Chris Collins and Christian Lafferty explain how to stop customers complaining about service delays. Tell them upfront what will slow things down, set expectations at the write-up, and let them pick how often they want updates. Frame it early and most complaints disappear.
Foreign.
Service.
Drive revolution. Drive by. This is where we answer your questions. The number should you have a question, should there be something holding you back that you just need an answer to? Is 8333 Ask SDR. That's 8333 Ask SDR. And Christian and I will do our very best to try to help you.
Through that. Should mention that if we answer your question on the big show, we send out a pretty nice little swag bag rewards. Because you know, the thing that I've always thought is, and I know this to be true.
If you have a question, it's probably burning somebody else's mind too. So you're doing people a favor by asking the question.
They just might have forgot the number.
Let's go to today's question.
I keep in contact with my customers daily or every other day, depending on hurdles of parts warranty, authorization, etc. Most frequent comment I'm getting is that the process takes too long going through the authorization hurdles, parts delays, and then the work. How do you address that with the customer at the time they pick up their car?
Is it Brian with an I or why?
Why for sure, you could tell by the sound of his voice.
Brian, let me tell you, this question is so, so easy to answer and I appreciate you asking it.
The only thing you have to do is not wait till the end.
It's all in the frame up front. Like you can tell customers up front. Like we, we have a backlog in parts. We are short technique. Like, you know, whatever it is, if you tell them up front and they can plan for it, they will understand. If you pet the dog and you make friends and you tell them the truth up front, frame them on what realistically is about to happen. You don't have to tell them at the end because they already know. But if you wait until the end, it's too late. But you're begging for forgiveness instead of taking control of the situation. Yeah, I remember, you know, way back when, when I was a service advisor, this dealership that I worked in was such a hot mess.
Is this the one where they threw your arrows on the street?
The dispatcher did throw my arrows in the street, by the way. He was a drunk. The dispatcher.
He had Irish coffee every day.
Yeah, he had. He made coffee, but had a thermos that had whiskey in it.
Also, the service manager smoked a lot of weed and.
Left early.
And came in late.
So he reeked of ambition.
I used to clean his demo when I was a lot lizard.
I think we all did that. There's probably a couple people listening to this that were porters with me because I know they listen and they know what I'm talking about. Anyways.
Were you, were you telling a story there?
I forgot my point.
Oh, okay. Well, let me pick up the ball and run. So the other thing, one clearly tell the truth from the, from the onset. The other thing, I wonder if this might help you out a little bit, Brian, is I heard you say that you talk to your customers either every day or every other day. Now if it's a situation where you know that it's going to be an extended thing with parts or authorizations or whatever, what I might do is I might frame that and let the customer choose the interval on contact. So if I talk to Chris and.
Way less than you think.
Yeah. So the one thing that you might, might find is that they want to contact every three days instead of every two. But you asking them allows you to understand what their expectations are. And then it, to me, I think that CSI in general isn't it about exceeding expectations. Right. So what I want to do is I want to set it up and if they say call me every two days, well, I might call every day in 22 hours. I might just kind of sneak that up just a little bit. So I'm calling a little bit before they expect and, and make sure that you're really good about staying in that contact and then you want to establish the next follow up time. So I would over communicate about the communication, if that makes sense. So tell the truth up front and then let the customer have a vote in the amount of time that needs to be spent following up. And to Chris's point, you might find that you have to spend less time, but you make the customer really happy because you asked them about how much they wanted to be communicated with.
I remember the story I wanted to tell.
Okay, let's do that.
So in this service department there was a hot mess. We would write up, there were like eight of us. We would write up customers all day. We would put the ROS into dispatch and about 2 o' clock you could tell on the wall what wasn't gonna get in. The dispatcher would put like a mark of what he didn't think was gonna get in. And then you had to call all those customers and tell them their car wasn't gonna get in. And you would call a customer at 2 or 3 o' clock and you'd say, hey, your car isn't gonna make it in today. And what Would they say? So they dropped the car off at 7 or 7:30 or 8 and now it's 2 o' clock and you're gonna tell them their car isn't gonna get in? What are they gonna say?
How am I gonna get home?
No, they say, I made my appointment two weeks ago and now you're telling me my car isn't gonna get looked at today. And so what I learned, and it worked really well, is that time of write up. I would tell them, okay, we're a little shorthanded on text right now and so we aren't getting to every car every day. There's a good chance the car won't make it in today. It'll be in line, but it won't make it in today. You might want to plan for that. And I'll let you know later in the afternoon and solve all my problems.
Yeah, because you told them up front they weren't stuck in alerts, told them.
The truth and if they had an issue or they wanted to complain, I just absorbed it. Yeah, we're a hot mess. We don't know what we're doing. My manager's smoking weed and the owner doesn't care. So you know, I didn't say that.
But.
Tell them up front, tell them the truth. Yeah, that's it.
The truth will set you free.
Thanks for the question, Brian. We will see you next time on Surface. Drive Revolution. That's pretty good. 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. 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.
