This is a conversational transcript of a Service Drive Revolution episode (host Chris Collins with Jeremy O'Neill and Christian Lafferty) about the "volunteer’s dilemma": people assuming others will handle small tasks, leading to visible neglect (trash, dirty bathrooms) that signals low pride and poor customer service. The hosts link this dynamic to service-advisor workload imbalances and recommend proactive cultural fixes—leadership by example, actively calling out lapses, and enforcing simple behaviors (e.g., greet customers within six feet). The episode closes with banter, a preview of the next show, and CTAs to subscribe and comment.
Chapters
Foreign.
Welcome to this week's Friday drive by on Service Drive Revolution. Please say hello to Jeremy o' Neill and Christian Lafferty. How are you guys?
Gentlemen, tgif. I am so happy it's Friday.
Yeah. Okay, so this series we're calling the elephant in the room. Things that. That we know are happening but nobody really talks about. Right. It's the big elephant under the desk.
Like Trump getting reelected.
No, nothing like that. Leave the jokes to. It's again, Christian. Did you run that one by him?
No.
Today I want to talk about volunteers dilemma. Let me explain what it is. The volunteers dilemma models a situation in which. In which each player can either make a small sacrifice that benefits everybody or instead wait in hope of benefiting from someone else's sacrifice. An example of the scenario in which an electricity supply has failed for an entire neighborhood. All inhabitants know that the electricity company will fix the problem as long as at least one person calls to notify them at some cost. If no one volunteers, the worst possible outcome and is obtained from all participants. If any one person elects to volunteer, the rest benefit by not doing so.
Sounds like service advisors. Yeah.
And so I think one example of this and this volunteer's dilemma is an indicator of the culture in your business. And let me tell you where you start to see it. You go into a drive and there's garbage and trash around. You come back a month later, it looks exactly the same. In the culture in your business is chicken or the egg, which came first? Who's gonna do it?
I didn't put it there. It's not my trash.
Exactly. And there's absolutely no pride.
In the business. And in the fact that customers take that, perceive that we don't care about ourselves. Right. We don't care enough about ourselves to pick up the trash or clean up or straighten up or make sure the bathroom's clean. Right?
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a gateway. So what happens there? Instead of focusing on the positive, once they see that, that pile of yuck there, they. They find every other thing. They find every dirty corner. They find, like you said, every dirty bathroom, every vending machine that's not working, like, it all comes up because of the pile. It's like, okay, these people don't care that much. So I have low expectations.
And I'll tell you another thing that there's a commonality between the businesses that have dirty bathrooms and employees will walk by trash and not pick it up and how they treat customers. Customer comes in and says.
Where'S the bathroom? They point over there. Not, oh, let me show you. Right. Go on a wild goose chase, good luck, I don't care. Because your culture is. The little things don't matter. And it's the volunteer's dilemma.
Yeah.
So you have to attack that. You have to make a big deal about it. You have to overreact and you have to constantly talk about it. Right. Six foot rule. Any customer around, you got to say hi. You catch somebody not doing it, you make it a big deal. You see somebody walk by a piece of trash, you make it a big deal. All those little things add up. But assuming that somebody else is going to do it is cancer in your business, in your department.
So we've had a lot of questions recently of the advisors that are high achievers, but they take on extra that other advisors ignore. I remember when we worked a shared floor at one of the dealerships, I would turn, you know, there's five advisors that way. At 10am I'd turn. Nobody else is on the drive. They're all out doing their thing. Cause they'd written their cars for the day and then there's four cars that pull in and who's going to help them? So I was in that dilemma of, okay, I've got to help these customers. These guys aren't there. So then my RO account grows, my responsibilities grow. I can't get back to the customers I'm supposed to because I'm busy writing all day long. So that's another one that I think if I could go back in time, what I would do different is I would communicate better with my team and call them out on it, you know, in a nice way. But that way we can all, you know, win instead of me just taking the brunt of it. Yeah.
And understand that you got to lead by example. I mean, I don't, I don't know how many times I go to another business and I'm walking on the lot and I pick up trash and I'm walking with the owner and it's like I'm starting leading by example is that drives me crazy. And I don't even own your business. And it's always interesting to witness that reaction.
You know, there's weeks at my shop that I'm walking around. I'm so glad Chris isn't coming up this week because we have some cleaning to do. Can you answer a question for me?
Sure.
I see a lot of.
Well, but will you say it in the voice of God?
No.
Why not? I can't do it that well. That's why cigarettes why do they always end up on the ground? Why can't they go in the ashtray? That is a huge pet peeve of my.
Because people don't eat them.
Like, I don't know. You got to. You got to make ashtrays everywhere and easily accessible to you, but it's easier.
Just.
Yeah, smoking's a dirty. It's a dirty thing. You got to clean them up. It's just a part of it. You have to accept it. We're not. We're not trying to be right. We're just trying to win.
There we go.
So it's. That's. That's a little food for thought volunteers. Dilemma chicken or the egg. Create a culture in your business where they're attacking it. They're not waiting for somebody else to do it because it's. It's cancer and it's poison in your business. Do me a favor. Pay attention to this preview of the upcoming episode of Service Drive Revolution.
Next week on Service Drive Revolution, we're going to talk about space travel.
Independents are way better at trust than dealerships. I also paid them $500 to make this call so I could actually win the challenge.
Service loses them before they even get a shot.
Well, we do get emails from the voice of gods.
Do you know how we came up with the term voice of God?
I have a dark spot on my soul, so I'm going to hell anyway, so it doesn't matter.
So if you're offended by it, yeah.
Get over it before go pedal gets pushed. The go motor has to.
Can you get herpes from your mosquito?
Probably, man.
Have you ever partied with parts managers?
Yeah, they don't have to work the next day. It's not a problem.
He's got an answer he can't.
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.
