The Top 10 Reasons Why Customers Hate Service Advisors (Service Drive Revolution)

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Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution, the show for anybody with a service drive. Please say hello to Christian Lafferty. How are you doing, Christian?

I'm doing great. Always better than ever, with the exception of I've had a little bit of a disappointment over the last few days.

Hold that for a second. Disappointment. Today we're going to Talk about the 10 reasons customers hate service advisors. Not the three reasons, not the five. The 10 reasons customers hate service advisors. We also are going to answer your questions.

And we're going to talk about the election.

We are.

So you're saying KANYE For President 2024, because he clearly didn't win this go around.

Yeah, I'm going to need a marker for that, clearly, right? I really thought Kanye 2024, he was a shoe in.

What, what, what makes you want to vote for Kanye?

I don't know. I just feel like there's some sort of a tranquil absurdity to the whole thing.

Tranquil absurdity. That's a great community college word choice.

Was that community college? I felt like that might be junior year.

Yeah, it's possible.

You know what, speaking of politicians. Right. A lot of going on in politics, things have been really weird. Last week in D.C. it got a little bit cold and politicians were seen putting their hands in their own pockets.

I get it. That's funny.

That's how we start.

Hey, do you know we hit a milestone.

Tell me more.

The voice of God, better known as Russo, has been doing some great things online, but we hit 10,000 followers on YouTube.

Okay, that's pretty solid.

Pretty solid. We have 1.4 million views on there.

Well, the theme is telling me too is about the rate of growth. Right? Like, it was crazy how we've gone from 1 million to the. The extra 0.4.

Yeah, we're growing pretty, pretty fast. But we should, we should technically. Shouldn't we have like champagne or something for that? Did you bring champagne?

Well, not for the camera, but yes.

It's interesting to me, the 1.4 million views. Do you know what our top.

Watched videos are on YouTube?

I don't know the exact order, but I definitely know a couple of the top ones.

What has been my goal from the very beginning with the content that we put out there for free. What has been. I've said this a million times.

That it's better than anyone else charges for. Right.

So I think that I know that, like, people play these in their training meetings. Our competition will play our videos in their training. I know that manufacturers play it in their training. Right.

Definitely.

And so I think that's why some of these have so many, so many views. But the number one video is five Keys to Being a best of Breed. Service Advisor. Number two is Leadership Training Fundamentals with Jocko Willick.

That was amazing.

Number three is Service Advisor Training the Circle of Trust. Co starring my bulldogs. It's like a Bob Dylan music video ripoff. Number four is Service Advisor Training.

Pet the dog. Oh, the pet the dog story.

Yep.

And number five is Service Advisor Training Selling more maintenance in the service drive. I'm noticing a trend here that the title Service Advisor Training seems to rank pretty good. Hey, I thought the, the video about Gillette and masculinity was on this list.

I think we excluded that one from the list, but that's really high.

Why would you exclude it?

I don't think it was quite the same kind of training video.

No, but I'm telling people these are the top videos on our, on our channel. It doesn't matter if it's not about Service Advisor.

So we've got a 1A.

There's one on there about masculinity and I forget what I say in the video, but I'm sure it's great. I'm sure it's insightful.

Right. I almost wish you would have shot that now because we got this masculinity thing going on because of the prison yard and everything. It's a, it's fun but good, good.

Job, Russo, on that big milestone. I have a feeling going from 10,000 followers to 20 is going to happen pretty quick.

Yep.

Especially with some stuff that we, that we have coming.

I thought it was funny. Yesterday we were on a coaching call with our coaches. Not, I guess you wouldn't say it's a coaching call. We were, we were on our bi weekly call with the coaches that are out in the field. They're all, they were all in stores and you on the agenda. When we were talking about the agenda for the call, you're like, you're like, I want to talk about menus because one of the things that we will do when we go into a service department is we will help them redo their menu. And so you had seen some inconsistencies in the way we were doing menus because you're good at sniffing those sort of things out and you had some things you wanted to say. And then so on the zoom meeting, you said, okay, I'm gonna put up some menus and I want you guys to find what's wrong with these menus. So the menu Shows, like, the parts cost, the retail part, whatever's packed in, then the labor, then what we actually charge for it, and then the effective labor. That's right. So there's a lot of information on the. On the sheet. And so you. It was really funny. So you put the first one up. And then I'm like. And I. I don't know. What did I point out? Like, five things.

Yeah. I feel like you forgot that it wasn't just you and I talking pretty much is what happened. So I don't know if you guys have ever had that where you're in school and then there's someone that sits in the front of the room and, like, the teacher will ask a question, and then.

Yeah, I always hated that.

Yeah, that person answers the question, and then the question after that, and then they actually predict what the third question's going to be. So that was Chris yesterday, and I was trying to work on teaching a lesson to the group, so.

But be honest. Did I find things that you hadn't.

Yep.

Yeah.

So.

So what did you say? Because it was pretty funny. You're like, with all due respect. That's what you said. With all due respect. And I had no idea where you were going with it.

So at this point, Chris had been talking and pointing things out for a couple of minutes, and I had to pause, and I said, chris, with all due respect, do you think we could let the coaches start the exercise now and point out.

Because it was about the coaches, it wasn't about me.

It wasn't about you.

But the thing.

And I apologize. And I cited, like, you. You put a financial statement in front of me, or you put a menu in front of me. I go to work, like, I get super excited. Even to this day when I get a financial statement, I just want to go to work. I want to figure out what's going on.

You were absolutely. You were a kid on Christmas morning. I don't even know if you noticed. You sat up in your chair and you're glued into it. It was a lot of fun for us. And I think that the lesson and part of the reason that we're talking about this is to let everybody know, like, internally. One of the ways that. That we're always staying ahead of everybody is we don't stop. Like, you don't stop looking at things. I don't stop looking at things. And as the coaches, we're always trying to learn to get better. Like, that's why we do that kind of stuff. This is the. Like, it's A passion.

I hijacked your well planned lesson.

Thank you. It was, it was good, but it.

So on the second one, I sat there, I had a lot to say, but I sat there, I bit my tongue.

You did well. And they did perfectly, didn't they? They point out a lot of stuff.

Perfectly.

They did really well.

Perfectly, perfectly.

It was a stretch. Okay.

Do you believe that anything is possible?

For the most part.

What was that? What was the hesitation like?

I don't think that I can fly.

Oh, okay. No, yeah. Okay. So flying is not possible.

Correct.

What other things are, what is possible and what isn't possible?

I guess I'm going to try to keep this G rated because like, for like the first seven things that came into my head are our audience does.

Not care if it's G rated or not.

So let's see.

I would like to say that the chances of me becoming a really, really solid, like NASCAR style driver, they're dwindling.

Would you. Would you agree with the statement that if you put your mind to something, you could accomplish it?

Yes.

Then why can't we find a coach in Canada?

Listen to this. Long pause, everybody.

So what I'm thinking, I actually, I sit and marinate for a second.

Did you want to say something but you held it back?

No.

Oh.

So I was, I really processed, like, what's the reason? Right. So I think there's a couple of reasons that, that we have and is one is that there's definitely a difference between how we are and then how.

Canadians are. So I think it would be.

It's hard for anybody coming into our little thing because we're a pretty tight knit group. And also all the coaches that we have have been with us for a long time in one capacity or another. So we know each other pretty well.

And a lot of us knew each other even before we started working together too. Like it. We're totally a clique.

So you don't think that a Canadian would fit into our clique? What is it about Canadians that you, you racially profile them is not being clickable?

I don't know. I just think that there's a different aggression to what we do. And I think that Canadians are Russian. Canadians are really nice people.

You know when they say that they're sorry, they don't mean it.

I know that they don't mean it, but they want to. Yeah.

Sorry. They don't mean it.

No. But we will find a coach.

Canadian coach.

Yep.

So you keep wanting to hire an American coach and make a move up there don't you? That's what you've been thinking. You're like.

You probably have somebody in mind that just went through a divorce that needs a change in environment. I'm just like, hey, by the way, we got you a two year work from it, right? You're moving to Canada.

Have we ever talked about Toronto? It's right in the middle of the country.

It's not. It's. It's above New York, by the way.

Yeah, it's above Buffalo.

What is the one in the middle? Calgary is more the middle.

Yeah. Like Alberta, which is a pretty cool city. Right?

Calgary.

So no luck on hiring a Canadian coach, huh?

Still trying. Still working on it.

Okay. Do you. Do you want to talk about the top 10 reasons customers hate service advisors? I love this list.

I do. I feel like this is if there's ever been a list where everyone's gonna be like, oh crap. Yep. Oh crap. Yep. So we'll get down eight of them in every once in a while.

If I remember right, because we did this list a couple weeks ago. This was driven by our team of. Most of them have never worked in our business. They are just customers.

I feel like that's why it's the best list.

And when we started roundtabling this list, it was coming out of them like Jon Bon Jovi writes a song.

Right. Like we didn't get it down to 10.

Yeah.

I think it was 74.

Yeah.

And then we pared it down.

They had a lot to say.

They were not shy.

So there's a lot of outside input from our team and maybe we just kind of curated it, but this really isn't. It isn't our list necessarily.

We scribed it. Yeah. We didn't really manufacture it at all.

Okay, so top 10 reasons customers hate service advisors. Number one, they lie about diagnosis.

There is no doubt.

Number two, the car is never done on time.

Well, that's assuming that the customer actually gets an ETA of when the completion will happen in the first place.

Also, how could that be avoided?

Well, communicating and frame. Yeah.

Tell the customer the truth and stop trying to. Most of the time that's either because the advisor didn't tell the truth or the the advisor was trying to let. Was not trying. Was allowing the customer to tell him when it would be done.

Yeah. So we're two for two on not telling the truth.

Yeah. Number three, not done.

Right. Whoops.

How many advisors? Quality control. You watch that video? The circle of trust. Service advisor training. The circle of Trust. Is that what it's called?

Yeah.

Service advisor training. The circle of trust. One of the circle is qc.

The most skipped yet probably one of the most important.

Not done right. Most advisors would. And it's interesting from an outsider's point of view, most people on the inside like us would think, well that's the tech.

Not done right.

Correct.

But the. But it's interesting that a consumer perceives that it's the advisor.

They do, they're the representative. So I've heard that so many times that the advisors called the mechanic. Have you seen that? Yeah. The customers call the advisor mechanic all the time.

Number four of the top ten reasons customers hate service advisors. Charge for diagnosis while under warranty and.

Then lie about it.

Maybe I just blended 1 and 4. But that's crazy, right? I. I feel like nothing sets off the relationship of distrust just like that.

So I remember, I, I think this is in my book the Millionaire Service Advisor. I think the story. But I've told the story before because it's a true story and it stuck with me forever and is when I first got the job as an advisor. So there were times where I would get to cover for advisors when they were sick and out and all that. But when I was anointed advisor and I got my own advisor number which by the way, my Advisor number was 17, which is, which is a lucky number on the roulette wheel in Vegas. So I was 17, I got my advisor number and I don't know, first or second day riding service. The. These Boeing engineers bought Subaru SVXs. Do you know what those are?

Yeah, those little sports car things.

Yeah, they, they were like a sedan sports car. They were, they were, they kind of look like the Porsche Panamera in a way. In a way.

And they had a really cool dash. And there was something about the center of the dash I remember too.

And they had like the little side window. So a bunch of Boeing engineers, because this is Seattle, right where I wrote service, they had bought those because they thought they were an engineering wonder or whatever, which they were not.

This guy comes in and nobody wanted to write him up. And I remember he's just sitting out there, nobody wanted to write him up. So I just walked out to him and I'm like, how can I help you? And he goes, oh, I have an appointment, I need to drop this off. So I don't know, it's like a, I write it up, it's like a 20 something line RO of rattles and like, you know, and so I turned it into dispatch and then whatever later the dispatcher calls me down there or something and he's like, you need to get money for this. I think it had been in Ben and dispatch all day. And then he's like the world's worst dispatcher too. By the way, his name was Joe.

Was he the one who would throw your stuff out the door?

He threw my arrows in the alley once. He also was the one that had whiskey in his thermos and we thought he was drinking coffee, but he was just drunk all day.

Yeah. So.

I had to get money or whatever. The card sat there all day anyways. And then I had to get money from the guy. And I didn't, I didn't know that Subaru's rattles were only covered for the.

First 1212 or whatever.

Yeah, it was a really short warranty, something like that. Yeah. I think one of his things too, was it polls and, and all that, but customers perception that the car is under warranty and then things like alignment or rattles, depending on the manufacturer, they're not under warranty. Okay, number five, top 10 reasons customers hate service advisors. Different price.

Depending on who you talk to.

Yep.

And especially the point was brought up if you call parts directly.

Yeah.

So I don't, I don't know if that's still a thing that much, but I know it definitely was a thing where the parts department over the retail counter would quote a different price than what was quoted on the back counter.

That's exactly right.

Which is a, which is a confusing thing and a cause for customers to not trust us.

Yeah. And then, then even within advisors on the drive, you call. And if you got a, if you got a renegade advisor, they're quoting something at two hours instead of an hour when it should be. And it's like you can get five different prices with five different phone calls if you're not careful.

Okay, so I'm going to present number six. Like it's a Christian joke. Like it's one of your jokes.

I can't wait.

So you, you, the last couple times you haven't done this where you, you just like tell the joke. You're not like asking the question, the weird awkward pause and then the answer. So let's do the weird awkward pause.

Okay, I'm ready.

Okay, top ten reasons customers hate service advisors.

Number six.

Is.

Can't find one.

Yeah. The empty desk.

But I mean, that's kind of a. Would you call that an oxymoron? How can you hate somebody you can't find.

That's a really good point. And how in the name of all that's holy. Do they all have to leave at the same time? Like such a failure on that last person?

Like, they all go to the food truck.

Right. If there's five people and you're the last one before you go, like, there's just an epic failure.

Number seven is they don't call or pick up the phone.

Yeah. In any way, shape, or form. Yeah.

Number eight is they can never hear a rattle. Like, they're deaf.

What?

Like all service advisors can't hear rattles. Number nine is their condescending.

That's a. That's a community college word for sure.

Condescending. Yeah, well, it's the. It's kind of in what we would think of the opposite of empathy. A lot of advisors don't have empathy.

Right.

They think they're experts and customers are stupid. So we got customers that think advisors are stupid and advisors that think customers are stupid. And it's the chicken or the egg.

Yeah.

But the customers are the ones spending money, so maybe we need to be more empathetic.

We should be aware of their opinion for sure.

And then what do you think the last one is number 10 of the top 10 reasons customers hate service advisors.

Go ahead. You can ruin it if you know it.

I do know it. But then there's also a spin to it. Right. Is that advisors sometimes don't order the parts.

Now, is that the parts department's fault?

Well, who do the advisors blame it on?

The parts department, hands down.

Yeah.

So that's the top 10 reasons customers hate service advisors. They lie about diagnosis. Not done on time. Not done. Right. Charge for diagnosis while under warranty. Different price depending on who you talk to. You can't find one. They don't call or pick up the phone, can't hear a rattle to save their life. Condescending and forget to order the part. That's a pretty good list. Pretty fun. I like it. Okay, now we're going to go to your questions. Remember, if you call the hotline and we play your question on the big show, we are going to send you some swag. T shirt, coffee mug stickers, maybe a notebook. I don't know. It's swag. It's. It's great stuff the number. So write this down or put it in your phone. The service drive revolution hotline is 8333-Ask SDR. That's 833-327-5737 8333 Ask SDR for iPhone users. Okay, let's go to our first question.

I have A question about your repair authorization process. I understand it, and it makes sense in some ways. However, what do you do when the customer decides not to go ahead and do the repair? And now the technician has his, let's say, his one hour or so into it. Now, because you didn't get prior authorization for those diagnostic testing, now you're out on the hook to internal, your technician. Right?

That's my question also.

Christian, what happens to a frog's car when it breaks down?

I know the answer to this, too.

It gets towed away.

Christian, you're getting. You have, you have people calling in jokes.

I'm getting emails too, like you do. Some of our material actually comes from that.

What is the joke? What do you call it? What.

What happens when a frog's vehicle breaks down? It gets towed away.

Pretty funny.

Good work, Jesse. First thing I'm also wondering about Jesse is if he's got himself a girl and I want to make her mine.

What?

Yeah.

What do you mean?

Rick Springfield.

Oh, you want to steal his girlfriend? Jesse is Canadian.

I'm sorry, He's a boot. Oh, which is perfect for my moose mug.

Jesse, pay attention. Listen to me. You're not understanding what repair authorization is, my friend.

They are authorized. The. The term repair authorization insinuates that they authorized the full repair before you did it. Diagnosis would have nothing to do with it. If you say to a customer, hey, we're going to figure out what your coolant leak is, I'm giving myself $2,000 to work with. If it's less, it'll be less. If it's more, I'll give you a call. They can't decline the work because they've signed for $2,000.

I don't understand the question.

Well, I think what he's saying is, is that maybe the instances that he got the authorization for 2000 and it's more than 2000, and then he's saying, I holding nothing. If the customer says no to that. But you've got $2,000.

Yeah, you're. You're. You're charging them for diagnosis for sure.

Correct. So.

Yeah, if it. If. And then the thing to think about there is maybe you should have said a higher number because what are they like? The idea with, with repair authorization is it's kind of the worst case scenario. So, like, if I'm. If I'm writing up a BMW and it comes in for a coolant leak, I'm not getting a repair authorization for hose. I'm getting a repair authorization for the radiator. Now the Radiator is going to be like, I don't know, 4,000 bucks or whatever it is. If it's the water pump, it's two, right?

Yep.

And so I've got enough to do whatever it is I need to do. I'm going with the worst case scenario, which he's kind of telling the customer the truth, so. Well, the magic happens too, though.

But a really good thing, like, if you go worst case scenario and it's $2,000, you're a hero. And the customer spent $2,000. Like, I don't know any other scenario where it works that well.

Yeah, that's the. Yeah, that's the other part.

Did you.

Did you catch that, Jesse? Is what Christian's saying is, if you quote the $4,000 and it's only two, you're a hero.

But you just want to say, like, hey, I'm giving myself four grand to work with. Don't be so shy on the number. So the lesson here is probably you needed to quote a higher number to begin with, because then the customer might have said, well, if it's 2000, I don't want you to do it. Only spend a thousand. Then you know, you got a thousand to work with, but they're still paying. Diagnosis, my friend, even in Canada, that's how it works.

Good job.

We're gonna be sending you some swag. Next question.

Hey, Chris. This is Chris Mioli. I work in an independent shop, Essex County Auto Repair in Middleton, Massachusetts.

I got a question for you. We keep hearing it more and more, and I know we don't give out prices over the phone. We never do need a really good, smooth answer of why without having to get wordy and trip over my words with people.

You know, just, I need that one phrase that gets people to go, he's right. I need to bring the car in. It's the only way to do it so that they understand. Signed, the voice of God.

Great.

So I don't know what your opinion is on this, but I think that's more of a Jeremy thing, not to give a price.

Well, I definitely think it's a Jeremy.

Thing, and I've never believed in that.

Right. I think that you and I actually differ on this a little bit.

Okay, so tell me where you stand on it.

So I do believe that the focus of a phone call, in.

The end result of that is that the car gets here, Right? Yeah.

We want to get them in.

So I would want to educate the customer, and I would first say, you know, before I give you a Price on something, Tell me what it is that makes you feel like you're at that level, that that's what you need, whether it's a radiator, whether it's a brake caliper or whatever it is. How did you arrive at that part? And I would go into a thing and say, I'd be happy to give you a price on what this is, but I think the main thing is we want to figure out what it is first. Because I'd hate to tell you that it's going to be $500 and you show up and I tell you it needs $1,500, then neither of us are happy in that case. So I think that I would try to fight giving quotes over the phone because I think the thing I want is an appointment to figure it out.

Yeah. So I just think, like, I ran into this too, when, when I was a general manager of a BMW store and nobody wanted to quote prices on cars. And I knew, like, back then that the trend was going to, you know, online sales, and people just wanted it to be super easy. So in my opinion, the thing I would try to do is ask questions. So if somebody calls in and says, how much is a water pump on a 2015 Toyota Corolla? I would just say, okay, let me ask you a couple questions. So why do you think you need a water pump? Who told you this? Like, who's telling you that? And then I would say, you know, we. We get called on, on for price quotes all the time. And is this just about getting it the cheapest or is it. Is it about getting the car fixed? That's what I would ask. Then I'd say, well, I, I can get you a quote for a water pump. I'll have to put it together and call around. But if, you know, you're. You're also, you could ask them, like, how much they were quoted by somebody else and say, if I beat that, are you bringing it in? Like, what? Because you can get it in and recommend other stuff. Like, there's tons of things you can do. But I think asking questions and then putting them on ice and calling them back with the quote.

Okay, we don't differ that much. Then that's pretty close.

Because a lot of times you can find. If it's just about price, you can find a cheaper part somewhere. Like, if it's just about price, you could find a used part. I know that's a terrible idea, but there's no warranty. But you could find a used part, too.

I think. It's more about understanding what the customer needs and asking more questions. But at some point, people just want an answer, and you got to give them an answer.

Yeah. I don't think that you dance and say it's. I think the worst thing that you can say, though, is it's not our. What have I heard people say? It's not our? Like, that's not what we do. Like, it's not part of our business model that we give prices over the phone. Like, have you heard people say that before?

Yeah, I don't agree with that. I don't know.

Like, I just want to get people in and get them to do the repair. But, I mean, you can do a lot of things. It all goes back even over the phone. You have to build value in your shop. Like, I think that that's the thing. It's the answer to that is find a way to build value in your shop.

Create doubt in the other shop.

No matter. Nobody ever wants to call the cheapest plumber. Yeah. Yep.

Ask questions. But good question. Thanks. You guys want one more time? The number is 833-3-ASK SDR. Call us with your questions. And this was. This was fun.

That was a good list.

Very fun. We learned that I know how to diagnose a menu. I can fix a menu very quickly.

You can.

You could time me.

Could be a new game show.

It could be. Do you think there's an audience out there, like on Netflix for.

That was a good list.

Very fun. We learned that I know how to diagnose a menu. I can fix a menu very quickly.

You can.

You could time me.

Could be a new game show.

It could be. Do you think there's an audience out there, like on Netflix, for.

Who can beat Chris at diagnosing a good or bad menu at a. In a service department?

Yeah. I mean, I can think.

I don't think anybody cares about that.

But I can think of 10,000 people that would watch that. They're all YouTube support subscribers.

Do us a favor. Have a great week, and we'll see you next time 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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.