Service Advisor Tip: Understanding Our Customer’s Identity
Chris Collins shows service advisors how to shift conversations from transactional to personal, so you actually understand who your customer is instead of just processing their order.
Chapters
But so if you're approaching a car, what are you thinking? And what I want the advisor to say is I want to make friends. If an advisor says, oh, I'm going to rip their head off or what am I going to sell them? That's not, that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for, I'm going, you know, I'm going to make friends. How do I make friends? How do I connect? And then they.
Might say something to the effect of I'm looking for things or clues on how I can connect. Yeah, so like bumper stickers, that, that sort of thing.
Right.
So the next question is after you've greeted them and said hello, I like to do something completely.
In a misdirection away from the commodity.
So the car is the commodity, the oil change, the service, the check engine light is a commodity.
Right.
In the sense that other shops can do that. They can do that repair for less or more money. But that's the commodity. I want to very quickly get away from the frame of a commodity, of a service. So when you say, do you have an appointment? What brings you in today? You're putting them in the frame of the commodity. Does that make sense? So I want to make it personal. And the question that I used when I was a service advisor, that worked really well for me. And it's a little bit of an open ended question, not quite an elicitation question, but an open ended question is, where are you headed today?
Where are you headed today? Now what would be some examples of some answers to where are you headed today?
I'm headed to the dog park.
Straight to hell.
Now I'm the one with the joke, right?
That's pretty good.
Dog park.
Yeah.
You don't even have a dog, bro.
Yeah, that would make me little. Is it creepy if you go to a dog park without a dog?
I don't know. I walked by a dog park last night and stood there and watched dogs for a while.
I had a theory. Like you could literally guess what the dog's name was by the way they played with the other dogs. Like, that guy's gonna be a Max, right? That guy's gonna be a Bentley dog.
Personality N like they do, they do have personalities.
And it's funny. The dog park by me, there's big dogs in one section and little dogs in the other section and they play different.
You know what? So I don't have a dog. But you know that I love dogs. You know what a way to get me to stay here more Often would be for me to get a dog.
Bring in Olivia.
Oh, yeah, that would work.
Is that not what you were going to say?
No, I was going to say I should get my own dog.
Oh, well, there's a great idea. Then you wouldn't travel so much.
Yeah.
Wow.
We're solving problems. Okay, so where are you headed today? Is going to open your customers up to think about where they're headed today and take them off of the idea that this is a commodity. Right. So it's a little bit of a shift in frame. Shift in script, you could call it. And then the customer say, oh, I'm headed to work. And now I want you to think about this in.
In sections of three. Okay. Because, like, what happens a lot of times is some advisors are introverted and you say, where are you headed today? And then you say, I'm headed to work.
Yep.
Now you want to ask what do you do?
This is what happens.
Okay.
Where are you headed today?
I'm headed to work.
That's what happens.
That uncomfortable silence is not normal.
Or they're walking around or they're getting the mileage or they're doing whatever.
Yeah. But.
Yeah, that's what happens. So you want to think of this as, you know, three. Three shots. You're going to fire three shots out of your revolver. So where are you headed today?
I'm headed to work.
Oh, where do you work?
I work over at the accounting office. Jones and Smith.
Oh, wow.
Like, what's the craziest fraud thing you've ever discovered or Mickey Mouse thing? Are the sales department there? Mickey Mouse?
No. I used to do the books for Gotti.
Wow.
Yeah.
Would they keep track of the dead bodies on there or was it just money? And how did you handle cash and laundering?
Yeah, we called the dead body line, line 86 and got really good at laundering for sure.
Now, was that a debit or a credit to the financial statement?
It depends on how they are, 86. So if they are shot, it's a debit. If there's some sort of torture involved, it's a credit.
Wow. It's weird how you came up with that. That's funny. So you see, what I'm doing here is I'm getting to an answer that now I can actually connect. The first two really are almost just transactional. So, you know, where do you work? They tell you where they work. What do you do there? They tell you what they do there, and then you ask something specific about that job. Right. And there's. I've always found A way to make that. That third question funny. So if somebody says they're a martial arts instructor, you can say, like, you know, how many people have you killed? Whatever it is. But you can say something a little funny and irreverent that makes them laugh. But now, what have we done here, Christian? Help us understand. We've gone from connecting this. This experience.
From a commodity to what?
To making friends?
No, from a commodity to what?
It's an experience.
Identity.
Man, I feel like I should be better at this.
It's okay. Identity. This is their identity. Is their. What they do every day is part of their identity. Now, what sort of people do you talk to about your identity?
My friends.
Your friends?
Yeah.
So now we've become mildly a friend.
We're getting there.
What. What sort of person do you trust to do your bricks?
A technician.
No.
A friend.
No. You seen my. Some of my friends. Like, I'm not having Kosh do my braces.
Gonna be a long day. Okay, sorry. So now from here, we want to continue down the path of questions that align with identity, not commodity. So we've bridged. Now we've. We've got to. What do you do there? And then. Do you have kids? Did you see the game on the weekend? Whatever it is? Well, I don't like football. Oh, so what do you like? Right. Every. Every dead end is an opportunity to ask another question.
Yeah.
Where most of the time, service advisors, really, they dead end and they. They clam up and they. They don't ask. Well, you know, if I. If I say, like, oh, did you watch the game over the weekend? Oh, I'm not into sports. Oh, what are you. What are you into? Chess, Science, boring stuff. Accounting, What? And then they'll say, oh, well, you know, I like to whittle. And then you're like, oh, wow. Do you have any pictures of your widow? Right, yeah.
So if you have customers showing you.
Pictures of their dog, pictures of their kids, pictures of their whittling, pictures of the car they're restoring in their garage, pictures of dead bodies on line 60. What?
8. 86.
86 on the financial statement, whatever it is, now we're starting to make friends, and we're connecting on a deeper level. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver 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 83333, ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers Chris Collins Inc. Dot com. Now that's offers.chriscollinsinc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
