Service advisors need to be scribes, not diagnosticians. They capture what customers describe, ride along to replicate problems, and explain the process upfront. Good communication cuts diagnosis time and builds trust.
Is it's about communication and it's communication both ways. It's communicating to the customer and it's communicating what the customer needs to the technician. So they are a communicator. You came up with the word that I, that I thought was really cool. You said they're scribes.
Yeah.
Explain what you meant by their scribes.
So essentially their job is just to kind of take information, write it down and then hand it off to, to the technician. So they're just kind of taking the story from the customer, writing it and then giving that story to the technician. I used to say translator. But what I. Well, to a point though, what happened and what I found was, is when I was training advisors and saying you have to translate, what they would do is they would take the information from the customer, then kind of like self diagnose and put that on the paper as opposed to actually just taking what the customer said and letting the technician do that work. And it would sometimes send the text down the wrong path because the advisor was putting their two cents onto the transcription.
Yeah. So customer is coming into the service department, advisor is meeting them and getting what needs to be done. And then the next one is they're recommending things that the customer might not be thinking about that they need as far as needed maintenance. Most of the time you're just recommending maintenance. Cause an advisor wouldn't know much more than that at the time. But they're documenting the customer's needs. So if the customer says I have a rattle or my car cuts out at this certain time, they need to get as much information as they can to make it easy for the technician to figure that out and diagnose it. So they might need to go for a ride with the customer. But whatever it is, they need to understand what, what it is so they can communicate it to the technician in a very effective way. Now a lot of technicians will tell.
You that doesn't happen, not near as effectively as it should. You think about that like the retelling of the story can take diagnosis from minutes to hours.
Yeah. And I have seen on ros. And not that long ago rattles.
Rattle from rear.
Yeah, like that's the description. Rattle from the rear suspension, the rear interior, like you know, the rear trunk. What where?
Like throw me a bone.
Yeah. So that can be, that can be a real inefficiency for the technicians if they're not provided with the right information. And so that's something that advisors should, you know, try really, really hard to be good at and Second of all, put your hands on the problem. Like, if it's rattling, go for a ride. Make. Make it. Duplicate the problem. The. The thing I used to tell customers when I was an advisor, when they would have a rattle or whatever it is, I would say.
Understand, there's this weird psychic phenomenon that happens that there's this, like, One Mile Dome that comes over your vehicle whenever you're within a mile of us. The problem doesn't happen anymore. Just to kind of plant the seed that, hey, it's, you know, a lot of times you hear the thing once and you think, oh, that's happening, but it isn't happening all the time. But your perception as a customer is that it's happening all the time, but it's hard to replicate. And so if we can't replicate it together, they're going to cut the technician a little more leeway because they understand they couldn't produce it on demand.
Right. Otherwise they just think we didn't try hard enough. You know what I used to do? That's kind of. I like how you said that. The One Mile Dome. I. I always used to say, so you know, when your kid has a toothache and they're like, oh, dad, my tooth. It hurts so bad. You finally go to the dentist and the toothache goes away. It's the same exact thing.
Oh, yeah. Cause customers would get frustrated. They'd be like, oh, it does this thing. And then you'd go for a ride with them and it doesn't do it. And then they'd be like, you know, and I would be, it's okay. Like, that happens. But what I was really trying to say there is, listen, our techs can't. They don't. Like, they don't have crystal balls.
That's right.
So I have to be able to replicate it for them. So that's the communication part from the customer, also communicating the expectations to the customer. So the service advisor's job is to also frame the customer. What's going to happen, what can be expected, how the process is going to work right up front. And then communicate. So you got to communicate. We teach in our advisor training, you know, touch the customer when they don't need touch, when they don't expect it, because then it builds trust.
Yep. Outbound, not inbound.
If they got to call you, you lost.
Absolutely.
And it's funny, like, if, you know, in a service department, you can sit by the phones at lunch and tell how well managed it is and how good the advisors are by how many calls are coming in to check status.
So.
Great, because if we're not getting to them before they call us, we we lost. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. 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 to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
