How To Sell More Service WITHOUT Annoying Customers

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Service drive revolution and your Friday drive by, where we answer your questions. Now, do me a favor while I pour myself a little bit of tequila here, Open up your phone to notes or grab a pencil or pen and write down this phone number. 8333, ask SDR. 8333 ask SDR. That's the number you want to call if you have a question.

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I am a service manager that just recently inherited a store a few months ago, and I was discussing with one of my service advisors about the fact that his penetration of sales of preventative maintenance was considerably lower than the other advisors I have in the store. So we were having a conversation, and during the conversation, I, you know, kind of questioned him, why do you think your preventative maintenance penetration is much lower than everyone else? And he looked at me and he said, I am afraid to sell preventative maintenance to customers because I'm afraid that they're going to give me bad CSI scores for my surveys.

Okay, Ron. So I.

Need to kind of establish just the basic architecture of how a service department works, and then, then we'll talk about the individual advisor after that. So the thing that we want to understand is in, in the good old days, way back when.

The customers pulled right in the shop and they talked directly to the technician, and that became ineffective for a couple of reasons. One is the technicians weren't efficient because, you know, they're helping customers and working on cars and then also just, you know, the paperwork, communication parts, you know, all of the aspects that.

Have to be handled, all the details that have to be handled. It wasn't efficient for the technician to be doing that. So we added a layer of expense called service advisors. And a service advisor's role was to improve communication to the customer, to advise, recommend on how the customer can keep themselves in a safe and dependable vehicle in the long run.

Right.

And communicate with the technician, coordinate paperwork, accounting, all of those things to keep the technicians in the back doing the thing that that makes us money, which is turn hours. So that layer of expense, that layer of personnel, was to improve the process. So I always kind of bring up this little reminder that if the customer could pull right in the shop and deal directly with the tech and it would be better than why do we have service advisors? What are they there for? Right. So I just, I, I want to set that basic frame or basic understanding before we get to the local part, which is your individual advisor. So an advisor that, that feels like, oh, I'm not going to, I'm not going to save customers money in the long run. I'm not going to recommend something because I'm afraid that I'm going to get a negative CSI.

Is nuts in a sense really, because the service advisor doesn't really believe in what they're doing. Two there they probably are not very good at petting the dog and making friends with customers and building trust. And so service advisor's role is to build trust and make friends with the customers, get to know them on a personal level, become a friend and not just an acquaintance that's doing a transaction in a sense. And I, I always say, you guys have heard me say this a bunch of times, if you wouldn't recommend it to your mom, don't sell it. But if you have a service advisor that doesn't believe that alignment save tires or that, you know, power steering eventually would prevent the need for a power steering rack for $2,000 or the brake fluid doesn't break down or, you know, then they probably should be working for NASA and not for us because they clearly understand something that we don't understand. So a service advisor's role is to keep the customers in a safe and dependable vehicle. And it's proven that preventative maintenance, I think the stats by the Car Care Council, we talk about this in our advisor training is like.

It'S, you can look it up on Google, but whatever it is, for every dollar you spend on maintenance, it's pretty dramatic what, what you save and repairs in the long run. So I think your advisor just needs to understand that if they're making friends with customers and building rapport and honestly suggesting things that customers need and they can't pull that off without getting a negative csi, they probably aren't meant for the service drive because it's pretty easy. Customers expect to maintain their cars. It's, you know, if we're overselling or we don't know how to make friends or deliver things in a way that people don't hate us, then yeah, maybe, but.

You know, that's, that's a pretty tough situation to be in that we're allowing that in the drive. Honestly.

So.

You know, maybe give them some training on maintenance and have them spend some time in the shop to understand how the fluids break down and have, have a technician explain the benefits to them maybe also might help. But.

That'S why advisors are there. I mean the, the job is called service advisor. That's the whole purpose of it. So that's my thoughts on it. Thanks for the question.

Next one, I wanted to know how you guys felt about the manufacturer surveys and how in depth they're getting nowadays. For instance, Nissan just came out with a question. Do you feel like.

The advisor was trying to upsell you on something that wasn't needed? Or, or was the vehicle fixed right the first time? And especially now during COVID.

Trying to get parts and people happen to come back two or three different times and the questions that they're asking about was your car fixed right the first time? How do you guys feel about that? And kind of how.

You guys suggest getting around that with the customer and trying to overcome that. I'm sorry, you gotta come back for a second or third time.

Cool. Thanks for the question, Christian. That's a good one. I would like to point out that my trusty sidekick Christian is not here because he's actually out in the field. Think about this for a second, Christian. In the sense that what we're saying is the manufacturer is asking the customer how they felt. And so let's separate ourselves from the idea of we're selling alignments, we're selling water pumps, we're selling brakes, what, you know, whatever it is. And let's think about what we've really been in the business for a long time of doing, which is managing feelings. And that that question shouldn't scare us in the sense that if we're really genuinely taking care of our customers, connecting with them on a deeper level and then recommending what they actually need and in an empathetic way that isn't pushy. They're not going to feel like we're trying to sell them something they didn't need. Right. The only time they're going to feel that is if we don't connect. If we're running them through like a number. If we have Service Advisors writing 25 ROs and barely any time to touch anybody, make friends with them, let alone follow up. Yeah, customers feelings are going to be on the negative side on just about everything. And so I would just think about your process in the sense of don't think about it. As far as the, you know, we're, we're writing them up, we're selling them this or whatever. But think, like, how would I feel if I came in and this happened and I was told this or I was greeted this way? And think about it from the context of feelings. And that's really what we've always been in the business of. But we kind of take it for granted because in the service department, they aren't buying something that is aspirational. Most of the time, they're buying something they need, right? Customer comes in on the hook on a tow truck, they have to fix it, or they're, you know, or they're going to take it to a junkyard. So understand that.

When they come in for maintenance, they kind of have to maintain it, right? When they come in for breaks, diagnosis, anything else, they kind of have to. And so we, we have a captive audience in that sense. And I think that has caused us over the years to take for granted the fact that we're actually in the business of managing expectations, feelings, emotions, and we probably, as an industry could do a better job there. So maybe go through your process or have your wife go through the process and give. Give you, you know, unbiased opinion of how different things in the steps made you feel or made them feel and manage feelings. But that's probably, at the end of the day, a good question. Not. Not a bad one, in my, in my opinion. And then you ask the question about how do we manage fixed, right?

I think customers understand that there's issues with parts, and once again, we're managing expectations and feelings. And so I've seen more than a couple times in my career that we totaled the customer's car and the advisor still got perfect CSI because of the relationship the advisor had with the customer. And that just, to me is proof that if the advisor has equity and has built trust over time, and our processes support that, it's real easy to say, hey, you know, Nissan's going to reach out to you and they're going to ask you if this was fixed. Right. Fixed right means we had the part, we don't have the part, so we don't have the opportunity to fix it. Right? So please answer the question accordingly. And if we have any sort of equity, they're going to understand that and we can, we can educate them in that way. But when we're not managing emotions and we don't have equity and trust, then we're leaving those sort of things to chance. And I personally hate to leave CSI to chance. I want to do everything I can in the process to endear the customer to us so we have equity and they like us. Versus it's just an exchange of, you know, a commodity for money. And you don't want to be in that situation. So take a look at your, your processes and just understand the game you're in is managing feelings, not selling an oil change. And if you do that, you'll, you know, you'll approach it a little bit different. Great question. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody for that. Remember, the number is 8333, ask SDR if you have a question and we'll see you again real soon on service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. 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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.