Q & A | Service Advisor Customer Communication

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Welcome to your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your questions. I'm Chris Collins and this is Chris John.

Hello, everyone.

The number, should you have a question is 8333, ask SDR. That's 8333, ask SDR. If we play your question on the big show, we will send you a swag bag that usually includes a T shirt, a hat, a coffee mug, a.

Notebook, bar of soap, bar of soap, sdr. Soap.

Is this a drop the soap joke?

You know what was funny is that I was thinking about this. I have my. A friend of mine, his birthday is coming up and I just struggle with this. Like, you know, what do you get for the guy that has everything?

And then it dawned on me. Penicillin.

How did you. I thought.

I thought there's no way that he has a drop the soap joke on tap. And you did it. And yet you just went into something else.

It's funny how that works.

That's funny. That's great. Okay, let's go to today's question.

I'm having a little bit of a struggle with the fixed operations director who oversees multiple dealerships in this dealer group.

They made a change there about a year ago where they pay the technicians on closed repair orders, not booked time.

They believe that this decision was to make technicians write their stories better and stay on the advisors to get these ros closed faster so that they can get paid. However, I've never done it this way and I was kind of shocked to find out when I started at this group that that's how it's done. I strongly believe that the technicians should be paid when they finish their part of the job and the advisor should be paid when they finish their part of the job. So I was calling to get some insight on this and see what you guys thought about it. If you've seen it done either way or both ways before at other places and what you find to be more successful in retaining our advisors and technicians. Thank you very much.

Yeah, so we've seen it both ways. If we're, if we're talking about technicians and morale, it clearly is better for morale the closer to when they do the work that they get to book the time and then get paid. Because if, like, let's just say a warranty RO is pending or a customer doesn't pick up a vehicle for a while, that's has very little to do with what the technician is there for. And so that can be a discrepancy in, in that way. On the flip side of that, you Will get better stories and more accountability.

Especially on the warranty side. And also in some states, and you're in one of those states, it can get difficult to correct time on a technician. So you like for example, with comebacks, back flagging. There's just a lot of issues with, with the way that certain states make you pay technicians. You're, you never have to take it back if you never gave it.

That's right. That's funny.

Right. So you're never back flagging a warranty.

Issue if their story isn't there or they, you know, they code, you know, they gave the wrong information. It depends on who you have booking out the ros and coding warrants and all that too. But you, you avoid that part of it. That can be a labor issue also. And so I, I would just say that to me.

In different scenarios there's different ways to do this. And depending on the state you're in and the issues that you came into and you're trying to fix, it can be effective to pay them on the closed. I would say that I don't remember ever making that flip, but I know people that have.

For the most part, I just.

Move warranty into the shop and make them interact with each other. Kind of like I make.

Yeah.

A little face to face or kind of sign off on it before.

It'S close. You know, it's closed to the warranty schedule. So I guess I would do it a different way. I think we're probably similar in that. Right?

Yeah.

So pay quicker.

Yeah. So I always want to get the tech flagged and paid when the job's done and I'm totally okay with that. And then on the backside, you know, advisor gets paid when the RO is closed and everything like that. Now this to me one is I've always done it the way that, that you know, like we were talking about where the tech gets paid like that. However, I understand.

Yeah.

Why someone would do this. And it's a really classic case of fixing the symptom, not the cause. So why do you think someone does this?

Well, because they probably came into a mess.

Yeah. So work in process is crazy. Warranty, chargebacks, all that other stuff. So they do this thing, they try to fix the cause by fixing the symptom and it forces it, but it doesn't build goodwill or morale. And all those things that you said.

But really hurts a tech if like they're, they miss hours on a pay period. Like they have a big job, they've worked on that for two days and now it isn't closed out and they don't get paid on.

That's right. So, so then you can flip the other way where then a tech will purposely hold a job back, right. And not finish it and then claim it on a Monday when they did. And then like, so the hit like a guarantee, like California has that. So they hit the guarantee on Friday where they might have booked 15 hours in the week. And then the next week they have a 70 hour week, but they really only did 80 hours between the two weeks. So it's like you're paying 110 hours instead of paying 80. So you got to be really careful. Like there's a, there's a world where that becomes a sword fight that nobody wins. And at the end of the day it's like, you know, I, again, I feel, I feel for Joe because he doesn't know exactly what to do other than what he's told from the directives down below. I would say, trying to understand it and like if you fix, if you fix work, work in process and you don't have a lot of warranty chargebacks, everything's clean, then you have a leg to stand on to try to move it if, if that's a thing. But I would imagine that, you know, that's probably a grumbly tech shop would be.

I guess I would, I would try to make it up somewhere else, Joe, with, you know, gamification or something and just understand that when you become a director someday you'll be able to make these decisions. And it's kind of funny, like throughout my career, things that I thought I would never do, I ended up doing. So just pay attention to the good and the bad of it. And then when you're in charge someday you'll, you'll do it the way you want to do it. But the bigger dealer group gets, the more controls you have to have in place because it's just, you know, when you're just running one dealership and things get a little out of whack, it's easier to fix than it is across 10 dealerships or whatever. So it's harder to turn the ship around, the bigger it is.

I agree with that.

Thanks for the question, though. We'll see everybody 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.