How Many R.O. Should an Advisor Write? (Service Drive Revolution)

Coming up on today's show, we talk about how many ros should a service advisor write? We also answer a question from an up and coming service manager. And we ask our editor Michael to describe different parts on a car to make a bigger point. I'm Chris Collins, this is Christian Lafferty. And that's what's coming up on Service Drive Revolution.

I gotta keep my phone right there. Cause my little brother's in jail. Have you ever had somebody call you from jail?

No.

So this is a new experience for me.

Okay.

But they call you collect. But it's not collect like you're used to collect. Like where you can just say, yeah.

You have to go through a system.

Yeah. So they, they say there's a, you know, guest or whatever from whatever jail.

And then from the LA county jail.

It says if you'd like to accept this call. And then you hit one and then it says, okay, it's gonna be like, you know, 40 cents a minute plus a $7 connection charge. Plus of this, plus of that. Please enter your credit card. It doesn't save your credit card. So if he. And you don't know when he's going to call. Right. So if he randomly calls, you have to have your wallet and credit card ready to go and put it in or it times out and then you can't talk to him.

And then he doesn't get another chance at the phone for a while probably.

Right.

Holy cow.

So you have to watch. So we're watching. If he calls, you can hear my little brother in jail. I don't know if he'd want to be on speaker or not. It also tells you that they record it. So like if you're talking about anything shady.

Yeah.

There's somebody there listening.

Like I would assume people still try, like to speak in code in sorts.

What do you think jail is like?

It's like not my.

I'm not excited about restricting is the word that comes to mind. Like we were talking in a previous episode about quarantine. I feel like quarantine and jail are probably close to each other, except bars are involved in the jail thing.

I never felt during quarantine like I was in jail.

Well, I think this Canadian quarantine is closer to jail. Not in the Canadian quarantine.

Oh yeah, But I wouldn't do that.

Yeah, that's true.

No, I wouldn't do that.

But I do think that that's like jail.

I'd figure out a way around that. Or I'd walk through the woods, you know, from The. The state of Washington.

There's, like, there's ways. I have.

There's hundreds of miles of.

They can't guard everything.

There's no border patrol. Like, down on the Mexican border. Like you could fly a helicopter over. Yeah, like I could get in there. I'm not gonna do that. But I'm just saying I'm not sitting in a hotel room for 14 days. It's not gonna happen. I thought you meant, like, normal quarantine.

No, I meant. I meant the actual.

So you brought up a good point the other day. And we're gonna. We're going to prove this, okay, In a social experiment right here on the show. Barring I don't get a collect call from a jail in Oregon.

It'll make from. For great podcasting, though.

You were talking about how advisors talk to customers. Like they know about the car.

Yeah.

They talk about the part, the labor, the this, that. And customers are just like, I want the light to go off.

Yes, that's exactly what they're saying.

Turn my check engine light off if you replace the. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we have. We have an amazing crew team here, but for the most part, they don't come from the automotive industry. Right. So.

We'Re. We're gonna bring Michael on and we're going to ask him different things about a car to see if he knows. Now he's just a normal, you know, cool guy to hang out with. He's. He's edited a lot of our videos in the last couple years. So he's done the leadership training, the advisor. Like he is around the lingo. Also, it's funny, when some of our employees take their cars in for service, they always feel like they need to come back and report to us. Yeah, we hear terrible it is. What a pain in the ass it is and how terrible it is. And one of the dealerships that they go to. That's terrible. Actually has our online training.

That sucks.

But they're clearly not watching. Okay. So, Michael, can you come over so we can do this social experiment?

I would say that he probably has a better than average understanding of the business. When we look at our normal customer base.

Yes, I would agree. Better than average.

Hello. Here I am.

So just to recap, Christian is going to mention a part on a car, and then you're going to tell us what that part does, what purpose it serves, whatever you can imagine about the part, right?

Yeah. I'll give you my best guess.

And these things that I'm about to mention, I've heard personally service advisors telling customers that they need this thing without further explanation.

Yeah, it's like the customer would know.

Yes.

Yeah.

Michael.

Right.

The first part I would like you to describe is a CV boot.

What do you think a CV boot is?

A CV boot?

Yeah.

Okay, well, first I kind of need to know what the CV is, but I'm going to take a guess.

I want to say a CV boot is some sort of cap that goes on, that goes at the end of the cv. The CV being the long.

Like, tube that's coming out of the.

Like the radiator, I want to say. Okay, right. And that's where the CV boot, which is this rubber cap, you know, goes on there and stops the.

Gave him the answers before, so.

Stops the fumes. The fumes from coming out.

That's a hundred percent what it is.

Oh, yeah.

See, I didn't think you'd be good at this. Okay, what's the next one?

What?

Come on. It's a tube coming out of the radiator.

Yeah, that's what it is.

What's the next one?

I can't wait to see how this answer goes, by the way.

At some point I'd like to know what these things are.

Yeah, we'll get to that.

Okay, great.

You have to approve it first, obviously, and then we'll tell you what it is that you spend money on.

This CV boot's about $400.

Depends. I've seen some.

I mean, rubber is pretty expensive. It's.

Yeah, that's right. It's a product.

So you're assuming the boots made out of rubber?

Yeah, that's what I'm assuming. I'm pretty confident.

Not leather?

No, no, it's red. It's.

Michael?

Yeah.

Your next part I need you to explain to me that you need for your vehicle is a tipum.

A tip them.

A tipum in.

Yeah.

Oh, God. Okay.

Is he thinking about Vegas and a strip club or something?

What are you doing?

What was that?

I think he's trying to decide if I made this up or not.

Oh, is that.

It's a real part.

Okay, tip them. Tip them. Okay.

This is.

Like a. This is a bolt. It's like a rubber bolt. And it screws on the end. The tip. Screws on the tip. The end of the.

Of one of the bolts in the. The engine that's holding all the. The pistons together. You know that piece that. Where the pistons go down, it's holding that entire compartment. I don't know what it's called.

The cylinder wall.

Yeah. Yeah, it's holding that together. It's. It's.

It's holding the cylinder wall together.

The. The bolt itself is holding it together, and this tip is at the very end of it, keeping everything tight.

Once again, it's like you gave him the answer.

It is like. I don't know if he read that right out of an automotive journal or some sort of repair manual, but it's.

Impressive to use it in a sentence. They would say, I'm sorry, but the tip is loose.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Heard that before.

Now the last one, I think this is probably when he's gonna ace this, by the way.

I don't know what a tipum is.

I'll explain in a little bit. We'll get all three of them together. Right. So.

The last thing I need you to describe for me.

What is the knuckle?

Okay. What is the knuckle? The knuckle. The knuckle. I'm trying to think. I'm, like, picturing an engine in my brain. I'm trying to think of what part could be the knuckle.

Yeah.

Or actually, doesn't you have to be the engine?

Right.

Yeah.

Don't assume it's the engine.

Right. It's just the car.

He goes to the engine, though, regularly. Like, I think it's clear that Michael thinks part of the sunroof.

I think the engine is a pivotal part of the car. That's, you know, so is the sunroof. That's true. That's true. The knuckle. The knuckle. I want to say the knuckle has something.

No joke. We just missed the call.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

My ranting around has caused this.

Another night in jail.

Sorry, buddy.

Oh, that's rough. Anyways, back to the knuckle. The knuckle is. I want to say it has something to do with the door. Like, it's. It's like a piece of metal that's in the door. That is when you. You know, when you open the door, you, like, pull on the thing.

Activates the knuckle. The knuckle opens up the door and. And opens it up.

So it's part of the mechanism that makes the door open.

Yeah.

Once again. It's like he has a crystal ball.

Good at this. He's amazing.

You go. You pull the handle. It activates the knuckle. The knuckle pulls the pin out of the door, unlocks it. Open up the door.

Yeah, yeah. And how much. How much is a knuckle usually?

Oh, I can answer that.

They they usually go for about 450. But you know, if they give you a deal. Yeah, you could probably get it down to 350, 375.

They're knocking 100 bucks off just like you. A discounted knuckle.

Percent discount.

Yeah, it's. That's the.

Do care about the quality of the knuckle part?

I'd say so.

Could it just be any old knuckle? No, no.

You want like a name brand knuckle?

Would you ever put a used knuckle in?

Probably not.

You know, a lot of people actually had that happen. They use CV boots.

Yeah, it's crazy.

I think after a few years you got to replace the knuckle. I don't think they last very long.

No. Doors open and shut all the time.

Exactly.

Yeah. Okay.

Sometimes it gets stuck. And when the knuckle gets stuck, that's another hundred dollars.

Okay. So let's start at the top.

Okay.

CV boot stands for constant velocity boot. This is actually this thing that's at the end of your axle which plugs in to make your wheels turn. It's like this big nasty grease filled thing that keeps everything clean while the wheel is turning from the axle.

There's like a joint there, right, that. That holds the grease around.

Holds grease? Yeah.

So it has like a metal. It'll have like a metal fastener on each side. Yeah, it's just rubber. So if a rock hits it or anything, it starts to leak that grease out. So on Subarus, when I was a service advisor, CV boots were plentiful.

Yeah, in my day they cracked all the time. Did you have that happen? Yeah, where they just dry cracked.

They also just get hit by a rocker.

But I wasn't far off. It is made out of rubber, right?

Definitely made out of rubber. And it is a tip. Yeah, but it's the top of something. Right.

Connect to the radiator.

Now one that you didn't do so well with was the tipm, which I've heard this word used a lot in the last couple of weeks. Tip EM stands for totally Integrated power module. Now here's the funny thing is, is I don't care what TIPUM stands for. What it is, it's the fuse block. Like it's where all your fuses are. So instead of saying that, we say tip EM to the customer who has no idea what that means.

What does it stand for again? What's the acronym?

Totally integrated power module.

So you were close in the door.

Totally integrated.

The door is the knuckle.

Oh.

And then the knuckle is part of the front suspension, actually, where there could be rear on independent suspension, too. But this is where a lot of the suspension components in the front sit on the knuckle. On the knuckle they sit. And it kind of connects the suspension to the wheel area.

Oh, okay. Okay.

So I've seen used where.

Where exactly is the knuckle?

It's gonna be close. It's gonna be at the outpour positions, just behind the wheels.

Right behind the boot.

Actually. I would say it would be above the boot.

Above the boot.

Yep. It's more to. It's more to hold suspension, cradle suspension components in place.

Give Michael a hand, though.

That was pretty awesome.

Pretty funny. Well, pretty funny.

I tried my best.

You did good. I like it. Can you help me here? So Automotive News had an article. And how would you pronounce this, this writer's name?

Irvaksh Karkaria wrote an article in Automotive News talking about how last year's inconvenience of COVID.

Increased service satisfaction numbers. So service departments had higher customer satisfaction during the pandemic. And it's saying because of lower RO count, spending more time being more accommodating, picking up cars, all that. Right. All the stuff that we know isn't that funny?

Weird.

Weird. But hey, maybe our industry stepping up in a time of need.

Yeah, I would say so. A lot of lessons to be brought out of that article.

Brings me to the question of the day.

Okay.

How many ros should a service advisor write?

Well, I have a formula in my head. I feel like you go up to the advisor and you ask them, you say, okay, Chris, how many ROs do you think you can write a day?

25.

Okay, I'm going to divide that number by three. You can write eight ROs.

I love that. That's your formula. Is it always by 3? What if they say 12?

4. 4. 4's it. You're going to write 4, but we're going to have good quality.

Oh, my gosh. How good would those ros be? They'd be perfect.

It's so fun.

You know, you have the highest hours per ro. The best satisfaction.

It'd be amazing. Right?

So depending on the car line.

Yeah.

It's anywhere between 10 and 14.

Yeah. You could make a case at some are less than 10, but 10 to 14s.

Now, if you have a quick lube.

You'Re a moron.

Because you probably have your least talented advisors riding the most cars. And it's a chase to the bottom. They don't make enough in gross to cover their pay.

Right.

You can't keep them around. You have high. The turnover in quick lube techs after two years is something like 60%. It's out of control. And the quick lube advisors don't even pay for themselves.

It's a, it's a talk about broken systems.

That's broken systems and money losing opportunity. It is a money losing opportunity. So in our system, we like to spread the ros out amongst all the advisors, spend more time with each customer whether it's an oil change or not. Still pet the dog, get to know them, build trust. Think about it is that opportunity with the oil change is usually where we lose the retention and they never come back. Let's actually make that an experience that they enjoy. They feel like we care. They feel like they can trust us, we're their friend. And not just run them in and out like cattle.

Right?

Yep.

And it doesn't have to take any more time. You can still do it in 30, 45 minutes and do it the right way. But you can't do that if you got these poor kids riding 25 a day just stacked up and you're thinking, well, they're just oil changes. Yeah, look at all that opportunity going through your hands. Like literally these cars go through the quick lube, they're leaking oil, they need tires, their brakes are metal to metal.

They.

And nobody's saying anything. And I know a lot of you listening are like, nope, not in ours.

We.

It's happening.

Hogwash. It's happening everywhere. Hogwash. I wanted to say something else, but I don't want this to be an explicit show. This is a family show, right?

Always has been.

Clearly.

Speaking of families. So I was with my kid the other weekend and he was reading and he's like, can you give me a bookmark? And I just. Shame overcame me because he's 8 years old and he still thinks my name's Mark.

Pretty good.

Thanks.

It's funny.

So why do you think people think advisors can write too many? Why are we not focused on the experience and the end result, the average per ticket, the quality of the experience with the customer.

Well, I think that in general, most service departments or leaders of service departments, maybe even general managers, are thinking the same way. They're equating dollars to cars. And that is absolutely not how it should be. But they're thinking the more cars I get in, the more money I'll make.

It's exactly the opposite.

It is exactly the opposite. But their belief is that they Got to get more.

Here's the thing. If you can't have great satisfaction and a high average per ticket with less cars, by God, you're not gonna do with more cars. I don't. I don't know. Like, it doesn't even make sense. It doesn't make sense to you either. You're just not paying attention. Yeah.

The other thing that the, that the pandemic brought was, is like you were saying, with the way that we split.

Quick lube, the MIC brought the microchip vaccine.

Yeah, microchip. Johnson Johnson vaccine. Exactly. So we're happy to have that for a few days. But the thing that I noticed was, whether it was an oil change or an engine repair, those service centers were very happy to have that customer there. They finally, for the first time, saw both types of ROS as equals.

Yeah. Think about it. The advisors are behind plastic. They're, you know, it's less personal, but it was more personal.

Yeah. The customers were valued because the alternative.

Is that the store's closed and the customers had an appreciation for us that they probably didn't have. So the secret is.

Slow down your RO account. Have a realistic expectation. Don't run all your customers through a quick lube with your least talented techs and least talented advisors thinking that that's a recipe for. For success. I don't care who the manufacturer is that's lying to you about that. It doesn't work. You want to slow the process down, spread it out amongst the advisors, you're going to have higher average per tickets. You're going to have less comebacks because we're actually fixing it while they're there and not waiting for two weeks for the hose to pop or the tire to go or whatever. Right. So we're going to avoid comebacks and we're going to build trust, and customers are going to come back and our retention is going to go up. Slow it down. If we learned anything from this pandemic.