Chris Collins, Mia, and Christian argue that raising labor rates reduces customer declines by letting shops hire advisors who can call customers early and clearly explain recommended repairs. Most declines aren't about price. Customers often say nobody told them about the work, or advisors downplayed safety issues.
Okay, let's talk about raise your labor rate, get less declines. What do you think I mean by that, Mia?
If you raise your prices.
You could have less declines. Why do you think that is?
I think that that.
Means it kind of goes hand in hand with work smarter, not harder kind of a thing, which, to me, people equate quality with high dollar amount or higher dollar amounts. Right. So something that is more expensive, people are automatically going to assume that it's better quality. Right. So if you have a higher labor rate, people are going to assume you do better work, which I would hope you do. And thus you're probably attracting customers that know the investment that they need to make and are willing to spend the money.
It's not what I mean at all.
No. Well, I'm curious.
So if you go into a service department and you have a lot of declines, and I ask the service advisors, why are customers declining 100% of the time, what is the answer?
They're not asking for the sale.
No, they're not telling you that. I'm going to give you a hint.
It's price.
Oh, the advisors.
The advisors don't say the customers don't do it because of the price, because.
They couldn't afford it. Yeah. Yeah, gotcha.
So the advisors say that.
Yeah.
But now if I go and call 10 customers that declined work.
What are the customers going to say?
Nobody told me that.
Yeah, so this came up because Christian just experienced this, and same thing, you call the customers, you're like, hey, I see. Me and you were in here last week and we recommended breaks, and we're just trying to get better, to understand what's going on.
Weird that somebody would decline breaks you're okay with. Sliding into a school bus and killing a bunch of kids.
Just was on my mind. I just wondered, like, Mia, you're okay. Like you, somebody's walking in a crosswalk and you just going to plow them over and kill them? What if that's a mother of 12 kids?
You declined your brakes.
Why am I laughing at that?
You were the Jeffrey Dahmer only killed, like, eight people.
Your car was. Your car was here. We could have done it. You left it here all day.
This is easy.
We're easy. Now you're driving around with faulty brakes. You don't have to make an appointment or go somewhere else and then just doesn't. You seem like a smart person. It doesn't make sense to me.
Would you let me know the route you drive to work? Because I want to avoid those streets at all.
Costs, you're a murderer. You're gonna consider.
But you, so you, you, you know, you call and you, you.
You have this idea in your head that, oh, it's our price. You just, you just automatically as a manager default to, oh, it's our price. You just think that, right? Nobody ever says price. They say, yeah, when I showed up to pick up the car, they told me I needed brakes. Or here's the one that, that. And I don't know if you experienced this, but I've experienced this numerous times and I literally have to go for a walk just to, just to comprehend and not overreact, not try to be funny, you know, but the customers will say, what? I need breaks.
That is the worst.
The advisor just put it on the paperwork and closed it out. Or the tech put it in there and the advisor just, somebody closed it out. Customer was never told. And here we're thinking that it's about price. And so maybe the idea is raise your labor rate. Get your effective labor rate up to where you can afford to have enough advisors that have enough time to call the customers. Stop having your advisors write 25 a day, slow it down. Actually, you know, have an effective labor rate that isn't from 1984, you know.
And run a healthy business that we're actually calling customers and we're calling them. We have the best chance of getting the work or.
Doing the job when we call them early in the day, telling them at 3 o' clock or 4 o' clock they're on their way to pick it up or it's not effective. And so that's the thing is raise your labor rate and get less declines. It's about getting the system dialed in to where we're communicating with the customers and then building trust. That's, you know, the other equation here is that they have to trust and like us, but in a lot of situations, we get the drive fixed, we get the trust thing fixed, we're petting the dog and it's the text in the back end and that communication, which most of it falls on the advisors, but the techs are only going to recommend things and, you know, run it up to the advisor if they believe they're going to call and sell it too. So it's a trust system between the text and the advisors.
But, and a lot of times I feel like advisors kind of set themselves up for failure because before they even call or you know, they get recommendations and they immediately shut themselves down by saying like, well, this customer is not going to buy it. Anyways, I might as well. Like, there's no point in calling.
That's not your job. Your job is to tell them what's.
The worst thing they can do. Say no. Like you're not going to get fired.
Like customers closing is the same whether you tell them or not.
Exactly.
I never looked at it like that when I was an advisor. I just looked at it like I was telling them the truth.
Yeah. It was my responsibility to exchange the information with them. I think that that's a big. Another one that I think is horrible. And it's not as bad as the customer not knowing at all.
This is a segue to a joke.
No. So this is actually really a thought out comment. Believe it or not. I know. Everyone ready? Ready.
Yeah.
Good stuff. I love her. It's so fun to have her around. So is when we call the customers on the RO and they decline brakes, which like, let's say the brakes are almost metal to metal. And the advisor's worried about telling the customer bad news. So they're like, they told me I should do it next time and it'll be like, clearly bad. Like tires are bald, brakes are completely worn out. And the advisor said I should do it next time because they don't want to give them the bad news there.
It's so disrespectful to the customer's time.
It's not fair.
People don't have time. Like people are picking up their kids. It's. Well, pre Covid soccer practice, whatever. Like they don't have time. Like the. There's a lot of situations when I would overpay for something just not to have to sit there for two hours again. Me too. Yeah.
That's insane to me that. Yeah. It's like almost the opposite of where you're overselling something that's not quite necessary. It's like almost just as bad, but it's on the other side.
I would pay four times what I paid for my last colonoscopy to never have to do it again.
It's a horrible experience.
Why do I laugh at your jokes but you refuse to laugh at mine?
That's not true. I've laughed at plenty of them.
That was funny.
I would overpay for my colonoscopy. That's funny.
No, that's true.
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