Chris Collins and Christian discuss how a valet pickup and dropoff service boosted average repair orders and customer satisfaction scores across seven Infiniti dealers in Chicagoland. Valeted customers spent more per visit than those who drove in, and the program created unexpected benefits beyond the initial goal. Christian walks through a seven-step system starting with marketing the service and expanding reach into neighboring states.
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When Christian was a service director, he was really, really good at a couple of things. First of all, for the brand, he had the highest customer pay sales per ticket. Like the factory literally came in and tried to figure out what you were doing and didn't ask the right questions.
Because they always think it's something different. Right.
Yeah.
Than the system and the process, but also very cutting edge in his thought process of going to the customer, going after things and not sitting and waiting for it. And if you think about. So the brand was infinity, there weren't a ton of infinities in the marketplace.
So you had this mindset of, oh, I was going to go after it. And if. If you're. If you have a high sales per ticket, at some point, if you want to do more, you're going to have to figure out how to get more vehicles or more ros. Right.
That's right.
Because you kind of hit the point of diminishing return with your closing ratios. And in all that. And so you're very progressive in your thinking. And one of the things that, you know, you took on was valeting customers cars.
That's right.
The things that I would say is one, is that launching the system probably one of the best things for our business in terms of really the reach. And when you think about it, and this was in the Chicagoland area, and there was seven Infinity dealers in the area. And the one thing was, is that what we didn't want an excuse for someone not coming to us is them saying that they've got an Infinity dealer just down the road. So we fix that by saying, you don't have to go down the road. And the reality of our industry is that most people would rather go to the dentist than come and have their car serviced. So it was really an opportunity to differentiate ourselves and give a different product. The thing that I think was so amazing that we didn't expect, there was all these unintended byproducts. The first was that our O value was. Was higher on valet services than on traditional customers that came in.
So you guys think about that for a second. So the average sale on a customer that you valeted was higher than on a customer that drove in.
Yeah.
Don't let that get lost in this.
Yeah. Because I think that that's probably one of the biggest objections is that people are like, well, it costs too much money to do A or B or whatever it is. Right. But the return is always so much better.
I've got it down to essentially, as you're thinking about how to get as advisors to be the best possible advisor you can be for a valet service. I've kind of got this whole our system that we did in seven steps. The first one, pretty easy it is that you've got to appropriately market this thing. It's a service that you have available. If you're not telling your customers that you have valet service available, then you're going to be like, well, no one wants to valet their cars. So there's a little bit of an outreach that has to happen. Okay. And then setting the table for that, maybe some of the ins and outs. And one of the things Chris and I were talking about this previously is do not limit yourself in how far you would go to pick up a car. Do not look at it as the one off. Look at it as the long game.
One of the other stores that was part of the program, they would go out of state to pick up cars.
Yeah, we'd go to Indiana.
Yeah. And I think that that's brilliant. They also went to Wisconsin. So essentially, like all the neighboring states. Think about that. Like that they're so progressive that they would go anywhere basically to pick up a vehicle, which is cool. So the first thing is you gotta let everyone know that you have that service.
But we didn't start that way, though. You start small and then you kind of go out.
Yeah.
But you gain a lot of confidence when you start to see the results.
That's right.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving 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 to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
