perfect. Like I only have these three texts to. And so just that illustration of it starts to show you. And there'll be a million different, you know, things that you'll, you'll see that it streamlines, but less well.

I remember going from the dispatch to so I went to a Cadillac Oldsmobile store where I had a team of three. And I mean, it was fun. Like, they were my guys. I would get them.

You're looking out for each other.

I've tried to get one of those guys to come on the show because he hits me up on Instagram. He was one of my text, and I'm like, I would love to have you come on the show. And any. I think he's just chicken to come on or whatever. But it would be so fun to talk to the, to him. But it was so fun. Like, it was just free. Like, I felt like, oh, I, I can control my destiny. Like, now it's just me and my boys and, you know, it was great. Okay, thanks, you guys, for the questions. Remember the numbers 8, 3, 3, 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-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 to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.