The Dealership Business Model Part 2 | SDR #308

Hey, thanks for coming by and hanging out with us here on the big show. This is part two in our series, the Dealership Business Model. And today we're going to be talking about the customer experience and where the leverage is in the experience and where we sometimes get it wrong.

And explaining how we can overcome that. I'm Chris Collins, and this is Chris Joan. Hello, everyone. And Hoagie.

What's up?

And so that. And not much more. Coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.

Part two is the customer experience.

The thing that, that I would say right off the top is that a customer experience that is good is designed. It doesn't happen by accident. Every part of it is controlled.

Every part of it can be changed. We are ready for contingencies and glitches in the system. It's almost something we practice. But the customer experience is a living, breathing thing.

So, like, thinking back on your. Maybe not as a provider of customer experience, which I think that's a whole different thing. But what about you as a consumer? Is there, like, an instance that kind of sticks out to you, that embodies a lot of the stuff that you.

Just said, one that maybe sticks out to me the most? And I've had a lot of great ones and a lot of bad ones. I'm sure everybody has. Right. But is Claridge is in London. So during COVID I was going to Scotland, but I had to kind of go in through London, get tested, quarantine, kind of, kind of. And then I could go inside of the UK and so, I mean, the very first thing, because back then, everybody's so paranoid. Everybody's wearing a mask, everybody, you know, I mean, I literally remember people at the airport in hazmat suits. Do you guys remember that? Like, people were walking and Hazmat suits.

And we're not making light of COVID But what was kind of an overreaction, I mean, it was something we didn't understand. So people were overreacting. Just happens. But, you know, you're, you're dealing with.

Your, your test. So you had to get tested 24 hours before you got on the flight. So you had to go pay some incredible amount of money in some place in Beverly Hills. They would do that because everybody wouldn't do it. And they also had to be in some system where they, you couldn't walk into the airline, they had to push it to the airline. So they were on some system where they were satisfying the airline's needs or whatever. And so you, you just have this, like, very tense thing going On. And then you're on the plane, and you just feel like at any moment, you're gonna get sent home or, you know, whatever it is. And so when.

When I landed, Claire just had sent a driver for me. And you have, like, a menu of what kind of car you want. A Rover, like, whatever. And I just picked the. The Rover, because that's what I drive here. And I just wanted to see what they were like when they drive on the other side. Like, I just thought it was cool. And also, they had. They was. It was the long one, so it's the one where it's built more for somebody to sit in the back and have a driver. And so right when, you know, I have my.

Luggage and the guy meets me and he's got the, you know, sign and all that, because you got to get your luggage clear customs, and then you come out, I think is the way I remember it. But I had my luggage. And he. When I got in the car, I said, do I keep the mask on? And he goes, sir, we wear the mask. You're the guest. And it was like I'd been teleported into a different world.

That's really cool.

Like, the whole American chaos.

Panic was, like, gone. Like, they didn't have it. And so then, you know, you check in, and they had masks on, but you didn't have to wear a mask. They sent somebody to my room to have the COVID test I needed there. So you had to have one when you arrived, and then you had to wait five days. I think three or five days. I forget. But they sent somebody to my room. They did the test. They had the results. And.

Then anywhere in that hotel that you walked around, you never saw a bill. Like, I don't know if they're doing it through a headset. I don't know how they do it. Maybe somebody's watching on cameras. I'm not sure. But everybody's really, really nice. Everybody's like, Mr. Collins, everywhere you go, they have an elevator operator that chats you up. Like, they. They don't need an elevator operator. In fact, I started using the elevator that didn't have the guy in it because I just didn't want to talk for 10. I just wanted to get to my floor. Like, it's just so funny. But, you know, you go to any of their restaurants, bars, whatever it is that you never see a bill. That's it. And then I remember. So I was excited to see some of the museums there, and I went to.

Well, I'd been pulling them up online. And it was overwhelming, like, how many museums they have because they really sponsor the arts there. It's different than here. Like, I think part of what the Queen does, part of her role, is to sponsor the arts, because there's more art galleries there than anywhere I've, you know, seen. So I got a little overwhelmed and I went to. To a couple galleries the first day, and then I came back to the concierge, and this guy, his name's Martin, and he was in, like, kind of the penguin jacket.

Yeah, what you'd expect.

Tails. We call them tails.

Okay. Yeah.

So nice. What can we do for you, Mr. Collins? Like, that whole thing. And I go. I'm wondering. This is in the afternoon. Like, I've gone to. I went to Tate Modern and I went to Tate.

Tate, I think, not Tate Britain. There's like three of them right there. And I. So it's late in the day. And I said, hey, is there anybody that, you know that could show me around that understands the art galleries? Sure, Mr. Collins. What time do you want him here? Whatever. I was like, oh, really? And, yeah, And I go, well, the. The gallery's open around 10. Okay, 10 it is. And I was thinking, like, 9:30, right? I was thinking, they open at 10, let's meet at 9:30. But he's like, 10 it is. And I'm like, okay. So it like 9:55 the next morning, my phone rings and they're like, we're ready for you, Mr. Collins. I go down, Martin's standing there, and there's this. This older English lady that is maybe in her, like, late 40s, early 50s, and she looks scared, like. And I don't know, I'm intimidating. So I thought, oh, maybe it's the American or whatever.

I don't know.

You know, I didn't know. But she goes, okay, let's go. And we went to. The first place she took me was the National Gallery.

I thought we would see, like, two or three museums. We got through half of the National Gallery, and I had to tap out. It was like 2 o' clock in the afternoon, and I couldn't take anymore. Like, it was so much information, and it was so much cooler than I'd ever imagined. Like, she's telling me the story of how the art is acquired and what it means. And I'm seeing these pieces of art that I'd seen before that are famous but never understanding them like you would understand them. And the Caravaggios and, oh, it's just insane. So I go back and then I'm walking through and Martin goes, oh, Mr. Collins, how, how was it? You know. And I said it was incredible. And he goes, okay, good. He goes, I tested her for 30 minutes before you got here. She really seemed like she knew her stuff. And I was like, she knew her stuff. Like the idea that he would test her and that's why she looks so scared. Yeah, just like the, the attention to detail and their system is just built for it. I it. You don't see a bill you can walk into. You know, the queen had, used to have tea there. And you can walk into that and have. They prefer that you're formal. But I mean, I walked in there and, you know, shirt and regular pants. I wasn't in a suit and they gave me tea like the Queen would have. And just, you know, they, there was never a, no anything he wanted, like, and the, you know, just the idea that they would test her is such a cool thing like that. He, first of all, I'm asking him to do the impossible. Like, when I went and asked him about that, I didn't think he would.

Have somebody, like on command.

Like, I need somebody to just go show me around art galleries. It tomorrow morning.

That's. Yeah. So everything I hear from that is like. And that's customer experience. Right. At the end of the day is Claridges, not only is anything possible, but if we're going to do it, we're going to do it at the highest level. Like, there's no box checking. It's. They know that.

Yeah.

And I couldn't imagine if you went back to London that you would stay anywhere else.

No.

And you know, one story I forgot is, you know, I was going to visit somebody in Scotland and I wanted to take him and his wife a bottle of wine. Same thing I tell Martin, I go, martin, I want to take them a bottle of, of wine. And I, I, I forget. But I had an idea of what they liked, the couple that I was going to see. And he goes, oh, yeah, come with me. And we go down in the basement and there's a guy down there with all these crazy wines and liquors from all over the world. And he's like. And they were blown away. Like, literally blown away. They were like, how did you get this bottle? And I was like, oh, Claridge is. And they're like, oh, yeah, Claridge is like, everybody's kind of knows, but that part too is like the, I was trying to achieve something and they made sure that they were blown away with What I was trying to achieve. When I handed his wife that bottle, it was like, what? Like, oh, my gosh. And it wasn't crazy expensive or, you know, it wasn't like that. Even when. When I had that guide, it wasn't crazy expensive. I thought. I thought it would be more also. I thought it would be more because we never talked about the price. Like, I was just kind of going with the flow, and I just took care of you. Well, you have. Sometimes when you go with the flow, you see the price and you're like, oh, man, now I should have asked, because I wouldn't have done it if it was that much. Right.

We've done that at a couple of dinners before.

Yeah, we have. And it wasn't like the bottle of wine wasn't like that. Like, I mean, you're. I mean, I think that bottle of wine was a couple hundred bucks. It wasn't a thousand bucks. The. The guide was like 500, I think. And then I tipped her or something, and I went back and got her again.

And went to different galleries with her. And she's incredible.

If we.

If we go, like, I want to take the boys there, I would try to find her and. And have her show us around. She's just amazing. Just the way she tells the story. You'll never think about the art any other way. Like, I remember.

Weren't you telling me that she was super, like, descriptive of tapestries? I think that was a story. That's that lady, right? Like, there was all the tapestries on the walls, and she was giving you, like, all the information on, like, whatever all the meaning was. You'd never get that without having a guide. Yeah, it's just a more enhanced.

There. There is some art in London that you would just, like, you can literally sit there and stare at some of those all day. Like, you. You feel. Well, I mean, like, I kind of have told you before, like, some of the stuff we. We hung out with her, and then Missy and I went back on our own just because, you know, you want to use her, but then you want to just go back and sit in front of the Rothko's at Tate Britain and just absorb it. Like, you can't. You can't run through the Rothko's and the Turners, man. The. The Turners are insane. In. In person there and say, that's the thing about some of this art is you never. You never see it in a book like you do in person. It doesn't. Doesn't translate. Yeah.

Yeah, it's Completely different. I don't know. That's a long, long version of a customer experience. But.

The, the favorite part really, though, is not seeing a bill. Yeah, like how they know that and it just shows up.

Yeah, like.

Yeah, it's the little things. Right? And, and you talking about art, it makes me think of it through the lens of curating something.

Right.

Like, all those experiences are curated. And when you're thinking about customer experience, there's so many situations that come up that we think are outside of our control. But if you're focused on trying to curate and not leaving things to chance, it's amazing. All the things you can control, and then you start finding little things that customer love so much that you would never think. Like, where along the lines did they figure out that someone. Not, like, I don't even think about. Not if I'm at a resort on vacation or whatever. I just get used to that. I get handed that little thing with the pin in it 18, 000 times if I stay there for five days. Like, everywhere I go, I'm. That's genius, right? Like.

And it's, and it's the, the little things. But yeah, just. It's all curated. They're not, you know, they're not leaving things to chance. It's funny, I tell this story sometimes when, when we're talking about, like, curating things and. But my grandma was famous for these dinner parties, like, people. She's been gone for 20 years and people still come up to me and are like, man, like, can we go to your grandma's for the game this weekend? Or whatever. Like, yeah, man, I wish, but, you know, I didn't get it when I was younger and I especially thinking she was super crazy when I was a teenager and, like, started driving, I would stop by there and she'd be out the door to greet me and like, welcome you in and, like, tell you what was going to happen. And dinner's going to be in 20 minutes. Are you staying for dinner? Like, and she'd always tell you where the bathroom was. And her house was a thousand square feet. There was one bathroom in the middle of it. And like, every time she'd go through this thing and tell you and, and like, staying the night there when I was a kid. 6:30 in the morning, sun's up and the front door is open. And I always slept on the couch in the living room when I'd visit. And I'll be like, hey, can you, can you shut the door? Like, I'm still sleeping. She's like, oh no, someone might stop by. Like, and, and it was the same thing. She was anticipating somebody coming by and she had this system. I remember thinking, like, sometimes I'd stop by unannounced, she'd still be out the door to greet me, welcoming me in, asking if I wanted a drink or anything, telling me where the bathroom was. And so, so fast forward, years later, I'm at a customer experience meeting. This lady's the, I've talked about her before. She was the head of Marriott Hotels training program for like Ritz and JW and some of those things. And she said hospitality is 100% about control.

And she's like, I don't know your business, I don't know the car business, but in our world, hospitality is about control. She's like, we just don't leave things to chance. And it immediately, for the first time ever, it made sense of what my grandma was doing. Like, she just, she controlled everything. She was going to tell you what was going to happen. And, and people got to where they just follow her lead. It's one of the only places I've been where you go for dinner. And she doesn't even ask people what they want to drink. Like, everything's just prepared and you just kind of go with it and it's funny. So I always thought it was kind of crazy, but looking back on it now, like, I get it. She, she was a pro in hospitality. Like, it was genius. She curated everything.

And. Yeah. And so, you know, whenever I hear different things and think about this whole concept.

That'S definitely like, the key ingredient is you can.

You can do all types of things in customer experience and there's way more you can control.

But the main ingredient is not leaving it to chance. Like, and most people just throw the door open and see what happens.

Yeah. If I can say one thing in relation to that, you, sometimes I hear you and like you snap. And I think that you're doing it so much now just to prove that you are an Olympic level, world class snapper.

I've never snap.

Oh yeah, joke.

Oh, but you did. And it is amazing to me, like, how much time do you spend practicing snapping?

I didn't even know I snapped.

Oh yeah, you're a snapper.

I don't know, it may be a dad thing, like, cut it out or something. Like it's, I don't know.

Yeah, there's.

Yeah, I can't even do it.

You can't snap. Can you whistle?

Not like he can. Like, I can make a little teeny Noise.

But oh my, I think you might be.

A little feminine with your snap it. Is it okay to say that?

Yeah, it did not sound manly.

Like it doesn't have conviction.

Like if I've got an eight year old around me, I'm trying to get him to come here.

You throw something at him, you clap instead. That's funny. So the, the thing about those experiences is they're all designed and intentional and.

I think a lot of times we're not thinking about our processes in automotive that way. Like the process that made us number one in new car sales was the kind of the same as the process that we use in the service drive is it started with the outcome in mind. Like we were reverse engineering what we wanted the customer to experience and understanding that even if they didn't buy, they were going to come back and they, we were going to be different than everybody else. That there, there was something about it that they would somewhere else experience that and go, oh man, no, I want to, I want to go over there where it's organized. And so you have to start with the, the very, very beginning in the, in, in service. The beginning is the, the appointment. Like we, we have all these different ideas and different softwares about how appointments are made but you know, the time between appointments, how many waiters, where, where you're putting stuff, how you're loading the appointments versus leaving it to chance. We, we talked about this on an SDR not too long ago, but it's impossible to even make an appointment in a lot of places. And we're talking about exactly the opposite of what everybody else is doing. We're going to make it really easy to make an appointment and we're going to be on the offense on how we're loading the shop and see setting the advisors up for success. A lot of times like when we think, oh, we need advisor training, the advisors are overwhelmed. They're overwhelmed because the system is failing them. You know, you, you can't have three waiters in a row. Like you just, you have to have.

Intentionality to how you're loading things and how you're handling customers, what you're saying, the script that you're using and the consistency and all that. And most of the time also what we lack is consistency. It's not consistent because we don't have a desired outcome. So consistency isn't as important. Right.

And the defense mechanism for that for service departments is that theory. And I think Hoagie talked about it on the last episode is the controlled chaos. And I think the reason why we don't have the consistency, we don't have hospitality is because so many service departments, not only do they live in controlled chaos, at best, they wear controlled chaos like it's a badge of honor, like it's the best thing that they could do.

Oh, yeah. It's like, no.

Oh, yeah.

We barely made it through. But we did. And it's like, no, you did it.

Yeah.

If you're. If you're that beat up.

Yeah.

You look like you just wrestled a tiger.

Yeah. And that's so much in conflict with hospitality. Yeah, it's in complete conflict.

Well, I mean, we see this when we put service drive Juno in place and really busy drives, and then everybody's like, oh, we're dead today. And then you look and they've written more.

Right.

Than their average. It's just there's a reason for everything. Everything has a place. Yeah. And it's intuitive like that way. And so then if we, if we talk about the appointment. The other thing that, That I think we mess up a lot is forced relationships. So my first job as a service advisor, I had a service manager who was a service manager like, 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 that's unknown and kind of scary, you. You have a certain amount of trust that. Well, I lived through it last time.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm going to live through it this time. You get somebody new and they're, you know, they're different. It. It brings back up that feeling of, I don't know if I'm going to live through this sort of thing. And so you know how we're. How we're setting the advisors up, the relationship between the advisors and the customers, and then the. The one that maybe is the most important part of the whole system is forcing through the system. Not forcing with a cattle prod, but through the system that the advisors are meeting the customers at the car and. And we're taking Away all the anxiety from the experience right at the very beginning. We're taking away decision fatigue, and we're. We're grabbing control. It really is control. What happens with most people is when somebody in the room is alpha and they take control, everybody relaxes. It just happens. Like, no matter what, like, they just relax. When there's somebody there that they know is in control, Everybody just falls into place, and customers are the same way. I saw it with the. The new car side of things when I was a general manager, where I would see salespeople asking customers. Like, I remember one of the first things I did is I'll play blackjack for test drives, right? So then you see all these dumb sales people going through my office is on the floor, all these salespeople going, well, do you want to drive it? Well, do you want to drive it? So have you driven it? And I was just like, oh, my God. I created the most annoying.

Like, even I think one guy was like, hey, I get to play my boss for blackjack. If you drive it, it's like, okay.

You walk in, the mail lady just Test drove a 3 Series.

And, you know, and so what we developed over time is nobody was asking a customer if they wanted to drive the car. They were driving their car. And it's the same thing. When an advisor meets a customer at the vehicle isn't really talking about the vehicle, is talking about them and petting the dog and focusing on the. On the relationship. You are in control. And then the more questions the advisor asks, the more they're in control. And so, you know, when. When I would write up a customer and say, oh, where are you headed today? Oh, what do you do at Microsoft? Oh, that's crazy. How's that as a job? Me asking them questions put me in control. Unconsciously, the customer is relinquishing control to me. And they feel good about it because there's giving up control, not feeling good about it, and then there's giving up control and feeling really good about it. Like, oh, this is something that is enjoyable because it's about me. Everybody likes something that's about them. This is human nature. And so that. That forced part of the system is the magic. And, you know, I. I think about this because Christian was reading me an article the other day about some dealership that was using AI and they were talking about in the article where they were using the AI and the. The parts that they're using AI are the parts that we already have figured out. And the AI would never figure out what we're doing in the parts where you should use AI, they weren't using AI, so it was a weird thing like, oh, well, the parts taking too long, but not using AI to figure out what parts you could predict by what cars were coming in. It's just funny like how they're, they're, they're.

They'Re putting AI to the symptom and then the AI is very ineffective that way. And so even with the customer experience, they would never figure out instant inspection and the things that you can do that create a incredible customer experience and higher sales.

Because the inputs wouldn't, wouldn't lead them there. Yeah, it's a, it's a broken system so they, they wouldn't be able to figure that out. And then we just go to now how, how do we staff the, the shop? Right. So how do we staff the shop in order to find, fulfill the work that is coming in? Because we're selling time and the technicians are the ones that produce the time and the mix in the shop. How many A, B, Cs we have, that sort of thing is something that most of the time is accepted as reality, not intentionally designed. And what I mean by accepted as reality is if they have a shop that is overbooked, you know, maybe not the best mix of technicians, not the best culture, we accept that as our reality versus designing a new reality that serves the customer base that's coming in. And that just happens at every step. That same leaving it to chance or copying what somebody else has done that doesn't work is the norm more than anything else.

Yeah, I mean it's. And then that goes to that thing probably even more so than that is.

You know, you ask, hey, why, why do we do this thing like that? And I go, you know, I don't know. It's the way we've always done it. Right. The tribal knowledge. Like there's just, there's stuff all, you know, all around and yeah, just like you said, just a complete lack of intentionality. And you know, and it was something that a service manager, four service managers ago implemented and may have no use or, or you know, help in, in anything at all. Just completely useless. And we still do it every single time.

And he implemented the idea after going to a 20 group, getting the idea from someone else that had no proven success. But like, you just kick it down the road.

Yeah, yeah.

There's kind of two more things about this to the customer experience that we miss is if we don't understand the financial statements, we don't Understand how to create a customer experience. And what happens is we don't know how to price things. We don't know how to price things. So then we can have the right mix of text in the shop, because the text are an outcome of what we're charging. So if we don't have the effective labor rate, we can't afford the tax. So our work mix and how we price everything is. Is at play. And then the other thing is like, one of the outcomes of understanding the financial statement is discounting goes away immediately. Because when you understand that if you're discounting, you know, if you're breaking even in your department and you discount the top 10%, you're going negative. 20. Like, it's not dollar for dollar what you're going negative. And so you have to understand how you're pricing things and how the pricing plays into the customer experience and what outcome and mix we want to sell of work in that design of the customer experience. And that usually is not connected. Those two things are completely separate and left to chance.

Don't you think that's one of the coolest things about that? Claridge's story is how much of an understanding must they have about their pricing, their model, for you never to get a bill. But I would assume that everybody that gets a bill is happy with it and feels like they got great value for what it was. Like, how much research do you think went into all that? Like, for them to be able to charge a certain amount of money for you to look at that thing and be like, yeah, that was worth it, but it's not too low. But it's also not too high. Because if it's too high, then you're going to tell them, no, I got to see something like that, to me, is all research.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, they know it's all designed like what they're charging for the room.

Well, I think a good example of this, and I've talked about it a little bit lately, is the leadership book. Like, we have it priced and we're marketing it in a way to attract the people that are in the app. And when you look at an interaction with the people in the app, it's exactly who we were trying to attract. I mean, there's a couple stragglers in there, but it's by design, the price point, how we market it, the tone of everything is all to attract this one type of person. We don't want this type of person. We don't want this type of person. We want this type of person. And, you know, a lot. We, we talked about this early on. A lot of people are selling a book to a kid sleeping on their mom's couch as a get rich quick, put your last 200 on a credit card and buy this course. And our, our book is meant for somebody who's already accomplished something. We're not getting somebody off of a couch. We want the person that's already off the couch. And so I'm not okay with selling a million books and it only affecting a hundred people. I want to sell a million books and affect a million people. Like, I want the person that we're attracting to be the person we can help, and then I want to help them. But you don't leave that to ch. Most people are just trying to get lucky and figure that out, but you really can design it. If you understand human behavior and your target audience and what the need is in the marketplace, then it makes sense. But I mean, that's just a book. A service department's way more complicated and we're leaving that to chance. And arguably there's more money in, in a service department too. And it's left to chance. And so the, the pricing and then.

You know, the. Yeah, it's just, it's just left to chance most of the time. And what, what is so great is when somebody comes to masterclass somebody new to, to our coaching group and they, it's all laid out for them and the look in their eyes, like, I don't know how many times yesterday I heard, oh, I just can't wait to get back. Like, I just want to get back. Yeah, this is fun. The tacos are great. Love what you did here. But I want to get back because now I know something that I didn't know before. And this is going to be huge. Like, oh, this is, this is different than what I was over here battling constantly in this vicious, you know, loop of doom or whatever. Yeah. And now something like, okay, well, this, you know, it's going to be work to change it. But there's a, there's an intentionality to the work that isn't just like, oh, I'm gonna try, you know. Right.

Yeah.

So customer experience is, does not happen by, by chance. And it is designed. It is an outcome of all of the little details and the psychology, the math, all of it plays into it.

But I mean, it is interesting that the system that we run in the service drive has worked in a doctor's office and retail stores. The same thing works just about everywhere. And the commonalities between selling cars and service. The systems are very similar in their care and handling of the customer and their feelings, taking away decision fatigue and, and ending up with control in a very soft way, but, but a comforting way for the customer. Like they're just on the train. They get on the train and then we're driving.

Yeah.

It'S, it's incredible. So you guys want to add anything else to that?

No, that's pretty good for my.

Oh, I think that's, I think that's pretty great.

So that's, that's part two and customer experience in the dealership business model. And we'll see you in part three here real soon on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job 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 it's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.

Sam.