How Carvana is Increasing Customer Visits to Dealership Service Departments

This is Service Drive Revolution. I'm Chris Collins, and this is Christian's replacement. Yeah, well, not replacement. Christian's out in the field, and he couldn't be with us today, but he will be back.

I was gonna roll with it. Yeah. I was gonna pretend like he was gone. Gone and scare everybody.

So part of the role of replacing Christian is you're gonna have to randomly interrupt with. With.

Jokes. But the jokes, like, they can't be too funny.

Right.

You know how Christianity's not funny? They're not really funny. They're just more. How would you say it?

If you're listening to this? Mia slapped her knee.

Yeah.

In a very dramatic fashion.

Very dramatic.

How have you been, Ms. Mia?

Very busy, but good.

Tell everybody why you're down here in beautiful, sunny, scorching hot, way too hot, Los Angeles.

Because I'm writing or finished writing a training program for you, and now we're filming it.

It's for what, though?

For BDC training.

Yeah. So forever we've had the request on our.

Training platform to have BDC training. And Mia and I were talking a while ago, and we're very simpatico in our thoughts about BDC and the role and how it works.

Yeah.

And so I don't know. That'll be up, you know, probably in three weeks or so. I would guess something like that. But she's been. She's down here chunking through it. We built a whole set for you that's like a BDC set. Like, the magic of Hollywood.

It's so great. It's like. It's so beautiful. It really is. It's a great set.

You have a picture of a cat.

Yeah. Cause I love cats.

And then a picture of an engine with parts that match your hair.

That was a motorcycle.

Oh, motorcycle engine. But literally, our team here built me a. This weekend, like, over the weekend, like, Kosh was sending me pictures, and I was like, oh, wow, you really did. My idea was more like office space. More funny. Like that.

Oh, yeah.

But this looks like a real bdc.

It does.

In our office, we have a BDC that the phones don't actually work. But you had a headset BDC where.

The phones don't ring.

Yeah. And so. And how many videos is just. The course for the BDC rep is like, 42 videos.

I want to say, like 45 videos.

45 videos.

Yeah.

Some, you know, shorter, longer. And then. Then we're going to. As a part two, we're going to record BDC manager. Like, how to do the pay plans. How to set it up, all that. That'll be stage. Stage two.

Yeah. It's gonna be great. I'm excited.

Yeah, it's really fun. It's really fun to see you recording it and making good content.

I'm excited for the blooper reel.

Nobody else is excited about that. So. You know, if Christian was here by now, he would have told the joke.

Yeah. Let me think of one. Hold on. I want us to do a knock, knock joke, but I want you to start it off.

Okay. So I. I do. It's reversed.

Yeah.

Okay. Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Get it.

Got it.

Because it's not funny like Christian.

That's pretty close to what Christian would do.

Yeah.

Makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

I had to channel my inner Christian since he's not here.

Christians here in spirit.

I know. Me too.

We saw somebody post a really funny letter on LinkedIn. That was funny but poignant, I guess.

Yeah.

And so today, me and I are going to talk to him and interview him. Aaron Bradshaw is a service manager at Chevrolet of Columbus. Now, you would think Columbus, Ohio, right? Indiana.

Really?

You would have been wrong. I would have guessed Ohio just like I was wrong.

I didn't even know there was a Columbus, Indiana. Did you know there's a Denver in Texas?

No.

There is. There's like seven Denver.

Did you know there's a Hollywood in Oregon?

Really?

Yeah.

People who name these cities need to get more creative.

Yeah. It's too much, but fascinating. We're going to. We're going to talk to Aaron, so let's go do that right now.

Awesome.

Hey, Aaron, how's it going?

Doing great today, Chris. How are you?

Good. I like the beard. Where we got a lot in common there. Mine's maybe a little bit longer.

Yes, sir. I'm getting there.

So you're.

We.

Came on to you because of a comment that you had posted on LinkedIn, which was very articulate. There's the. The overtone of a polite Midwest gentleman in the way that you wrote this. But it's also punchy.

It's very punchy. It's sassy.

It's a nice balance of the two. But it's very diplomatic but on point. It's right on the nose. And so maybe is it possible, Aaron, you could just read what you wrote and then. And then we can talk about it?

Yes, sir.

Read it like you're narrating, like a documentary or something, like in the cold tundra on a Sunday in Green Bay or whatever.

He's narrating A Michael Bay movie theater movie trailer.

But then you have to have explosions in the background and things like that.

We're gonna do all that in post. It'll be great.

Dear Carvana, I want to send this letter as a thank you. Thank you for treating your customers like a number and not a person. Thank you for creating an environment to drive customers back to real, real dealerships, sales departments, because nobody likes buying from a machine. Thank you for ignoring customers concerns about the vehicle that they purchased from you. Thank you for sending them to us to do repairs, because obviously you don't fix what you said sell. I mean, why would you want to provide a great experience to a customer that spends money with you? Thank you for creating a new way to buy cars that can, but not always, turns people back to the idea of buying a car from a dealership and not a vending machine. Yes, we are partly to blame for your existence, but you done messed it all up. So I'll be here with my team ready to fix the vehicles you sell to unsuspecting but trusting consumers. Sincerely, most service departments that have had to deal with the crap that you pull on people.

Give him a hand.

Very, very well written and diplomatic. And so.

What. What were some of the comments and responses you got from that? Oh.

You know, first of all, I mean, I never really expect for it to kind of take off like that. You know, I more or less wrote it out of frustration. Had a customer recently come in with a Silverado they purchased, and.

You know, when the. When the vehicle was dropped off to the customer, the check engine light was on, vehicle had mechanical problems, and.

The customer tried to pursue Carvana. Well, Carvana, basically it said, well, that's the reason why you have an extended warranty that you get with the vehicle, so take it somewhere else.

Wow.

So, I mean, it. You know, it's a silver rock extended warranty, which is hit or miss, but, you know, they. They did end up paying for the repairs, which is. Okay, that's. That's great. But.

You still bought a vehicle that you had to automatically almost turn around and take it to get repaired.

Yeah. Mia has described the Carvana extended warranty as a $3,500 paperweight.

Yeah, pretty much. At least from my experience.

She said that not much is covered.

No, that's not. They, you know, there was, you know, like, some of the extended warranties will cover, you know, some of the parts labor, stuff like that, but then they'll start cutting out. They could cut out tags, they could cut out shop supplies. They could cut out. You know, some of them will even have literature saying that we don't cover seals and gaskets. Well, if you have a powertrain extended warranty and you don't cover seals and gaskets, then what do you cover?

Literally what.

That was exactly Mia's point earlier. She said that it's a powertrain warranty, but it really does nothing.

Yeah. Because they say it's a powertrain extended warranty, but then it's like, but this doesn't cover oil leaks or seals or gas. I'm like, then what, what does it cover? Because that's like the number one, you know, problem of a failed powertrain is that.

So, so don't, don't you think, Aaron, that this brings up a bigger conversation? Because I like how you say in there that, you know, we're partially, we partially created Carvana, right?

Yes, absolutely.

So as an industry, we're not, we're not blame free on this. Our hands are dirty too. And we've, we've had our failures. But.

But I think for the most part, it does show that. I think our intentions were better right in the beginning.

Oh, definitely. I think that, I think that we as the industry.

Definitely, we definitely did create Carvana because, you know, it's kind of like Amazon. They, they saw a need and they filled it.

Yeah.

And look at what they've done. So if you, with the auto industry, if Carvana is filling that need, then what is it that, you know, we are doing to.

To try to be able to kind of cut Carvana out of it? But they're still feeling that need, and that's something that the auto industry is lacking at. They're, they're just not filling that specific need that every consumer out there is looking to, looking to do. And the dealers that are actually.

Filling that void, as far as, you know, the, the just buying online.

Stuff like that, that's where we really need to start.