Should Service Managers Drive The Shuttle? | SDR #237

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. Today we're going to talk about should service managers be driving the shuttle? I'm going to reveal my first interactions with Christian, like, kind of how, how we met. We're going to talk about does crime pay? Should criminals be allowed to do whatever they want in the hopes that someday they will decide that that's the wrong path and they're just going to be great citizens. It's the honor system.

Right.

Does the honor work better than consequences? This applies to society, to parenting, to employees, everything. And there's some exciting stuff in the news, which, by the way, surprise. Not Ford.

First time in a while.

That and much, much more coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

Before we get to the subject today and what's in the news, which is pretty exciting.

Well, it's funny because we're going to say this and then we're going to invite everybody to our.

Have you ever thought through the timing?

Our first coaching meeting in our new library. Right. So we're going to have our quarterly in person coaching. So people in our coaching group are going to be the first to visit the library. They actually won't be the first in there because we have a friend who's having an event in there who teaches.

Day trading who is really excited about the space.

Yeah. But they, they got weird when we said we were going to take everybody's cell phone and wand them like TSA before going I. Which we are an idea. So when we used to do business outlaws, we would take everybody's cell phone and warn them to make sure they had no recording devices and it was like a sealed.

Yep. Yeah. Those cool little lockers.

Yeah. We're going to do that again here in Los Angeles. Would you describe Los Angeles as a. As an experiment?

A petri dish, for sure.

California is an experiment.

Yeah. With Los Angeles being like the experiment within the experiment. Probably.

It is odd that in our little office. So we. What do we have? 10 people here?

10, exactly. 10.

10 people here. Out of the 10 in the last couple months, two of them have had their car stolen.

That's right.

Like literally had their car stolen. And one indirectly has been shot at while driving with the BB gun.

That's it.

So historically, if you ever called in for an issue or a login or whatever, you probably got Jenna, the Amazing Jenna on the phone. She had her car stolen a couple of months ago. It was parked on the street. I don't know why Jenna would ever put an airtag in her car, but she did. She's crazy.

Super four sighted. Is that what they call that?

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm impressed.

So they found her car pretty quickly, but it was. It was damaged and it was in the body shop for a couple months. I think she just got it back.

Yes. The steering column was basically.

So they. They abused it.

Yeah.

And then she had the feeling of having her car stolen, which is an odd feeling. And also driving her car, knowing that somebody had been in there and done what, you know, it's kind of. Kind of an odd.

Yeah.

Feeling. So she decided she didn't want to live in California anymore and moved.

Yeah. Pretty extreme. Now there's nine people in the office.

I don't think that's extreme when you.

I don't know that it's extreme. I don't blame her.

Yeah.

Then Kosh, his role is to help us.

Make sure the video part and the whole thing's working. He goes down to his valet in his building and they tell him, and he thought they were joking that his car had been stolen from valet. So somebody brazenly went. Grabbed three keys. We were trying to explain that this happens at dealerships all the time when you don't have a key machine. They grab the keys out of the key box. So the valet there has a key box and they. The closest one, I guess, that the key matched up to was his car. They stole at one of the valets, tried to stop them, and they ran at him, didn't hit him, and then ran through the gate.

If I'm the valet, I'm not trying that hard anyways, to be honest, I wouldn't want the valet to work now.

His car had low jack. The police at some point informed him casually that they really aren't that excited about investigating car theft because they let. If they arrest them, they just let them out the next day. Which is the experiment that we're doing here in California is if. If there are no consequences for crime.

Will criminals get better? Like, will there be less crime or more crime? If there's.

No. No, I think. I think more people will join the party.

So your. Your. Your feeling is that there'll be more crime, not less.

Much more would be my guess.

Yeah. And so even so, then your. Your girlfriend.

Gets shot at. From. What do they. Kids do it from an overpass.

The overpass on. Yeah.

The four driving on the 405. They are shooting BB guns at people. And you're feeling. And here's part of the. The flaw is you tell her not to report it because it won't matter.

Yes.

So they're telling Koch. Doesn't matter because they won't do anything, even though the guy. I mean, I don't know. It's. In a way, it's attempted assault if you're trying to run over L. A. Yeah, right.

At the very least, in Kash's car.

Was trash to you. They stole his, you know, mail out of there. So they have his information. Like another just completely.

Odd situation in the sense that you feel like, I don't know, you just feel weird. It's a weird feeling when things are stolen from you.

Yeah.

It's constant. The. The amount of crime here, I think, is. Is up when you're tracking it, but I think there's a lot of crime here that's happening that isn't reported because people perceive the cops to be ineffective and they don't care. Their morale is so low. And it's an interesting experiment. So make sure you sign up for the coaching meeting here. Los Angeles.

Come on down.

The food.

You have a car that you know is on the list of the most stolen. Make sure you drive. We have. We have a lot of parking around here that's exposed to, you know, the right people.

Yeah. It doesn't even count what's happening in the ocean.

Oh, the cat. Your catalytic converter, too. Like, make sure you drive, because they like those.

Yeah, they're getting really fast. I timed one at 19 seconds the other day, but. But you'd be amazed at what's happening in the oceans, too. Right. So in Long beach the other day, I don't know if you heard about this or not. There was a. There was a ship carrying blue paint, and then it ran into a ship carrying red paint. 50 sailors were marooned.

You want to apologize for that? What's worse, the crime in Los Angeles or the crime in your joke? It's so close. What's terrible is people encourage you to do this.

They do.

Me being one. Yeah. So make sure you come to the coaching meeting and you sign up for that, because it's a great opportunity for you to see this experiment we have.

The office is secure, though.

I did turn on the pool. I turned on my swimming pool and noticed a lot of tourists over the weekend. There were a lot of tourists here, and I know it's spring break for some people and whatever, but I was thinking.

How, you know, for how long are people going to want to come here?

I don't know. The last time I went down to, like, that Hollywood Boulevard. Really busy area. It was. It was packed. Even though it was raining. So they're still, they're dissuaded by the lack of law and order here.

It's interesting. Well, so should we talk about what's in the news?

Okay, so today in the news, we've got a couple of things.

Let's start with our friends at Toyota. So they announced plans to introduce 10 new EV models with 1.5 million in electric vehicle sales by 2026. And the question remains, is the automaker doing enough? But Toyota sold 10.5 million vehicles last year, so tops in the world over Volkswagen for the third straight year running. And obviously they made quite a name for themselves in the hybrid market. So it looks like they're going to double down on that. So thank goodness. I can't wait to see more Priuses on the road.

You know, like the Prius.

I don't, I don't know why of all the cars like that anger me, that's the one, I think because there's.

A type that drives the Prius.

I was going to say they're terrible drivers. And if I'm calling someone a terrible driver, that's saying something, but literally punching down. Yeah, there's a, like, if I get cut off four times, three of them are Priuses. It's so crazy to me. All right, and also in the news, Honda, our friends at Honda recalling 564,000 CRVs over at Rust concerns. Now, the great news is that we don't see this from General Motors or Ford or Chrysler because this is recalls of vehicles between 2007 and 2011. And there are no Fords, GMs or Chryslers on the road that were built then.

Okay. Really, I died. No, I digress. But yeah, essentially CRVs made between 2007 and 2011, they have a rusting issue where the rear trailing arm's detaching. And I remember because I actually had a couple of cases of this when I was in the dealership world where we would have SUVs with trailer arms kind of coming apart. And literally it's the most. They called it the death wobble.

Crazy what happens to those. But essentially it's sold or registered in salt belt states where there was deicing agents used on the roadway. So essentially how many, guess what it is, is inspection. There's probably a repair that can be done. And if a car can't be repaired, Honda's going to buy it back from the customers. So anybody driving a Honda CR V 2007-2011, please be careful.

You saw that before too, did you? Do you Have a couple of those in your day.

In what sense?

Where the rut that cars rusted through.

Oh, yeah. When you. So what would happen is the used car manager would buy cars out of the Atlanta auction, and they were rusty.

Yeah. Probably because I got flooded during a hurricane would be my guess.

Yeah. Also, when I was a porter, the first time I saw a block warmer. Is that what they're called?

Yep.

I had no concept.

Yeah. The engine block heater with a little plug in the front that comes out of the. The grill. Exactly.

A lot of Subarus had that.

Subarus for sure. And in North Dakota, I saw many, many a block heater.

Prefer to call them Scooby Doos.

Yeah. Or Scooby for short.

Great customers, very loyal.

Love their cars.

Culty almost.

Yeah, I like it. So that's it.

That's the news.

See that?

Nothing about Ford. So the news without.

Not today. Maybe next week. Wow. You have to tune in to see.

Okay, Christian, let's. Let's ask the question that is on everybody's mind. This was brought up in our.

Facebook group.

This subject came up a few times.

The earth being recycled.

We thought recycled or flat.

First.

Is the earth cloud.

Yeah, for sure.

No, the question is, should service managers be driving the shuttle? And so I think somebody posted like, hey, I. I drove the shuttle. And the response was, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. And that's great.

And.

Show your people. Yeah, you'll. You'll do anything in the department.

Yeah. And so the. The question is, is that good? Is it good for a service manager to be driving the shuttle? Is it good for a service manager to be fixing the toilet in the new car showroom's bathroom? Is it good for the service manager to be.

I don't know, answering the phone?

Yeah, I think that the answer does that to. That is in a question.

Should it. Should a service manager be changing the oil in a car? A waiter. What about washing? Should a service manager go back and wash the car if the car wash is backed up?

Yeah. What else you got? You got more there, don't you?

So I would.

Should a service manager be riding the internal rose.

Oh, I see that.

Should a service manager be submitting warranty claims?

I feel like you're listening.

Should a service manager be fixing the leaking roof in a rainstorm because you were no help whatsoever when a roof was leaking?

And actually, it'd be funnier if it was a lightning storm.

You would have sat here at your desk on your zoom calls that you do all day.

Water could have been pouring on your head and you would have just got a hat.

The worst thing is, is that water did drip on me. I just kept right on going.

Yeah, yeah.

So worthless. I did not fix the roof.

Thanks for the help.

Oh, my God.

What if you would have got on the roof and laid over the top of one of the leaks? That would have stopped one of them.

Just taking it for the team.

Yeah.

And just drink the. Just drink the rainwater, which I would glow in the dark afterwards.

So what.

What are your.

What are your thoughts?

Is.

Is driving the shuttle a badge of honor? A sign of great leadership? Or is it a failure beyond comprehension?

Let's see. So.

I will tell you that I've kind of got the mind that if it's a matter between the customer sitting there and not getting helped or the service manager does the ride, I would say the service manager should give the ride like there's no one else. And you're just looking at a customer like. If it was me as a service manager, it would pain me to no end to see someone sitting around waiting for a shuttle ride.

Unfortunately, I can also tell you that as a service manager, all those things that you just asked before I learned what the role was, I did all that stuff and I thought it made me a good service manager.

You know, my earliest memory of you is.

I don't.

I've told you this before. It's clearly wasn't special for you.

Joke man. Sorry, sorry. I didn't tell it in the form of a joke.

I remember that right.

You getting up at like 2 in the morning and plowing snow at the dealership. And I remember asking you about it. That was before.

You know, I was a bad driver too.

I remember the. That. That time actually, that I was in Chicago, I went to Nordstrom's rack and bought.

Rain boots because my feet were.

Well, remember it would.

There was so much snow.

Well, the first time you came in, though, it wasn't just the snow. It was record cold. It was like the middle of January.

I think you remember this snowed like 80 times that.

And you brought a coat, but it wasn't even near enough.

That was already insulation.

And I think that we didn't even. I don't even know if you knew my name for five minutes because you were just so upset about how cold it was.

Was I?

Yeah, you were really upset.

But back to. Back to you driving. So you got up at like 2.

I'd get up in 1 and be there by 2.

And then you would move the cars or how would you plot. How do you go about plowing? So you know, the thing that surprised me the most about that was that we had to pay removal.

Like it was like 10 grand or something. To remove the snow.

Yeah. Because you only have so many places to pile it. So you would actually.

There's actually people out there come and remove the snow. And it wasn't cheap?

No, it wasn't cheap. And him people plow wasn't cheap either, but yeah. So what do you mean you did it for free?

Well, no, if you hired plow companies to come in, it was expensive. That's why I did it.

Right.

But yeah, so I had a whole system where I clean out the aisles first and then I would move all the cars up and then I would plow behind, move the cars back.

It was while it's snowing. So while it's still like you're getting ahead.

Yeah. My favorite thing was is that Chicago is so famous for like snowing a foot and then going to negative 20. So then the, the. My favorite thing about ice. Yeah. Black ice. So my plow truck was like a 1992 Silverado rear wheel drive. Like there's two ways that people go with a plow truck in the northern areas. They either have like a planned plow truck or the wholesale truck that they can't get rid of and that becomes the plow truck. So we had the wholesale truck. But my favorite thing about that truck was it had no heat. So I had to have an ice scraper not for the outside, but for the inside. So imagine me, one hand on the wheel, scrape, drop, hydraulic. Scrape, drop, hydraulic. Like what could have gone wrong? But yeah, I had it down to a science.

Yeah. So back to my question. Should a service manager drive the shuttle?

If it's symbolic, yes.

What do you mean by symbolic?

So if it's the showing, if it's a one time, one off thing that you say, this customer cannot sit here, I'm going to take really, really good care of them. And then after that you have to say, okay, that can never happen again. And you come up with a contingency plan. I'm okay with it. If it's their job description, that's a problem because you're missing out on too much.

Let me, let me ask you a question. I'm going to ask this question. I just want the answer to sit there. I'm hoping you answer this right.

If a customer of ours is unhappy and it gets to me. How do you feel?

Awful.

Okay, let's just let that. Sit for a second. When I was the general manager of a humongous BMW store down the freeway here, and I implemented a new system which was. Customers cannot leave without saying goodbye.

To a manager. So the salespeople were not allowed to let customers walk without a manager backstopping.

Was that a fireball one? Would you fire somebody if they did that? If they didn't turn it over, yes.

But it never got to that. We sent a couple people home.

Yeah.

And that was all we had to do. But we would have. Yeah.

Yeah. It didn't.

I guess it's like. It's like playing poker. You have to be willing to, but you hope that it never comes.

Right. Right.

Okay. So salespeople are not allowed to let a customer. What would happen is a customer would come in and they would demo a car. They would get presented numbers, and then the manager would look up and the customer was gone. And then you'd go to the salesperson, hey, what happened to, you know, what happened to Christian? And they would go, oh, he's going to home and talk to his wife. Or, you know, whatever.

Yeah, whatever the thing.

And so we were. We were of the opinion. Or I was of the opinion that if a manager talked to the customer before they left, we. We might. We might sell more cars.

Yeah. Did you guys used to call that? We called it the broom. You broomed.

Called it.

Swept him off the lot.

Called a manager backstop.

Oh, no. I'm talking about when you let him go without him turning over. My favorite was when people would let people go after a demo drive and didn't know their name.

You know, we figured something out later that was way more effective than this. But this is the analogy that applies to.

Right. But I do know the other thing which I think is brilliant.

Throwing their keys on the roof is way more effective than a manager.

They're not leaving.

What we're talking about is amateur hour compared to the real thing. So who do you think was my biggest problem or the biggest obstacle in implementing this new rule?

Your managers.

Correct. The managers. And so the managers would. On a Saturday when we had 40 customers in the. In the showroom, would completely fall apart. And then they were just trying to maintain, you know. You know, just get by, basically.

Yep.

But the system is only as good as the contingencies you have for it to be effective.

That's right.

Correct. So the time when we have the most customers, the system was the least effective.

And so we. What I did is I told everybody, we're going to get here at six o' clock in the morning, we're going to practice this. And they thought that was a crazy concept, but we did. I used cones as customers. Not joking in the showroom with cones, his customers. And we came up with a system that should they be. Should they be too busy to backstop a customer? We would get the Internet sales manager.

Yeah.

And then should we be so busy that she couldn't come down? We would get a couple of the fleet managers that previously were on the desk. And then, then we would get the general sales manager. Then we would get me. And then we would actually get the owner to come down and backstop a customer.

Oh, gosh, I hope it never got to the owner.

It didn't. And I think it got to me once or twice.

Good.

But it was the, the now when it got to me. And let's go back to the question I asked you. If a customer, if an upset customer got to me here, you would feel bad.

If you're in a situation where you're driving the shuttle or you're backstopping a customer and the people around you aren't really nervous that you're doing their job for them, you have a much bigger problem than should you drive the shuttle. And maybe in a moment of desperation, you'll hop in the shuttle. But the whole time I'm in the shuttle, I'm telling myself this is never going to happen again. I'm fixing this. This is ridiculous. Yeah.

You cannot be the backup.

This thing is broken. If I'm driving the shuttle.

Yeah.

I, I am a failure as a leader. I have completely lost control. All contingencies have failed, and now I'm taking direct fire.

So I don't know, you can make what you want of that. But if you want me to summarize it, no, you should not be driving the shuttle.

Yeah.

You should not be joining the show.

Contingency plans, that's the name of the game. It's systems and people that actually.

Like, I don't know, just be. I couldn't imagine my GM driving somebody holding in the shuttle. Like, literally, I would just be. I'd be freaking out the whole time. And the fact that I would never let the GM do it because I would do it first.

But.

Goodness gracious, yeah, now there's two. There's two other things that I want to leave you with on this subject because I'm sure a lot of you listening to this don't agree with me. And that's. That's okay. You will eventually. If, if you want to be an effective leader, you're gonna have to come to, to this side of thinking. Otherwise you'll always be the. The doer. You're not the conductor. You're always going to be the, the person playing the instrument, not the, the conductor. There are departments out there where the manager is the warranty administrator. They have one advisor, three techs, and it's a pretty small shop.

Yeah.

Every time I've done a strategy session in the last couple years with a store that size, the amount of potential, they're booked out two weeks at least.

Nowadays it's more.

You don't have the resources because you don't understand effective labor rate. You don't understand pricing strategies. You don't understand how to recruit technicians and build something that is scalable, that allows you to afford the amenities that customers need to keep them coming back.

Right.

If you're the shuttle driver, there's a pretty good chance of your customers are barely hanging on.

I think that's really fair.

Your results are not very good and you're not taking advantage of the opportunity for the most part. I'm sure there's an exception here, there. But I would contend. Don't make yourself the exception. You're not going to get better by, by laying on an excuse.

Are you, Are you maximizing your full potential with what you, what availability you could create in the shop, what you could convert by inspecting cars, what you could sell, what effective labor you could achieve by having a pricing strategy and the right service advisors and the right service advisor training. Could you then afford a shuttle driver? And then the last thing I'm going to say is, let's say you are the shop with one advisor or you're the advisor and the manager and you don't have, you know, the potential for that. Maybe don't offer a shuttle.

Yeah. If you can't man it, don't do it.

Out two or three weeks. You don't have to. Don't offer a shuttle. Just focus on what you can do.

Okay, that makes sense.

Now, that's the minority that we're speaking to, but.

I think it's important.

Okay, so here's the question we're going to end on. And maybe.

Maybe what's on everybody's mind is if you had to do it again, if you could be like Michael J.

Fox and go back in time.

Is that what it sounds like?

No.

Okay. It was actually, you know, that was a little bit of a throwback. There's an SNL skit with Dana Carvey in it where he does the back in time. But yeah, maybe it's not as funny me saying it.

Would you have got up at one in the morning to plow? So.

No, but I would have been able to pay for somebody to do it. For sure. Yeah.

What about one of your shop foreman or something? You had some talented.

No, my shop foreman came and helped me move cars. It was the. As a matter of fact, many times there's the two of us there.

What about a port?

He's a beast.

Porters. Every once in a while, as a matter of fact, as I got a little better, I drove that thing less. It was just the. I just remember the one time before I left and moved was. It was like that last straw where I hit the black ice and almost killed $300,000 worth of cars.

I would much rather have my value judged on the money I'm putting to the bottom line and the customer satisfaction and retention than if I'm plowing snow or driving a shuttle. I think we're changing the subject when we're doing that for sure.

And you know what the. Some of the managers that I've talked to that drive the shuttle regularly, they're literally, they're so tired of getting bombarded every day that when they drive the shuttle, that's actually like. It's like them going into the foxhole.

That's the problem. That's the bigger problem.

Yeah.

So you're changing the subject.

Evil system, changing the subject.

Profit and customer experience. Those are the two most important things. Good stuff. Okay, thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive 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 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.