Having Trouble With Your Technicians? (Service Drive Revolution)
Chris Collins and Jeremy O'Neal identify five reasons your technicians are slow: parts delays, distractions like smoking and texting, no systematic processes, poor collaboration with service advisors, and advisors who can't sell or document. They walk through real examples and push for better teamwork and training.
Chapters
Let's talk about the five reasons technicians aren't efficient.
Number one reasons.
I know the first one.
Okay.
Smoking and vaping. Just gonna say it.
No, the first one is the parts department.
The parts department. Why are you throwing the parts department under the bus already?
That's always what the techs say.
Well, yeah, if there's a long line out of parts, it's always parts fault. It is. Always.
I've never gone into a shop where they didn't say that it was the parts department.
Look at the color of that.
Holy cow, that's beautiful.
For our listening audience, I just poured some tequila into the new.
The new glass. We can't smoke cigars here in this.
Oh, next time. Yeah, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna go with smoking and vaping.
Smoking and vaping is number one. Okay.
Yep.
What is the number two reason technicians aren't efficient?
Sexting.
Sexting.
No, I mean texting. I'm sorry.
Technicians are sexting?
Yeah, probably.
What kind of technicians do you have in your shop?
No, this isn't my shop. This is a survey of all technicians all across North America, Canada.
They're sexting?
Yes.
Like they're sending pictures of their family.
Jewels to the cashier or whoever. Now, HR department, you got to pay attention to this, because that could definitely get you guys in some hot water.
So that's not number two. Number two is. It's the parts department.
It's department. Awesome.
Okay, what's number three? Number? Number three is the parts department.
He really has the parts part written down as number three right now, so that is actually funny.
Have you ever gone into a shop where they didn't say it was the parts department?
No. Well, let's. Hold on. Let's just pause here real quick. So two sides of the coin, dealership world. Yes. The parts department can slow down production immensely if a technician has to go. Let's say a tech's working on four repair orders a day, and he's standing in line for parts 10 minutes a day. How many minutes is that?
Say that again. I was just drinking tequila. I didn't know I was taking that.
I'll give you the.
I didn't know I was taking the SATs.
Four repair orders a day, 10 minutes at the park counter. 40 minutes is 40 minutes. Okay. That's a lot of money that you're wasting. It is. So that's no reason why some technicians can't hit. Hit the magical 100% on efficiency or productivity. Now, in the independent world, the service advisor is the parts Department. So the challenge is, if you mess up an order and you have a car on the rack and you don't have a part and now your technician has to stop. That costs the shop a lot of money. So you've got to make sure parts arrive on time and that the parts are actually there.
Okay. Actually, the number three that we have is they don't have a system.
Threw me for a curveball there. Yes. Tell me about a system. They.
They just. The really good technicians at Flag, a lot of hours, have a system for how they pull in the cars, how they inspect the cars, how they handle parts, how they get another car going. Like, the really good ones will have two cars going. They'll have one underneath the other car. What? They have a system. They're consistent in their system that they inspect every car the same every time. They don't take shortcuts, that sort of thing. Right.
So they actually run their little business out of their bay, like a business or a franchise model would, where they have duplicatable systems that are done the same way every time so they don't miss stuff.
Yeah. The other one I would say with that is the really good techs understand that there's a customer attached to this car. They don't look at it like, hey, it's a, you know, 2010 F150. They're like, there's. There's a mom that's driving kids to soccer practice that has to be to work on time, that is in a hurry and doesn't have time to break down. And so there's a human behind every vehicle. It's not just a vehicle.
Interesting. That's a great way to look at it.
Yeah.
It's powerful to think that way because there's, you know, there's somebody behind it. When you're impersonal, you'll take shortcuts. Your quality isn't as good. And you also won't inspect them the same way. Because if you care about them, like, let's say it was your mom's car and you saw a leak, you saw a belt, you saw a hose. You would tell them, hey, you should do that. You don't want to break down. But instead, we prejudge. We get in a hurry, we take shortcuts. We don't want to do the hose, so we won't recommend it because it's in a spot we don't want to do.
Absolutely. And remember, our repairs can become like a time machine. Right. Because it's much easier to take care of things. While there's smaller problems in the shop rather than out on the road as a breakdown. So here, humanizing it is absolutely key. And then with the system too, cleaning up after you work. Right. Like I'm not a good technician, but I have a cart with tools in it and I just throw everything in the top. And then our new technician Levi has done just an amazing job. First week he came in.
Shout out Levi.
Shout out Levi. There we go. Yep. Set a record. Flag, Flag. Radars. And I watch how he works. He's very methodical and when he finishes the job, he makes sure that he cleans up and puts everything back where it goes. So he takes a little bit more time at the end, but it speeds him up getting into the next one so he's not searching for tools and stuff. So yeah, having a great system.
You don't have a system.
Oh, I'm not as a technician because I don't make my living as a tech.
Number four.
Number four, that was parts department.
Number four is I have failed that. They don't understand what the advisors are doing.
Okay.
They don't work with the advisors, so.
There'S no team effort there.
Yeah, well, they, they just don't understand what process the advisors are going through. They just assume that the advisors don't know how to get descriptions. They don't communicate with them, they don't spend time with them.
Yeah.
They don't understand that it's a law of averages that if you, if you inspect 10 vehicles, you're going to sell like 30%.
So what you're telling me that some technicians will base their recommendations off of what a service advisor sells or doesn't sell. So part of that as well.
Yeah. Prejudge.
They prejudge based off of the advisor. Okay.
Now the number five reason why technicians aren't efficient.
I know the answer. I know the answer. Parts department.
No, the number five. This was yours. And it's really, really good. Untrained service advisors.
Yes, Service advisors that cannot sell. They can't close the deal.
They're not trained. They don't know what they're doing. They don't connect with customers. Terrible. Service advisors will kill write ups. Yep. Bad descriptions.
Oh, absolutely. They don't document every concern. They don't have the customer bought into the inspection process, all of that.
They don't call the customer. They don't have the right phone number. They don't get the work. Okay. While it's still in the tech stall, the tech's got to pull it in and out. Right.
Painful.
Because they didn't get the right number, they didn't communicate, all of that. And then when they do call and they don't know how to sell the work, like, it always blows me away. When you go into a service department, you go through repair orders and customers decline breaks. It's like, how do you decline breaks? You're gonna go get them done somewhere else.
I didn't come in for breaks today.
But when I call on declines, most of the time the customers I'll say like, hey, Jeremy, I see you were in here last week and we're just trying to get better and we recommended breaks. And I was just wondering why you didn't have that taken care of while you're here.
We have a system for that too.
You know what, what's the system?
The piggy bank system. You put that one in your piggy bank. And they.
Do you know what they say most of the time?
What?
They didn't tell me until I came to pick it up.
Oh.
So the advisors never called while I was still in the store?
They didn't even ask for the sale? Nope. Wow. So can I share a quick story with you?
Yeah.
So I had a vehicle that I took over to one of our local dealerships, and I got to be the customer and go through the sales presentation from the service advisor. And it was very painful. And so the guy, you know, gets me on the phone and I said, yep, go ahead, what do you got? And I had a very specific concern that I took the car in for. Right. And so he goes into this thing and then glosses over my concern. And then he's telling me about this and this and this and this. And the whole time I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, if I was a customer, I'd probably hang up on you because there's just no flow to it. There was. It was really like he was just reading off the repair order, just going down things. And after like 15 seconds, I totally tuned out. And then at the end of his, I don't know, five minute presentation, I said, okay, so what's it going to take to fix what I brought it in for? And so as an advisor, there's an art and a flow to how you present what the vehicle needs. And if you're just going off of a list and say that we found this, and my technician also found this, your customers are tuning out. There's no passion there. There's no purpose behind it, rather than just telling the customer what the list is. So sometimes we have to go on the other side and be the customer to feel what they go through in the presentations as well. So untrained service advisors are definitely a reason why our technicians are not hitting their numbers or why they're unproductive. So.
And there could have been a sixth one, but we decided to leave it off. And that would have been the parts.
The parts department, absolutely.
Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode on on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify, or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins, and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at chrisbulldogcollins and I'll see you again on the next episode.
