Types of Automotive Service Advisors | SDR #203

Welcome, everybody, to the big show service driver revolution. Today we're going to talk about the different categories of service advisors. You know, in industries like, let's say coaching, you have coaches that are the players coach, not the players coach. Right. There's all kinds of different categories that people fall into. And Christian has a list of categories for service advisors. And when we go through this list, you're going to be like, oh, yeah, I know that one. Yep, I know that one. Oh, I am that one. Or I was that one one. It's a pretty funny list and it's great stuff. Also, we're going to talk about your feedback from his trying to get an oil change debacle and kind of surprised us. The feedback a little bit and much, much more. Coming up on this episode of service drive revolution.

Strategy session yesterday, and it was for a Toyota store. The manager was really sweet and he said, I just listened to Christian talking about his experience trying to get an oil change. And he said, I feel like you were describing our service drive. And I was like, no, it's here in Southern California. But it's kind of funny, the reaction people had to that because most people in the comments on YouTube kind of sided with the dealership, saying, you were.

Wrong, I was wrong.

And I feel like you are missing.

The point. In the sense that we can't build our business around how we want to do it. We have to give the customer a vote.

You want the customer to feel like it was easy to do business with us. And more and more our industry.

Is. Well, I mean, if you're talking about a dealership service department.

It'S just funny in the sense that 80% of customers. This isn't a number we're making up. Like 80% of customers go to independence when they're out of warranty.

Let them. They didn't make an appointment.

Yeah, it's just like, so we have is a dealership. We have home field advantage. We have the ability to create a relationship because they have to come to us. They have to come to us for warranty.

We have all this opportunity to make them feel good. And.

We think that, you know, it's on the customer. It's just a. It's an odd take to me that that's how people feel. I adamantly disagree with you if that's your take.

Well, I think there's a couple of things there. The first is I just want if this whole discussion, the end result is that we acknowledge we can get better. I think that that's a huge part of it. And I would say to the people that think that, yes, it's the customer's fault if they don't make an appointment, that's true. If they don't make an appointment, I think in 12 months we're going to be having a very, very different discussion about where are all the customers. And we'll have to replay this part where we had the customers and they just went somewhere else because we made it too difficult for them. So I think in this particular case, that's already happening.

80%.

What kind of a business can sustain long term losing 80%?

I think it's tough. And I think that one of the things I would say is I thought I was realistic with my expectations. Obviously I wasn't, but I wasn't going in there expecting to get put to the front of the line. I would say I had probably more realistic expectations than a regular customer that doesn't know the business. I think that in general, people have it in their head that an oil change is an hour or less. So the expectation is there. And not only is the expectation there are there places they can go and get an oil change in an hour or less, within five blocks of wherever they're standing. So I'm just saying that the market is such that there are people that can actually execute on that kind of thing. And we have to be aware of the climate of the market. So I think build it to that. We have to and we can. And then the other part of it, I think the thing that I want to make sure isn't missed on that for that whole visit was that I think the worst part about it was the purgatory part. I don't know if you remember talking about that, where like, I was forced into a line of people that were punished for not having an appointment. And I wasn't told anything for an hour and a half before then. I was told it was going to be eight hours. Like, to me, I feel like if right when I pulled up, they're like, hey, we're backed up, we're completely full, I would have been like, man, I understand that. I know that there's times are tough right there. They'd be like, you're way better off coming back in a couple of days and making a blah, blah, blah. But I could have made a decision. I didn't have to invest an hour and a half of my day into it to find out that it was going to be eight hours. So I'm just saying that, like, there were hopefully in that example that Everybody sees there was opportunities for it to be better than it was. So did I.

If you, if you don't know what he's talking about, maybe go back in episode and listen. But he took his girlfriend's Toyota in for an oil change and they were booked out weeks. And so he decided just to drive in. Cause she puts a lot of miles on her car. And then long story short, our clients big auto group.

Huge.

Like what? Second largest in the country. Yeah, it's a big, big group right downtown here.

Easy. As a matter of fact, I never talked to a human just through text.

And that's my dream.

It was so wonderful. And I did make an appointment. Right. Maybe that was a good lesson for me, is to make sure that I'm always making an appointment, no matter how basic it is. But I dropped the thing off at 7. I didn't even talk to anybody on the drop off. I used the night drop. And then I said, here's what I need done. I need to pick it up by 5:30. It was 7 in the morning. So I gave him all day with the thing anyways. And then if I dropped off at 7, they contacted me by 7:10 via text. And actually they upsold me, which I was really impressed with.

What'd they sell you?

An oil change package. So I was pretty impressed with that.

Not an alignment.

No. So no one sold me an alignment yet.

I know you need an alignment.

There's no doubt I need an alignment. I'm just waiting for someone to tell me. But maybe a suspension. That's funny. But it was a really nice easy experience.

Most people when they see a roundel in the middle, you know, like an intersection where you go around.

Yeah.

Christian just goes right over the top.

What's this? What's the shortest way between two distances? Straight.

What's the best thing for the suspension?

Well, I mean you gotta, you gotta work it out a little bit.

Otherwise best thing for the suspension is to follow the road, not to go through the planter in the middle.

Yeah, I'm not really a good driver, you know, and I don't know if I ever told you this before, but I actually got. I got fired from a job once. I used to work in a calendar factory.

But they fired me for taking a couple of days off.

But that's okay, don't worry about that. Because I also had a friend at the same exact time, also got fired from his job. He was a taxi driver. And apparently customers didn't appreciate him going the extra mile.

It doubled up on you There.

Christian is so funny. Oh, man. So we were in Florida and I was doing. So we have this new leadership training that we're doing in the kind of leadership at SCT Southeast. Toyota was kind enough to let us go do it there and we had so much fun and it was great. But I, you know, it's new content, so I'm doing two days worth of content. I have all these notes. I'm, you know, I'm really. There's a bunch of layers to it. Right. Because we're doing a little pre game. So before they get there, there's. There's just a. There's a lot going on and some of it's kind of intimate in the stories I'm telling and very personal.

Thing.

Yeah, you're connected to it.

Yeah, I'm connected. Well, the audience gets. The people in the class get connected.

It's transformational.

Yeah. And so, you know, I'm thinking about all this and like, literally one minute before it's supposed to start, both days, Christian walks up to me and tells me the most inappropriate joke and then just walks away. And so later in the day, because I didn't, like, sometimes when something. Somebody tells you an inappropriate joke, I wish I had somebody else here to talk to because I can't ask you like, hey, does it, does it ever make you feel guilty when somebody tells you an inappropriate joke because you don't feel that. But I sometimes feel a little guilt of the, like, oh, my gosh, I'm laughing at that.

I can see where some of the jokes would make you do that.

Yeah, you know, in that.

The Chappelle thing.

The Chappelle thing. So there's this great Chappelle stand up special on Netflix called Sticks and Stones where he walks out and the beginning of it, over the credits, he's reading part of a Prince song. The lyrics of Prince song. And then the camera comes on and he's standing in front of an auditorium and he says, the good people of Atlanta, we live in a time where Anthony Bourdain killed himself. Where he starts to say Anthony Bourdain. The crowd starts to laugh.

No, they're clapping and cheering, but they're.

Conditioned that he's gonna crack a joke. And then you can tell the crowd's like, oh, what? Can't laugh at that. But it's too late.

I feel like you, you're like, like you just like getting over on people.

You don't have to like to ride that edge like that.

Later that, that afternoon, I asked Christian, I'm Like I was kind of saying like, hey, you know, you don't need to say that or whatever. And then he goes, no, it relaxes you.

I made the decision.

It doesn't, it doesn't relax me. Like. No, no, it does. You need, you know.

Do you remember what I use as a justification?

No, what did you say?

So I think I said this at the end of day too. You're like, man, like, you got to stop doing that. And I'm like, well, I'm just going to say that this was the best that you've ever done. Both days.

I told you took credit for, for how it went.

It has nothing to do with the hours and weeks and months of preparation.

Your inappropriate joke at the beginning, that made it good. But then you did it again the second day, right? Right as it was supposed to start. You walk up and you're like, kind of like you're seguing here. You're like, I was driving through the.

Where I snuck it in on you weren't sure.

So funny. Okay, let's talk about the different types of service advisors. I think that you've, you've had some fun with this. This is pretty funny. It's a great idea.

I think that everyone's going to relate to.

I don't know if you've been writing service for a year, you've probably worked with darn near all these people for sure. So I think that that's kind of fun. And, and it's a, it's a light hearted list at the end of the day. And it's really just kind of give everybody a little bit of entertainment, but it doesn't hurt. There's a lesson there where if you end up finding yourself almost classifying yourself as one of these people, there's hope you can fix that. Right? So we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. We have 10 of these bad boys. All right, so the first one, which is my personal favorite, and I think that. I don't know if you remember this, we did this episode a long, long time ago where it was like the worst four letter words that service advisors say.

So this first advisor is the. I was just going to call you.

Yeah, that was just gonna.

That they're always so far behind. They're like, oh, I gotta call this guy, I gotta call this person, I gotta call this person. I gotta get this answer to this tech. I gotta get this part ordered. And they're like always so far behind.

I always hate that when I call somebody and they say, oh, I was just thinking about you.

Do you ever say liar?

No, but I think it.

Yeah.

Ends up calling people a liar to their face. Usually doesn't work out good.

It's too far through the front door.

Too honest.

I get that. So everyone knows that. I was just going to call you.

My second one on this is the advisor that is all business, no fun, which looks you right in the eye when you pull into the service drive as a customer and furrows the brow and says.

Do you have an appointment? That's the all business, no fun. So we've all seen that one before. Yeah.

Just almost robotic.

Yeah, they're just there to write. Yep. Write paper, Put paper here, get paper back, put paper over here.

That advisor also their favorite thing is. Oh, well, our policy.

Oh, that's a good one for sure.

Our policy is.

That unless you're 35, you can't have a loner.

Wouldn't it be funny is that there's like a little. A little band. It's like 35 to 38 is the age for the loaner. Because at 38 you're too expensive. The insurance is going up. It's too expensive.

What would be funny is if you. If you. If it was 35, but if somebody was like, say 29, you're like, could you get your parents to come in and co sign or whatever.

That's pretty good too. I like it.

You don't consider you an adult until you're 35.

Yeah. So, all right, this next one, I don't think we have to bleep this one out, but everyone probably knows we do. Okay, fair. But the. I call this advisor the humper. So this is the advisor that anytime you want to find them, you're like, hey, where's Brock at? Is up at the cashier window. He's over at the reception.

The cashier might be attractive.

Yes.

And then you know what happens in. In that scenario is when you eliminate cashiers and you have advisors, cashier, their own stuff. Where does Brock end up?

Bdc.

Oh, I was gonna say the front.

Oh, yeah.

Exception. Like in sales.

That's right.

Brock finds a new object of his affection.

Yes. Brock's not stopping. I love Brock a humper. So that's the humper. The next. This is one of my favorite ones as a manager. I really like this advisor. I call them the showstopper. It's always like, look what I did. Like every time they. They sell a big maintenance or they get a big job, it's look what I Did. Look what I did. They want it. They want to get credit for every single great thing that they've done.

Which I think that's kind of cool. At least they're showing pride in it, and they know that they're trying to do the right thing.

They're looking for validation.

They're looking for validation, which is really easy to give them. So I like that advisor a lot, the one that's actually like, hey, this is my body of work. This is my career. So I kind of like the Showstopper.

The Showstopper usually has good team spirit, too.

That's right.

Usually a team player.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I didn't think about. This next one's one of my favorite ones. I call this the lawyer. So this is the one that actually is like, a customer's coming in, and they're like, I've got this concern. And they're like, yeah, no, no, the manufacturer's not gonna cover. That's technically not a defect. If I look up bylaw 422.68. Yeah, that's not gonna be a covered component. Like, literally buy the book. They are counsel for the manufacturer. That same person also is the one that's coming in to the manager's office and being like, yeah, so I helped that customer out on September 24th of 2014. They're back today for their breaks. I feel like that should be my ticket.

The lawyer loves to give you those things. So I really like the lawyer, too. I always think that that's funny to hear them really advocating on the part of the manufacturer. So the lawyer's kind of like the manufacturer advocate, but then we've got the customer advocate right now. I do think that in general, as service advisors, you represent the customer, but there might be times where you go a little bit too far for that. And this is the advisor that comes in, and they're always like, can we do this for the customer? And those.

Those advisors also usually tend to discount.

Yes. So there's probably a punchline to that that maybe you'll hit. You know, can we. Can we do this? Can we split this. Split the cost of this job with the customer? Yeah, Things that I'll get asked, but.

You'Re looking at the R, and you're like, okay, so it's got 100,000 miles on it.

They've changed the oil once.

Somewhere else.

Somewhere else.

Yeah. They haven't been here since the car.

Was done somewhere else. Use those great filters that are made out of a paper mache. That's right inside.

Yeah.

So that's the customer advocate. But really, at the end of the day, when they're doing the discount and they're asking for the extra above and beyond, what is it that their problem is?

What?

I think it's themselves. They're not seeing the value of themselves.

Oh, yeah.

So it's a self confidence issue.

Yeah, well, they get their value out of trying to give stuff away versus understanding that.

People actually can't work on their cars themselves.

That's right.

That's the punchline.

Yeah, that's a really good punchline. All right. Now, in contrast to the customer advocate, our next advisor is what I call the tech advocate. So I'm sure you guys have seen this where every time.

The advisor has a repair order, they're coming into the manager's office and saying, hey, can we get. Can we get John another half hour, another two tenths or there was a little bit of rust on the wheel on this. Can we, can we get in a little bit of extra? Like where they're always fighting for the technician. And I think there's actually. I think you do have a lot of times where you should be fighting for the text when it's legitimate, 100%. And the other thing that I notice about the tech advocate, they're typically pretty well liked in the shop, so there might be some lessons to glean out of that. But that tech advocate, where they're always asking for something extra for the tech, I think that's so funny. Then my personal favorite is the advisor that I call Obi Wan, where it's like they wave their hand and the tech does what they're supposed to. They wave their hand and their co workers do what they're supposed to, and then they wave their hand at the customer. And the customer's like, whatever it needs, go ahead and do it. Like, they literally are the master of the universe at that point. They never get rattled. No matter how many tickets they've written, they're still under control. They don't have a mess at their desk. They're way ahead. They're communicating with the customers as opposed to making the customers call in and ask for them and get stuck in the hold purgatory. That's Obi Wan. That's the next level advisor. Then I've got two more. And then I think my, my list is coming to the end.

I think I have a bonus one, the Obi Wan. I think Hassan. So Hassan is he works in the Hudson Group? Yes, he worked.

For our clients and Then he worked for us for a little while, but, man, he was Obi Wan in the sense that Tex fought to be on his team.

That's right.

So he took very good care of his text, but if he said something, they did it. Same thing with customers. He had this control of customers and he had the ability, like, I many times saw him write three customers at the same time. He'd be like, sit. You do that? Like.

He was like that. Is that who you were thinking of when you were. Yeah, yeah. He was special.

Yeah. So I was going to. I was going to originally call that the goat, but I think Obiwan kind.

Of calls him the goat.

So I think that the thing was, it was almost mystical the way that he got people to do his bidding. So that's why it kind of went that way. The next one is probably a cousin of the customer advocate, but the wallet seller.

So wallet seller and the fact that they have their wallet in front of their face, they can't see through it.

That's right.

Yeah. So they're the ones that. You're like, well, why didn't you tell the customer they needed this? They're like, oh, they couldn't have afforded it. You're like, well, but you got to offer it to them. Or like they're almost talking customers out of it before, you know, instead of just selling value.

They're the ones most likely to pair a ten line list into a two line list.

And they're okay with a customer driving around with an unsafe car because they drive around with bald tires or whatever. Right. Because they're so cheap. They think. They think so little of themselves that they project that on everybody else.

Yeah. The wallet seller is least likely to do maintenance on their own vehicle.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a really good point.

They're the worst.

Yeah.

And then they also disc. They have. The only mode is usually to discount. They'll discount before they even talk about the price. I mean, that happened to us today, right? We're buying chairs. We had to pay whatever they were.

We were a captive audience.

We were in a situation where we had to have chairs today. And supply and demand is an issue. I don't know if you guys have heard, but they had chairs and we needed the chairs. And then the lady's like, I'm gonna.

Give you 30 off without asking, without expecting.

You gotta. You gotta give some credit to the beard and my, you know, just how handsome I am. Quite charming in that scenario, I think. Yeah. But she would maybe be that. Or she's Just has good taste.

Well, there's also, you know, what could have been different, though, is they also. Look, she looked up your purchase history.

Oh, yeah. I told her when we went in there, I said, we've been customer of the day before.

Yeah. He's like customer of the month.

We've spent. We spent some money there, but like that furniture store.

Yeah, yeah. But I don't think you're not buying there because of the discount.

I did not expect a discount in the sense that she was giving us stuff off the showroom floor that's going to take her months to replace.

Yes. She was solving it.

There's a value to that.

Yes.

Now, I'm not going to say no to the discount, but we were buying either way.

Yep.

And we got a bunch of people coming here, and we need chairs, and we don't want them to sit in folding chairs.

That's right. And if you had left there, paid full price, and still the phenomenal service that she gave me, she pulled stuff. You could have paid full price and bragged to everybody about the experience.

I mean, when we went in there, we were. She said that she would give us two chairs off the showroom floor, and we walked out with six.

Six chairs.

Yeah.

Which was exactly what we needed. You did some Obi Wan stuff there.

That was pretty good beard. I'm telling you, that baby face of yours cost 30%.

That's as far as I would get. Is thinking about growing a beard. My kids fascinated with my mustache. He calls it the Bigote, which is Spanish.

He'll look good with a mustache when he grows up.

Oh, yeah, for sure. All right. And then we have the last one. And I think that for this reason alone, is the biggest challenge for tech. Going to Service Advisor. And this is the drive diagr.

Like the former tech. The former tech diagnoses everything before it gets to the tech.

How difficult does that have to be as a technician after years of fixing all these cars and seeing problem after problem over and over and over again in so many patterns. And then someone comes in with an issue, and you have no choice but to shut up and not say anything.

That's got to be so difficult. But, man, you can spot them from a mile away.

Yeah. Imagine being the technicians that ro. And it's wrong.

Oh, great. Yeah. So there's.

So there's no way you're supposed to not diagnose it and just replace the part.

Yeah.

Ends up. No. You kind of got to do double. Double work. Right.

Jeremy wrote it. Okay.

I have. I have 11.

I can't.

Mostly just because I like odd numbers. So 10 feels. Feels off to me.

Somebody just commented that the other day. They're like, wait a minute. Why was our list even?

Hate even. Even lists. I like odd. You know what my favorite number is?

Do people have favorite numbers? Is that a weird thing to say?

I think so. I don't have one particular, but three.

17.

Why do you think 17?

Because it's the middle of the roulette table, and I won a lot of money on roulette with 17.

It's also a prime number.

Number 11.

The should always be a quick lube advisor.

Should never. Should never move out of quick loop.

The lifetime quick lube job.

Barely can do that.

Yeah.

Barely can do that. Oh, that's funny. Always a quick lub.

That anything. More like the second that it's like an oil change, a rotation, and God forbid they put, like, brake fluid on it or something like that. And they're like, okay, that's too much. Can somebody else help?

You know what's funny too, is, like, there's advisors that are on the quick lube for like, a year, and at the end of the year, they don't know anything about the cars.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

Like, you would think that in that scenario, they would have learned enough about the cars that they can segue to. To a regular shop advisor. By the way, I don't condone having quick lube advisors. I think that it's the worst scenario ever to have a quick lube. But.

When you do, it's interesting how they don't. Sometimes they don't evolve. Yeah, they're just doing oil changes. If they sell something, they hand it off. So they're never really closing it out or.

Well, it's the same thing with a quick lube tech. They don't see the progression. Right.

Yeah.

They're just stuck in that closed loop.

But it's interesting how a quick loop tech that does some breaks, does some alignments, get some other stuff. How much more inspired they are.

Yeah.

Sparks their creativity.

I was. I was trying to. As we're kind of wrapping this thing up, I was like, okay, do I do a joke to end it? And so I've been starting to write a joke about leeches, but it sucked.

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.