Chris CollinsHelping Struggling Dealerships Build Profitable, High-Performing Service Departments | Automotive Coaching Expert | CEO

Service Advisors' Relationships With Customers | SDR #308

16 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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Chris Collins (speaker) argues that service departments should avoid random assignment of customers to advisors and instead 'force' repeat relationships so customers see the same advisor over time. He explains that familiarity—having gone through the service process with the same advisor before—builds trust and reduces customer anxiety even when chemistry is imperfect. The clip is practical advice for service managers and advisors about relationship assignment practices.

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The other thing that I think we mess up a lot is forced relationships. So my first job as a service advisor, I had a service manager, but he wasn't very good and he used to have this philosophy that it's an open floor and if the customer doesn't ask for you, then it's for anybody. That was his idea. Well, I've learned over the years because I did adopt that for a while.
But more effective is to force the relationship and put the customer back with who they had over and over. There's just a familiarity that happens that has an upside versus letting it be random. Yeah, there's a big upside to familiarity. Even if you don't have a lot of chemistry, if you've kind of gone through the process with somebody once, this process, it's unknown and kind of scary. You, you have a certain amount of trust that, well, I lived through it last time.