Pre-Authorization vs Diagnosis -Which is Better?

Foreign.

Everybody, and welcome to your drive by. This is where we answer your questions. A little something to think about going into the weekend. I am Chris Collins and this is Christian.

Hello, everyone.

The number should you have a question is 8333, ask SDR. That's 8333 ask SDR. If we play your question and answer it if your question makes the show. Basically, yeah, you get a swag.

You can't get land on the cutting room floor and get swag.

New in the swag bag are parts.

Hold pens and shirts.

And before we go to today's question, I just want to let everybody know that our final episode of our three part series with our coaches, like the.

Coaches panel is what it was from Top Dog.

So we had him here trapped. We, we lured him in with the football game and then we trapped them and then we recorded three episodes and drained all the knowledge out of them.

Yes. Do you want to talk about the torture?

Clients now in the field are calling going, hey, they seem like they're not as smart. It's because we drained all of the knowledge out of them for you. And the final episode goes up Monday. So if you haven't been catching those, I would, I would go back and start because there's kind of a little madness to it. There's a, there's an order to it.

Yes.

But the final and last one is Monday with Hoagie Cliff Grant and some captivating stories. Great conversation. We had a lot of fun too.

It was easy.

Okay, let's go to today's question.

I have got a question about. I know you don't like asking for.

A diagnosis fee. You'd rather ask for a repair authorization. So, Mr. Customer, it's probably going to be like a radiator or ac compressor. The cost from that is probably going to be around $1500 for your vehicle. If it's less than that, great. If it's more than that, I'll give you a call, let you know. Okay. What if you don't know what, what if you don't know what the repair is and what if it's not a tow in vehicle but a. Hey, can you take a look at this? Well, while they're coming in for an oil change.

And the parts aren't available that day, they're two or three days out.

Some advice on that, I'd really appreciate it, Josh.

Thank you for the question. Couple things we've got to clarify. One is you said I don't like charging for diagnosis. Not true.

I do like charging for diagnosis, technician deserves it. In fact, we. We see diagnosis as its own. Its own type of labor in our training. Like, there's four types, right? There's diagnosis, there's maintenance, there's repair. Competitive and competitive. And so, you know, the thing with repair authorization is it's the gift that keeps on giving. Because for some reason, we have not figured out a way to explain this in a way that doesn't create more questions than answers. Because once you try this, it's so easy. You think like, oh, why didn't I do this the whole time? So when it comes to repair authorization, it doesn't matter if the car was towed in. It doesn't matter if it fell out of the sky, if it was driven in. Doesn't. None of that really matters. What we're talking about is we have this weird thing that we do in the industry where, like, we. We tell customers, like, hey, let me add that to the ro.

Customers have no idea what an RO is.

They also don't understand the word diag.

Yeah, diag. They don't understand when we put on an RO CND could not duplicate. They don't know any of that. That's us. That's the world we live in. But if you think about, like, the average customer right now, there's. We tend to think about the extremes. So there is. You know, I wrote Service in Seattle. There were a lot of Boeing engineers that knew everything about the cars, but they were still like. I ran into two of those a month, Right? So they're like. They're less than 10% of the customers really have any sort of technical knowledge. Know what technicians do, any of that. Like, most people just don't care. Most people want to get to and from work. That's it. Like, they want their car to start when they go out, and they wanted to get them to wherever they're going without thinking about it, without, you know, any sort of disruption to their daily routine. And for the most part, cars are pretty reliable. They take it for granted. Right? So we have this thing in our head about diagnosis. We have that our customers don't. They want it fixed. And we do this thing where we make it more complicated. So we're like, hey, we got to diagnose it. Then you got to be sitting. Sitting by your phone, waiting for my.

Call, knowing when I'm gonna be done.

Yeah. And also, I have no. I have no idea right now, because I'm not psychic. Whether you want to fix this car or not or if you're just. I don't know, trying to see what's going on. Like, wasting our time. Right? We don't know any of that as. As service advisors. So when a customer comes in and they have a problem, if you've been writing service for more than a year for the same brand. Like, for example, if I'm. When I was a service advisor, somebody came in with a Jetta and they said, I smell this, like, sweet smell inside the car. And then I go, is it when the heat is on? And they're like, maybe like, okay, I know that that's. The heater core is leaking. There was a recall for it. I mean, it's leaking, right? So now do I. How much. How much of my time in the customer's time do I want to waste right now?

None.

Okay, well, it's gonna be $150 for us to diagnose that. Now, what happens in the customer's mind when you say that one is they're like, oh, they're gonna fix it for $150.

That's right.

It's not getting fixed for 100. Heater Core was like a grand. It's not getting fixed for 150. We're just confusing people because of our odd crazy context about we don't see it from the customer's point of view, we see it from our point of view. And that is the worst recipe for having any sort of ongoing relationship with a customer where they see you as the only person they would ever go to. When I tell you that customers would pull in and they saw I wasn't there and they would leave, I'm not joking. I know that because the other advisors told me that constantly. We hate it when you're not here because people pull in, they find out not you're not here, and then they leave. Like, because they trusted me, because I told them the truth. I didn't confuse them. So customer comes in. If you've been an advisor for more than a year, you have a pretty good idea of the worst case scenario of things. And so this is all you're saying. You're not saying, hey, customer, it could be the heater core. I don't say that right there. I say, okay, I'm gonna give myself a thousand dollars to work with. I kind of have an idea what it might be, but we got to check it out. If it's less, it'll be less. If it's more, I'll give you a call before I do anything. That's it. Anything. Check engine light. What's the worst case scenario for a check engine light on a certain model. That's what the. That's what I'm quoting now.

The.

The second. The secondary benefit to this approach is, oh, I don't want to spend $1,000 on the car. I'm trading it in next week. Well, wouldn't I want to know that before they spend $150 on diagnosis?

Yes.

No. No.

I don't. I don't for the life of me understand why this is so confusing. It's so easy.

Feel like I'm getting fired up.

Up a little bit. I kind of like it.

I don't understand. Could you explain to me why people don't understand this and they get it wrong and then they mess it up and then it. They're like, I'm giving my. You need. You came in to fix a problem.

Just so happens we fix problems, but it's not free.

I want to save the technician as much of pulling the car in and out. Whatever. Second thing, Josh, who cares if you have the part or not? I don't understand how that's relative to anything. Hey, Christian, we checked it out. It is the. It is. What kind of. I initially thought I am psychic and I'm an expert on this.

Frankly, I'm the best service advisor you'll ever have. Let's just get that out of the way right now. I know you feel lucky on the other end of this phone. You're like, know that last guy that charged me for diagnosis confused me. You. You seem to like, you know, know what you're doing, actually have a little insight into things. But anyways, Christian, I know that's what you're thinking, but also, it is your heater core, and we got to order one. We don't have it, but it'll be here Thursday.

Okay, cool.

Can you walk to work?

No.

Okay, well, I'll come by and I'll pick you up and drive your work.

You do that for me?

No, but.

Yeah, that's what I would do. Well, thanks for the question, Josh. We haven't had that one in a long time. So I'm glad you.

You asked, like, with anything, though, don't you? But what I hear is. And also when I get asked about this is that if you want to find an exception to the rule, you can.

Yeah. It feels like when people ask these questions, it's a statement. It's not a question because you haven't tried it.

It reminds me a lot of the discussion of when this happens to both of us every once in a while is like, what do you do when it doesn't work? Is what it sounds like is what I kind of hear in. The best thing I'd say is, why don't you give it a shot the way it's supposed to be done? And if you're not happy, you don't have to ever do it again. But if you do it and it works, you're going to be. You're going to be super happy that you just cut through a lot of layers of the cake on getting customers cars fixed.

Is working on the leadership book today. That's almost done. By the way.

See all this gray hair?

I do.

Well, you've seen how hard we've been working on it. But you saw us working on it today.

I did.

One of the things that I wanted to add in before the pygmillion effect is I wanted to add in the placebo. Nocebo. And the point, because I was reading this book about that, that do you know, up until the 1900s, medicine.

Was placebo effect.

I did not know that.

There was no science to it. Like, it was like, oh, yeah, ginger root gets rid of a common cold. There was no science to that. Like, even when they say, like, drink orange juice, it's like, it affects like, 8% of cold. Like, it doesn't fix the colds to drink orange juice, but just gotta believe it. The. The Florida Orange Juice association certainly doesn't want you to know that. But.

There'S a placebo effect in things that if you think something's going to work, and I do this to people all the time, It's a magic trick in the sense that if I make somebody believe something, I can step back and then they make it happen because they believe it can happen. If you want to make the technician's life and the customer's life easier, you can. If you believe that's possible, then you can. You can make it happen. If you don't, then you won't. It's kind of up to you. In a sense, it's the placebo. The nocebo is like fatalism. Like the opposite. Like, I don't think this will work. And then, oddly, it doesn't work.

Yeah, but the right attitude is placebo effect, no placebo. Whatever it is, all you need is just to believe that it's possible. I want placebos. Whatever's gonna get me to believe in whatever I need to believe. Yeah.

And I can sell you snake oil and it would work. You'd be happy.

Yeah.

Because you. We as human. Like there's a bunch of things that go into this, but we need an excuse. We need permission. Basically, that placebo is giving us permission to get well. That's it. That's all it is. Okay, Josh, thank you so much for the question. Have a good weekend. Make sure you check out the final episode of the coaches from Top Dog on Monday on the big show. We'll see you next time 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 now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.