Savannah, a dealership service advisor, asks how to handle a manager who avoids responsibility and blames advisors when repairs take weeks. Chris shares a story about a customer named Homer and his Dodge Charger, and recommends telling customers about delays upfront instead of letting them wait in the dark.
Okay, let's. Can we hear the first question?
Hi, my name is Savannah. I'm a service advisor for a dealership. I have a question. I have a service manager who likes to blame everybody for everything else, but, you know, himself in aspects of. He is stating that as we need to handle customers that are calling in on our point, they're calling in weeks on weeks on weeks because their car hasn't gotten in the shop. And my manager is blaming us, saying that we're not keeping in contact with a customer at one point. How long can you keep saying the same thing to a customer before they're pissed because their car didn't get fixed? So I'm just saying how to handle that situation a little better on my end and see if I can point my other fellow advisors in the right direction. Thank you.
I have a lot of experience with this because I used to work for a manager that for some reason, like we would bring in 75 appointments every day. And then by one o' clock, you were calling everybody telling them that their car wasn't going to even see the shop.
We were booked out weeks. So people waited weeks for their appointment. And.
You know, you would call them and they would be like, well, why did, why did, why did I make an appointment two weeks ago if you're not going to get to my car? And as a human, you were like, that makes total sense. But this place is so mismanaged. That's how we do it. And then I get paid to call you and try to make you feel better about something that's terrible. Like, you know, what I learned to do is tell them up front.
I remember you saying that during the write up, you would tell him it's probably not going to go in. Or even when they made an appointment, were you doing that too?
The funniest thing. So you know Homer. Yeah. So he was telling me. So he's got this Dodge Charger and he was telling me that he took the. Because it had a. Some sort of light on. It wasn't the check engine light, it was something else. He took it to the dealer here locally. He took it to the dealer, left it there. And then they called him and said, we don't have a tech to work on this car. And he's like, okay, well, I'll leave it till tomorrow. And they go, no, we don't have a tech at all. And it like, was like, oh, I meant to tell you, we should call them. They need our help. They don't have a car to. They don't have a tech to check. He's like light.
Whatever light it is.
How uncomfortable is that called?
This is a dodge. Like it's. There's nothing complicated. You could check the codes with the laptop.
Like, it's not hard.
Like, they can't even do that.
No. And this is a dealership. And he's like, they're the dealer. He wants me to explain to that to him how this happens.
Hilarious.
Yeah, yeah.
Imagine being an adviser there and that poor guy.
And homer is just one of 30 calls that you're going to make telling him the same exact thing.
Yeah. So the question is, what do we do when we have a manager that doesn't have an internal locus of control, that doesn't assume responsibility for the job they're doing? Maybe a Christmas gift, all you could pitch in or I don't know. We have your number. I'll tell you what we will do. We have the number, right? We do. I will send a I am leader book to your manager on the house. The first part of that book is all about personal responsibility. If he will read a book, that would be something.
It's called locus of control. It's life changing. Your life changes once you stop blaming outside forces and you take responsibility for yourself. So we can do that. The second thing is.
I personally, just like with that other job that I had, I left and went, yeah, that's fair.
