How to Fairly Dispatch Work Between Hungry Techs

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So we have two technicians that are very efficient and would like all of the work. One of the technician does like the more gravier work, of course, and this other technician feels that's unfair. However, efficiency wise, we're talking 160 to 200 hours in a two week pay period. So each and every, you know, I had gotten a large fight last week regarding this. So I've tried to find different solutions as far as DMS dispatching goes. However, I could just see, you know, limiting the amount, like limiting the work that they can pull or the work that they're working on. However, I just feel a technician will, you know, pull a vehicle and then put the car on hold and then pull the next vehicle or, you know, if I went up on an up system. As far as, you know, if this technician gets the first car when he first showed up and the second one gets the second car because he showed up later, I just foresee that, you know, they would look at the appointments and say, you know, pretty much say they're working on a car to avoid that car. So I'm trying to find a good solution here, make the technicians happy.

It's a great question. Thank you for calling. The first thing I think to kind of keep in mind is of the problems that you can have. This is one that I would want. Yeah, the idea that you got two technicians trying to flag hours and wanting more work or wanting, you know, it's like in football, you, the best receivers are the ones on the sideline yelling they want the ball, right?

Yep.

Like they always want the ball. And so.

It'S probably not comfortable and it's not easy, but when people are trying to perform, they're affected and they care. It's way better than having technicians that are indifferent about how many hours they flag in the work and that sort of thing. So that being said, just my personal.

Opinion and I, I like to set things up. Christian and I have talked about this before. Whether it's with salespeople or anything. I set things up where there's no, there's no need for me to get involved. That's my ideal goal.

As automatic as possible.

There's no. I remember when I was a general manager and there Were always the, these problems about how a split deal or whatever. And.

You know, I got it to the point where all that stuff was very clear how it was handled and I, I never had to make a decision. Yep, it was, it was written out and it was very clear.

So every time you argued or had to deal with an issue about a split deal, you lost two other deals. I think that's what I always thought. Yeah, because you're putting a lot.

It's also just a waste of time. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. So I personally like digital dispatching.

And I cap them at two and then anything over two that they have open, they have to come to you. And then I point out.

So one of the things that's happening here is we're not managing perception, we're allowing perception to be created.

In the heat of battle. So say, for example, you write up 15 customers today as a service advisor. So I'm going to abstract it to an analogy about a service. Say you write up 15 customers and one of the customers is just nuts. They're nuts, they're crazy, they yell, they're rude to you or whatever. Which customer do you remember at the end of the day?

That one.

Okay. And then how many advisors go? This place that I work, Their customers are crazy.

Yeah, one. One out of 15.

Yeah, but now the other 14 were completely normal and nice and you know, whatever. But we remember the crazy one. So the technicians remember the difficult warranty job or the one that they lost time on or what, you know, whatever it is. And so what we have to do is we have to manage perception in the sense that we have to point out.

And get ahead of it. Point out that it's over a 30 day period or a 90 day period. It all works itself out in the average. So you're going to have days where it's warranty and you're struggling and then you're going to have other days where it just all lines up and everything hits. And what we're talking about is what happens over a 12 month period? Did we make more this year than we made last year? Not the emotions in the moment. And so a lot of times when you change a pay plan or you change a bonus thing, advisors or technicians perceive, perceive they made less and they don't even know they're, they don't even understand or look at their paycheck in the right way. And so you, you want to get ahead of that. It's almost like, you know, propaganda in a sense is you want to talk about how we're making more than we did last year. You want to talk about the, the bigger timeline, not the moment. And you want to, you know, continually kind of reiterate that with them. And, you know, the, the other thing too. Like, I remember, I remember when I was really young, the other advisors, so there were eight of us. The other advisors.

Believed, they literally believed that the reason why my numbers and my hours, pero, were so high was because I was avoiding oil changes. Super insulting to me because I, I knew all the oil changes on new cars that I wrote that they all disappeared, right? And I always thought about those cars as future. Like I was building my clientele. And I also kind of at an early age, I don't know why, but instinctively knew that the equity that I had with customers, if I took really good care of them on a 1995 oil change, after two or three of those, they were going to need something. And I would point out, hey, you know, you don't need anything. And I would point, you know, make a big deal out of the fact that they were just standing out. And this was easy because it's equity. I'm building equity and I'm building a relationship. So when it came time that they needed a 30k or whatever, you know, I'm dating myself in the, in the verbiage, but I had equity. So I always saw those customers as building my clientele. And they did an audit. So they did this big audit and the, Our manager made it into this thing like I was going to be. I was going to be caught. I was going to be found out, right? And they talked about or whatever, and then it absolutely went quiet and nobody said anything about it. And I remember I finally asked, I.

Bet I know what happened.

What do you think happened?

I bet you wrote more oil changes than everybody else.

And so there was no big, There was no big announcement. There was no in. In, you know, to, to, to the moronic manager that I worked for. You would have thought that he would have stepped up and said, hey, actually, Chris has written more oil, more low mileage oil changes than anybody and still has high. Like, I was the example that you wanted to have as a, as a leader to go, no, do it this way. But instead, because of, you know, some of the advisors were his buddies and he'd worked with them for a long time in the whole thing. He didn't have the heart to. Or the, I don't know, courage or whatever it is to tell him. Tell everybody the truth. In a, In a sense, yeah.

Loyalty the low performer will get many a manager fired.

Yeah. Which he did get fired.

Shocker.

Yeah. But I just. I know from the. Perception and reality are always two different things. And so what you want to do is, you know, if you do an audit, and this has happened to me many times with technicians, it ends up that the amount of warranty and CP that they write is probably more similar than different.

This happens a lot when you have teams and that people say, oh, the team leader is keeping everything for himself. Most of the time that's not the case. Most of the time being a team leader is. Is hard. And people barely keep anything for themselves. But perception is that the grass is always greener on the other side, that everybody else isn't working as hard as me and. And poor me. I'm carrying this cross every day through the middle of the shop. And so you just gotta get ahead of that in a positive way with real facts and real information. But to me, the, the most effective thing is the boogeyman. The computer is doing it, because that could never be unfair.

Yeah. It doesn't have feelings towards one tech or another.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's good.

And it's a. It's an abstraction. It's. It's not a person. And so it's hard to. It's hard to get mad at.

Yeah. I like the. That's a. You bring up a really good point. Because I've probably done this five times in my career where I've had the technicians say that something's not fair, they're not getting dispatched too fairly. And almost every single time, the one that's complaining is the one that got the most favorable stuff.

Yeah.

Because they went no place, usually a ton of times, and they end up getting the tickets. And like this guy was saying.

And it's just perception.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then what happens when you point it out?

They don't say a word.

Yeah. The fee. Because you can't argue with the fact.

But they bring it up again in four or five months. They come back to it at the end of the day. So.

And once I would just go back to the. The first thing I said, I'd rather have that problem than a lot of other things.

Right.

Because they got two people, they care and they. They're. They're trying to find an edge.

Yeah. Most places would kill to have two people that are flagging between 160 and 200 hours.

Yeah.

Two weeks. That's really, really good. I wrote down just a couple of little things. Resources got to run like, you Got to give them an opportunity to make it. Inspections are the great equalizer. At the end of the day, even if you get a ticket that isn't, you know, maybe looks bad on the front, it any ticket can turn into an eight or nine hour job. So I wrote that down and then this is something that you've told me many times and it reminds me a little bit of this. Don't negotiate with a bulldog.

Because sometimes the people that are bringing it to your attention are the ones that are actually getting treated better than they think they are. Almost all the cases. That's what it is.

Great question. I loved it. Wonderful question. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't, you know, them fighting, there's, you know, I would try somehow to get. They're probably more similar than they are different, which is why they're fighting. So I try to figure out a way to bridge that because they're probably both great guys and they're just chasing, they're in their heads.

Yeah.

What did, what have you been saying lately? You're your own worst enemy. Basically, the enemy is you. How did you say it?

I think the obstacle is you at the end of the day. I think that's what I said. So true.

Thank you. We'll see everybody next time on Service Drive Revolution.

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