A short discussion between Chris Collins and Christian Lafferty about minimizing "comebacks" (customers returning for unresolved vehicle issues). Key points: establish a shop culture that treats comebacks as high-priority ("overreact" to them), view each comeback as an opportunity to build a loyal customer, and assign shared responsibility (advisors and technicians). Practical causes and fixes noted: roughly half of comebacks stem from vague or sloppy write-ups; many are small QC issues (stickers, fingerprints, seat position, radio presets) that advisors can prevent with a final quality check; proper tracking and coaching of technicians reduces recurrence.
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And then a culture there has to. Your culture has to be that you overreact when there's a comeback. You overreact by putting the sheet on there. You over react by telling everybody, the manager, the shop foreign, everybody knows, oh, we got to come back for Christian. He has a comeback. What's going on with that comeback? It goes to the front of the line. Parts knows get the part now like we're not. This isn't a two week if come maybe we'll put it on the stock. No, now like now everything is now it's in. How you approach that and how important it is will determine what your culture is. If you don't overreact and it's not a four alarm fire, then they're gonna keep happening.
That's right. It's got to be a big deal. Okay, I love that. So I approach this topic from the advisor standpoint. I love that you approached it from the technician standpoint.
So here's what I would like to say.
Yes.
You can't trust any of them.
Whether it's the tech or the advisory.
When it comes to comebacks. You can't.
Everyone's got to be involved and everyone's responsible for it. So what you just described is exactly how I start off. Every. Every comeback is. I don't know if you've ever heard me say this before, a gold nugget of crap.
Now you think back some hillbilly stuff totally. But you think back to like your five or six most loyal customers. How many of those started off as like a shaky situation that you fixed? Like your best customers. Don't they always come from crap?
For sure, always.
So anytime you get a comeback, it's an opportunity to get that lifelong, you know, go to your wedding kind of customer. And so if you approach your comebacks there first, then it's more important. I also have a belief that comebacks can almost, not 100% but almost completely be fixed by the advisor. And I'm going to give you two reasons for that. One is I would say that roughly half of the comebacks that exist happen because of lazy or sloppy write ups. We don't get good descriptions from the customers. We don't actually collect the information about what's going on. We say noise from rear of car and then a technician stuck trying to dissect what the heck noise from rear car means and they spend an hour and a half working on it. They get naturally and understandably frustrated and then it leads them into just trying to throw a part on a car. Just to make somebody happy which then becomes a comeback. So I think that the advisor plays an important role in minimizing comebacks for the shop. Now a technician, if they diagnose an evap gross leak as a gas cap, but they never pressure tested the system and then they find out that there was a canister leak, that's a comeback, that's technician related. However, I would also say that a service advisor can help the technician and cover their back by doing a really good quality QC step. So the advisor still has a lot of responsibility in that. So approach it is when it does happen, if you do it right, it's more positive than negative. The second thing is, is that you have to own your responsibility in a comeback when you're writing up the ticket. And then if we did a really good job of quality control where we look over a car before we let a customer know that it's done, we make sure the little stuff like most comebacks are little things. They're oil change stickers, their maintenance reminders, their fingerprints, the seat not being where it's supposed to be, the radio station not sounding the way it's supposed to sound, like those little things are completely avoidable. So you get that off the list and then the comeback that you have stands out a little bit more if it doesn't happen every day to your point, murder line, all that other stuff. So I think about it, as an advisor, your responsibility is to minimize the comebacks just as much as it is the technician's responsibility.
It's great.
So that's how I, I kind of thought about comebacks. But man, you gotta, you gotta approach it is that that's you're building a lifelong customer if you fix their problem. Yeah.
I would say one thing in closing too is like the, the.
The way you approach this and what you accept is going to determine the outcome. Right. So if you have an advisor can go get the tech in the shop, bring them up to the drive and they can look at it in the drive without creating an rf like all, without the red sheet, all that it all matters.
And I also would say that I've seen more times than not when you start tracking comebacks and you start having real heart to heart conversations that if you coach the technicians, they do get better. Like they, they can develop an attention to detail, they can get better, but only in an environment where it's important.
Thanks so much for watching this clip.
Of Service Driver 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 offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
