The Quickest Way For Service Advisors To Fail
Chris Collins, Jeremy, Christian, and Russo discuss what makes service advisors fail in the automotive industry. They share stories about trust, expertise, and how mechanics lose customers through specific mistakes.
Chapters
So you were talking about trust.
Yeah, and so I was talking to the voice of God and his real name is Chris, but we call him the Voice of God because there's already one. There's Christian Chris. We really have a rule now. We only hire people named Chris.
Yeah, perfect.
Chris Hoagie.
Yeah, it's making resumes really easy to review.
Yeah, we got a lot of Chris's here. But the voice of God was telling me the opposite. He's like, I don't trust independence. Because he has had an issue. Every time he's gone to this shop in Orange county, it's had another issue and he's been towed back and forth. Tell us the story.
Russo. God, Voice of God. And if he sounds like the voice of Satan, it's because he's really pissed.
So I was driving on the freeway after visiting my family, as I'm one to do on the weekends, and I had just gotten on the freeway and was driving back up home towards LA when my car stopped going. When I pushed the go pedal.
It was a Toyota, by the way.
Toyota Yaris 09.
Great car, very sensible.
Mm, conservative.
Four thousand dollar car.
Go pedal, wouldn't go. So pulled over to the. Pulled over to the side of the road.
He's like a hip mechanic now he's like the go pedal or he's a NASCAR driver.
Pulled over the side of the road, got it towed to my family's mechanic who said the next day, oh, well, this and this are broken. We'll have it done by Wednesday and then how much? Fourteen hundred dollars. And so said Wednesday, got it done Tuesday, thought great, under promise, figured out.
To Orange county because if you're not from here, Orange county is 45 minutes to three hours away, depending on traffic.
On a good day. Went back down to Orange county, picked.
The car up, was running it past the 405Y or. Yeah, yeah. So it's deep into Orange County.
Deep, deep, deep Orange County.
Northern San Diego pretty much.
So it's closer to San Diego than it is Los Angeles, that's for sure. So got the car.
And then as I'm driving away, it starts making a terrible screeching noise. So I had to bring it back in. And they said, oh, well, that sounds like it's probably your starting motor, so we'll change that out.
That starting motor?
Yeah, the starter.
Starter.
The before go pedal gets pushed. The go motor has to start the motor.
That's. I thought it was your water pump pulley.
That was the first thing that broke.
Oh, that was $1,400.
It was that and a fuel pump.
Oh, okay.
So then brought it back in. They just charged for the part. No labor. Just because I had been in and out of there already. So labor was on them.
How did that make you feel?
That made me feel good. Made me feel like a valued customer.
So how much did you spend the second time?
It's 300 bucks for the part, and.
We'Re up to 1700.
1700.
We're pushing 50% of the purchase cost. That was awesome. And.
And what was that? That was about two weeks ago, wasn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so now it just crashed out on me again this morning when I tried.
So what you need to do, Russo, is you need to go into the shop and ask the person there. Can you say, can you show me the dartboard that you throw the darts at to decide what you're going to tell me that I need?
Is that how you guys do it, Jeremy?
No, we use diagnostic. We use diagnostic dice at our shop.
So cg, which is an upgrade to.
The man, that would happen in a dealership.
It would.
No, it wouldn't.
Come on.
No, it wouldn't.
You're. Wait, the problems that have been there could just be. How many miles are on your yards?
I just passed over a hundred thousand when it broke down.
Initially, it's barely broken.
Did either of these shops that you took the vehicle to ask you for your service record?
It was the same shop.
It was the same shop.
Oh, did that shop, family shop, they asked you for your service record?
No, probably because I've only ever taken it there.
Ah, but now he's going to take you to a dealer.
No, he's not.
He's not.
I'm going to fix it on the way home.
Let's say Jeremy offered to tow it to.
I would.
I mean, yeah, it's Vegas, basically.
It's easy to get customers. They're everywhere. You just have to be willing to help them.
Jeremy's shop is closer to Vegas than.
To la, so it's going from San Diego to Vegas.
There we go. There we go.
LA is completely written out of the conversation at lunch.
Just go play the slots in Vegas.
We can hit state line in about an hour and a half.
I was gonna say you could open your door and drop your coin in the machine. You're so close to Vegas, So with trust.
Has the shop reached out to you to follow up, to see how things are going?
No.
If they did, would you be open to their offer of help?
Probably.
If you were to Place a call to them or text them and say, hey guys, I'm still having another issue. What can you do? How do you feel their attitude towards you would be.
They would probably say, bring it in.
That's another word that should have been on the four letter list a couple episodes ago, but it's not four letters. Why don't you just bring it on back in? That is the most frustrating thing for customers. Like, you want the car fixed. You want it fixed right the first time and you don't want any other problems. Right. So no matter how far they've been over backwards to help the customer out, bring it back in. The fact that his car is still broken is very frustrating. Yeah.
Now he's got a. We spent $4,000 on the car.
Yeah.
I think it was 3, 800.
Now he's gonna be in it. 3, 800.
Yeah, it's sunk.
Yeah.
That thing's not getting sold.
You're an owner.
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna break you.
Now, can I ask the voice of God another question about this topic?
Sure.
So in your opinion as an auto repair consumer, how intensive should a shop or dealership look your vehicle over? So when you go to pick it up, what are your expectations with everything?
Are you asking like, did they tell them all the other stuff that was wrong with it?
They did not. They said these two things that wouldn't.
Happen in a dealership.
They said these two things failed. It's going to be 1400 bucks. And then something broke. Literally after I drove it back home from the shop, it started making a noise and they said, okay, well then that's got to be this. So bring it back in, we'll fix that. Which they did. And then now a couple weeks later, it doesn't start.
Wow. Which could just be a battery issue.
Could be. But.
Yeah, but the, the point of the matter is, is, you know, there's other stuff wrong with that car and they, they're not telling him all the stuff that's wrong. So every time something breaks, he thinks it's related to the other thing.
Right.
Because they're not telling him. Hey, by the way, you might want to plan on spending another $3,000 in the next six months because this and this and this.
Well, there's that saying that consumers have. Which is. Ever sent ya.
How many letters is that?
Too many together.
Spell that.
Well, that's a high. Does. That's a 909 term. Why 760 term? That's the IE term there.
Interesting though. Interesting that you Know, wouldn't happen at the dealer.
So I disagree. It should happen at the dealer.
Dealers never don't inspect a car and present the work.
I will say I would have been happy to pay more money for it to just work.
Yeah.
If he. If he was. If he was.
That's a good lesson.
He's not shopping.
Yeah.
If he was telling me, you know, these parts are also broken, but we're not going to fix them now because they're not an issue. Like, you can solve that later down the line, that would have been okay. But instead, story instead it's, these parts are broken. Go fix those. Oh, but then this other part is broken. Go fix that. But now this other part is broken.
And if they had told you at that time that your battery tested marginal and one of the things you can do is you can date code battery so you could see how old the battery is. So if they had had that conversation with you and prep before it and it is a battery now, then that's on you, not necessarily on the shop. So it's your choice to do it at that point. Very interesting, though.
It's interesting the perspective though, right. Is when you don't inspect the car and tell them what to plan for, then they assume that it's your fault because you just worked on it. Right. Even though the battery and the water pump or whatever aren't really connected in any way. And so you bring that on yourself as a dealership or a shop. Right. I'm. I'm being facetious that dealerships inspect every time because they're just as bad.
But can I interject a different word here instead of dealership and independent, can we use the word expert? Because there's a big difference at the expert. You know, the expertise level of the technician doing the inspection.
Amateur or pro?
Amateur. Pro, absolutely. So we had a customer a couple weeks ago, brought in a car that she had just bought. She took it to a quick lube. They did $500 worth of who knows what. The vehicle had a blown head gasket, but because they weren't experts, they weren't able to identify it, what they do to it. They did a radiator flush on it. They did a transmission service. Yeah. It had a blown head gasket. It overheated.
How is that gonna fix it?
It's not. That's.
I think they didn't recognize that there was a head gasket issue and just recommended the preventative maintenance is what it sounds like. Yes.
And it also. It was a train wreck. They could not identify that it didn't have the factory cooling fan on it, so it had an aftermarket one. So there's obviously something going on there, which I would have been like, oh, timeout. We got to figure this out first before we do any type of maintenance on this car. So that's just the difference of having an expert. And, you know, I've seen it in my career where you have a master technician that's, you know, somebody's been with Volkswagen for 25 years, they can look at that car from bumper to bumper and give you a list, and they can project what's going to fail and when it's going to fail. And they're pretty much zeroed in on it. And then if you don't have the experts working on the car, it's kind of more of a transaction. They're transactionalizing it and they're not looking out for everything. Totally.
I agree with that. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. 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 @ChrisBulldog Collins. And I'll see you again on the next episode.
