Chris Collins and Chris Jones advise a service advisor on handling customers who blame Volkswagen for mechanical failures. They recommend spending 80% of conversation on rapport-building before discussing the car, using relatable analogies like consumer electronics, and reminding customers about warranties to turn frustration into loyalty.
Foreign.
Welcome to your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your questions. Whatever is on your mind that you need help with. The number, should you have a question is 8333-Ask-STR. That's 8333 Ask SDR. If we play your question, we will send you a swag bag of some fun stuff just as a thank you and also understanding that if there's a question you have, it probably will help others too. They're too afraid to call and ask.
Always helps.
And how are you doing, Chris Jones?
I'm great. Thank you very much. How about yourself?
Pretty good.
I like Fridays.
Friday drive by.
Good time to drive and buy.
Let's go to this week's question.
I am a service advisor at a Volkswagen dealership. I have been a service advisor other brands especially. Well, my question is sometimes I have a customer that, you know, they pay for a repair and they say, well, you know, this really reflects poorly on such and such brand because, you know, I'm just turned off by the whole whole Volkswagen thing as a result of this failure. What? How could I kind of reframe that? More positive for the customer, you know, both for them and also for our CSI in general. It's something that I've struggled with over my career.
So I do have a thought. So I think I understand where we're at. It's like the customer that comes in and we need to do a valve cover gas. And they're like, well, I can't believe VW makes this product and I'm never coming back here again in that whole thing. So I do think that kind of just as a rule, auto manufacturers get a bad rap because think of all the stuff that you have that doesn't move that breaks all the time. Like a car has a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot of outside factors that figure into it. How we use it affects how much stuff breaks where you live, has an effect on how much stuff breaks and.
Then how you use it.
I feel like you looked at me a funny way when.
How you drive it.
How you drive it.
The RPMs, the.
Yeah, all of that. Right.
The jumps you go over.
So. So my advice would be to kind of put all of that stuff into perspective and just understand that at the end of the day, we've all seen advisors that have gone from one brand to another brand and the customers will follow them to said brand, regardless of what the brand is or what they know about it. Where we're still at the end of the day in the people business and the better the friends you can make with a customer, the less focused they are on the thing that happened. Now I would certainly say I understand your frustration, man. It's always terrible when, when cars don't operate the way that they're supposed to. But thankfully we're here, we have service and all. Also thankfully you have a warranty because your, your MacBook doesn't have a four year warranty on it and that doesn't, you know, necessarily last forever either. So we're here for you. And the reason that we, we provide service for you is, is that we want your car to last for a long time, but it's not going to last for a long time and never break.
Yeah. So I, I think that the thing to think about first before we get to that is something you touched on is are we petting the dog? Are we talking to the customer about things that would put us in the frame of a friend? So where are they headed today? Kids, hobbies, you know, aspirations, that sort of thing? Are we doing that at the time of write up? Are we making friends and getting in that frame or is it just a transaction? Are we saying like, hey, what brings you in today? What time was your appointment? What's going on with the car? And everything we're talking about is about the car. I would say you want like an 80, 20, 80% of what you're talking about should not be the car and 20% should be the car. And you know, the car is the easy part.
Right?
Like it's not, if you've been riding service for as long as you have, there's not much new that you're going to come into every day. So the, the car is the easy part. Riding the RO is the easy part. Getting the description from them all that is pretty easy. The, the important part is the connection and you know, talking to them like they're a friend, like somebody you would talk to about what you're doing this weekend or where you're going this summer, that, that sort of thing. Right. And then if you're in that frame, this sort of, this sort of objection is going to come up less. But then you have all of the, the analogies and this is usually a good time to use an analogy about, oh, I, you know, I totally understand how you feel and unfortunately, I don't know if you just saw SpaceX. Their rocket, you know, blew up because of a little, little oil pump or whatever it was.
Oh no, it was O rings, wasn't it?
Yeah, O rings or Something. And I, I recently had a MacBook that was only six months old, you know, whatever your story is. But whenever we have things that, that have, you know, mechanical moving parts that are pressurized and experience, you know, stress and wear and tear, there's going to be a failure rate. And I'm really sorry that it's, that it's happening to you, but it does happen. And just having some empathy, but doing a, you know, some sort of an analogy.
Usually softens it.
Yeah.
You know, on the other end of that, you probably have somebody who can't afford that in the moment or wasn't.
Expecting about the thing. Yeah, that's, that's a really good point.
You got to have some empathy, you know, and really try to understand. But. Good question. I think the fact you're asking the question, you have lots of empathy because it's great.
You said, I want, I don't want customers to be disciplined with the brand and reflect poorly on CSI or her and everything like that. I get it. But, but if cars didn't break, there wouldn't be service departments.
Yeah. And I, I would just say I've many times in my career seen advisors get perfect CSI on a car that we wrecked or to even totaled a couple times. And so it's all about the connection and the frame that you're in that will determine the way the customer talks to you, the questions they ask, the tone, all that. But great question. Thank you. Remember the numbers 8 3, 3, 3 ask SDR. And we'll talk to you next time on Service Revolution. Thanks for watch 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.com chriscollinsinc. Com. That's offers chriscollinsinc. Com. I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
