The Best Way To Achieve Consistency (Service Drive Revolution Drive By)

Foreign.

Welcome to Service Drive Revolution, your Friday drive by. Say hello to Jeremy o' Neill and Christian Lafferty.

Hello. Hey, what's up?

We've been waiting to do this drive by for you for literally months.

Excited about this one.

We talked about the idea of checklists and then the. Jeremy is an expert on this and in context of a book called Checklist Manifesto.

It's a great book. It's kind of a boring read, but it's a great book. A lot of great content in it. This has been a game changer for me. So why do you think checklists are important?

There's a bunch of reasons. One is it frees up my mind. So if I write it on a checklist, I don't have to worry about it. If I don't put it on a checklist, I'm always trying to remember it so it like lets me go. So that's the first part. Then it gives me a checklist so I know what to do and I can reference back to it and it reminds me so I don't, I don't miss something. And then the feeling of accomplishment.

Oh, nice. Yeah.

And then also in certain situations, like let's say for example, if I'm going on a business trip, I have a checklist of what I need to pack because what will happen is I'll get to a city somewhere and I won't have collar stays or I won't have hair gel or whatever it is. And so you have to, you know, believe it or not, socks, underwear, like there's just a checklist of everything that needs to be in there. And the things for contingency, like a steamer to steam your clothes, things like that. So it, it's, it's just reassuring. And then you save time in the long run because you don't get to a city and then you don't have caller stays and you got to try to find a Nordstrom's at 8 in the morning that it doesn't open until 9 and you go on stage at 10 and then it's just chaos, right?

It is chaos. Yeah.

And so I think for those reasons. Does that resonate with you?

It does, yeah. This, it's been a game changer for us. And you know what I love about being on the front lines is being able to see, see the customer response to this. So at our counter we have a 32 inch TV that we show the customer the repair orders and everything. And I remember when we were developing our Level 1 testing and analysis package, we put a Checklist in it. And the one thing, especially in the independent world that we get all the time is, are you going to charge me to look at your car? And we're like, I just looked at it. I'm not going to charge you for that. Do you want me to fix it? You know, we do charge you for that little joke that we do. But when we started showing the customers the checklist, okay, pulling the codes is just step one. Then you've got to do this, this and this. It did two things. Yeah. So it justified the charges and then also made sure we didn't overlook something really basic through the testing procedure that could save the customer a lot of money.

It's always the little basic thing that you overlook. It's like I said, the collar stays or the steam steamer, right. And you get there and you're trying to, you know, get your wrinkled clothes unwrinkled and.

Yeah. And you know, how many times has a customer come in and said, okay, well, I need this coil replaced. Right. And you go to the car and the actual connection's broken. It's. The coil's not bad. It's actually just a connection which could be a lot easier to fix. So those are the reasons that I love checklists. And, you know, reading some of these stories in the book about airline pilots, you know, when human beings are under a tremendous amount of stress, pressure, they need something just to remind them to go back through the base.

Because you shortcut when you're under pressure, right?

Absolutely. Forget the basics. Right. Like your car won't. You're freaking out. Is there gas in it? Right. Like, I can't tell you how many sprinter vans I have fixed with our technicians that they're like into this long, drawn out. Well, the relay is bad and it's got a wiring issue. I'm like, wait a second.

Tank'S empty. Is there fuel in it? There's not even fuel in it. Right. So the basic things can fix a lot of things in life. And the checklist helps. And then the other thing that I'm really passionate about as an advisor is making sure that we deliver a five star product. Like when you get that car and you are leaving my shop, you look back and you go, that was amazing. I want to experience that again. The only way that I can do that is with checklist. So if I get a repair order back and the car's done and I go to it and nothing's filled out, what does that tell me as an advisor? Job's not done. Like, you Shortcut it, you just rushed through it. Why didn't you check everything? You know, brake inspections, did we pull the wheels? Is everything filled out in its entirety? So it's a good check and balance quality check as well to make sure that the job is getting done right. And it also lowers my stress level because now I know that I'm giving that perfect product that I owe my customers.

Yeah, it's the best way to get consistency. Right. So externally with customers, I think that it's really safe to assume that if we don't have the checklist, we miss something as we're telling to the customers. And it's hard for somebody to have a five star experience if they don't know what we did for them internally. Why I do a checklist every day is I need that direction because throughout the day there's just so much crap that kind of comes at me. And if I don't have that roadmap, then I'll deviate off of it and I'll never get anything done. So I've found that that really helps me to be organized. And the other thing I would say is that if you look at people that do checklists, that's pretty symptomatic that they're successful.

Yeah. Because it takes away the stress. You know, it's freedom in a weird way. And so it applies to any part of your business. Like if I have a retail business or a car dealership, I have a checklist in the bathroom and the janitors are telling me when they cleaned it, who cleaned it, what time, the whole thing. If I'm a service manager, I have, this is what I do daily, this is what I do weekly, this is what I do monthly. Right.

It's interesting, the bathroom thing, when I go into like a restaurant or fast food place and when I'm leaving, if they've got the checklist here and it's clean and it's updated, I feel really good about the place. But if I look and it's dirty and you're like, whoa, that was like.

That was 2017. That they last.

Right.

And then, you know, one thing that we do really well in this industry, and we were talking about this earlier, one of the breaks that we're really good at, especially at the dealership side of it, is month end closing. Right. You've got that report, you've got your checklist, you got to make sure your repair orders are cleaned up. So it can help you in many different areas to make sure that you're getting things done right.

I think too, on the dealership side, warranty, like, I don't know how many times we've been called into a warranty audit gone bad. And warranty audits are so easy to avoid. If you have a checklist, right? If the, you know, the key readers on there, whatever it is, it's usually like seven to 10 things. It always amazes me that advisors get paid on warranty, warranty, administrators get paid to submit. And it's so inconsistent. And it's really easy to make consistent with a simple checklist is the advisor can't turn in the RO without these things. You gotta run history, whatever, right? You can't do a recall without having the recall sheet on there, that sort of thing. So it, you know, repair orders, you should have a checklist for a lot of different parts of your business. So think about that. Think. Make a. Make a list of where you could have checklists and commit to doing, you know, two of them a week, creating two of them. Make it into a game with your employees for, you know, coming up with a basic outline. And then you can fix it or fill it in, but have them be a part of it because they'll believe in it more. But checklist, it's freedom, it's consistency, and it's success. Now stay tuned for this week's preview of Service Drive Revolution.

Next week on Service Drive Revolution.

Are you ready?

I was born ready.

We are going to talk about a subject that could be a little touchy. Which candidate, Biden or Trump, is better for the industry?

Why are you guys looking at me?

I can read below the surface here.

And the word is chaos. I mean, there's never been a politician that said one thing before the election and went and did the exact opposite afterwards, right?

Thank God. Slick Willie. I couldn't have done this without you.

You gonna describe our industry like a hot chick?

You're looking about $26,000. How does that sound?

You knew that it was going to be a mess. Did it work or not?

Backfired miserably. No, it looked good from the outside.

I've never experienced leadership so bad.

Here is no help for California.

Like, it's a disaster.

I'm just curious why we only have two choices.

Silence.

Wow.

Is this my last show with you guys?

Thanks for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolutions Drive By. I hope it gives you something to think about over the weekend and inspires some new ideas and hopefully some new results. If you have any questions for the big show, go ahead and post them below in the comments. We'll be looking out for them, and we'll answer them on the show. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins, and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins. And I'll see you again on the next episode.