Unwritten Rules Service Advisors Need to Know!

Foreign.

To this Friday, drive by where we answer your questions. I'm Chris Collins. That's Chris Joan.

Hello, everyone.

And standing next to him is that handsome devil, coach Cliff, who's here helping us out, answering your questions. That's what we're here to do. Answer your questions. Should you have a question, the number that you want to call is 833-3-ASK SDR. That's 8333-ASK SDR. It has happened to me recently where people DM me a question on Instagram or Facebook.

Don't do that.

Thank you.

But don't let me tell you why we did that. And it sounds way better when you ask us the question then if we read you're a question because it doesn't have as much context and it just sounds. It just doesn't work as well. And so we need your voice and your inflection and, you know, we want to hear your pain or your joy or whatever it is.

Because Christian and I aren't good at recreating your pain. We have our own pain. We might impose our pain on your joy. I don't know.

Speaking of pain. So they say that chameleons, they blend well, but I got to tell you, it ruined my smoothie this morning.

Okay, let's go to the first question.

What pitfalls are there to look out for when you're a brand new service advisor? And what are some of the unwritten rules that you usually only find out about once you've broken them? And a second question. If you had the choice to be a service advisor for riding passenger vehicles or big trucks, which are the benefits for both of those, and which one would you pick if you had the choice?

Service advisors that are the most successful.

Are good at two things.

Getting the customers to like and trust them. All of your sales, all of your future business come from your likability and trust by the customer. So you have to put a lot of care into how the customers feel. If they feel like you're ignoring them, if they feel like it's just a transaction, if they feel like you don't care, you're indifferent or you're too busy or you don't follow up, all of those things kind of chip away at your likability and trustworthiness to customers. So you got to put a tremendous amount of effort into getting to know your customers on a personal level, talking about the things that matter, like work, kids, football teams, baseball teams, whatever it is. But you got to understand one thing, that car or truck is a commodity. And anybody can service it.

It's it. You're the, you're the thing that makes it special. And your likability and trust is the magic. The second thing is as a service advisor is you need the technicians to believe in you. So you got to go out of your way to over communicate with the technicians. If they recommend something, you got to call and if you don't sell it, you, you need to tell them that you didn't sell it. But don't leave them wondering what's going on. And you want to get the best descriptions, you just really want to work at that relationship. Because if the technicians believe in you when you're in a pinch, they're going to help you, they're going to feed stuff your way because they know that you'll follow up, you'll call, and it will make your life a lot easier. So those two things matter more than anything else. Not the other advisors. You know, the two things that matter the most are how the customer feels and the technicians believing in you and understanding now. Items that are the things you learn about until it's too late.

There's a, there's a couple, I guess that I would think of. The first one being that you, you probably will wake up in the middle of the night and think about a car you didn't park out or whatever. So you need to keep notes and don't wait to do stuff like if there's something that needs done, just do it now. If there's somebody that needs call, call now. Because there's so many things going on. If you don't take instant action and have notes and go, you know, the one thing you want to do is go through your log sheet before you leave every night and make sure you, you've touched everything, parked everything out, whatever it is you have to do, but keep a really good log. The other thing is, is there's usually shenanigans with people changing numbers on ros. So you don't want to do that because what goes around comes around. Also I would, you know, if it's somebody else's customer, I would treat it just like it was mine. Can you guys think of any other weird stuff as an advisor?

Two more. You want to go first though?

Well, I was just gonna say effective communication. You kind of touched on effective communication with a technician, but effective communication with the customer, effective communication with other departments. I don't think that there's a way that you cannot be over communicate with other people. That would be the.

Yeah. And tell the truth it's not your car or truck.

I never understand that when advisors don't tell customers the truth. Like.

The job pays the tech eight hours and you're trying to promise it in six. Makes no sense. Like we need it for a couple days. It's a big job and we want to test it and do it right. Like, you know, we don't want to hurry. So a lot of times you get too excited and you over promise.

Yeah. So that's pretty close on now that I think about it. I've got three total. So one weekend. So this guy's seven days into his job. So when I was an advisor way back when, on my seventh day, if someone came down and said this to me, I probably would have changed the way that I approached service advising.

Don't eat yellow snow.

That's also great advice. Maybe not in the realm of service advising, but it's just good life advice. Right.

So first, more ros does not equal more money.

Oh, that's good. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

So that's one of the first things that I wish.

Slow is fast. Fast is slow.

Yes. And then these guys started to hit on. The second thing is that it is not your wallet. So when you're presenting things to the customer, do not pass your beliefs or your judgment onto whatever the repair is. Your responsibility to the customer is to exchange information with them. You know something about their car, they do not know that. Your job is just to exchange the information. And like Chris said, if you've made friends with them, they then have you do the work. It's not as complex as it seems. And then the final thing they also hit on is do not assume a social contract with your coworkers. Do the right thing. So those were the three things that I had.

Okay, that's great stuff. Then the last one, his question is, if you had the choice to be an advisor at a truck heavy truck like say at Kenworth or Mac. Matt, we like Mac has a bulldog as a.

Yes.

My buddy Mike bought two Mack trucks for his company and bulldog right on the front. I walked right over and broke them off and took them nice. Kind of like the front of a Rolls Royce back in the day before they figured out to make them pop up and down, retracting. You were going to be an advisor.

Would you be an advisor at a heavy truck dealership or a car dealership?

Now I'm going to tell you that for me, the truck dealership.

Has more potential as far as the numbers, but truck dealers are light years behind Car dealers in the sense that I've yet to see. Yet to see. And I could. Could be wrong. But even if I'm wrong, it's such a small minority. It's irrelevant that advisors are paid commission in a truck dealership. So you'll make more money in a car dealership because you're commission. But should anybody or should we decide to buy truck dealerships and pay advisors commission? It is unbelievable what you could write if you like. Most truck dealerships don't do inspections. Most truck like the advisors are just basically a warranty administrator in different clothes.

They're literally paid hourly in some situations.

Yeah. No vested interest whatsoever.

In the outcome. So if you could find a truck dealership that paid. That had a great pay plan, I would. I would pick truck. But since that's gonna be hard to do, I would. I would do car.

Yep.

You guys agree with that?

I was gonna say truck with a car pay plan.

Oh yeah.

That's so funny. I had no idea that you're at.

Is the reason why we should buy. We should buy some dealerships because it's just crazy how.

Well, I don't know. Just the other problem there is most of the truck dealerships, the techs are hourly too. So they're not vested in the production. The average efficiency is like 60% or something.

What do I do if I'm in my office in my computer and I'm just depressed. I'm bored.

It's dark.

There'S no windows.

There's no windows, so. And the shipping, the shipment, what do you call that? The stock order hasn't come in.

I like that you're talking with the southern accent with cliff here. It's so awesome because it sounds like you're trying to be him.

Did you bring barbecue with you?

It's a straight dig.

Yeah.

No, no.

He probably brought sardines.

Funny if you carried them, but okay, play.

Oh, I got a thing first. So I was gonna tell both of you this. I literally spent an hour.

A couple of weeks ago. I wrote down all the letter possibilities from ask SDR to see if I could make a little catchy thing about, you know, ask parts is parts hold taken. So the coolest one I got was ask pcp. Like if angel dust can't help you with it, I don't know what else can.

Hey, Chris, it's Sam. I work at a pretty decent size independent. We have four techs, two advisors, me and my dad and then a service manager and some guy in parts. My question is for you. I've been listening to you for a while now is we have kind of an expensive brand BMW. So I typically see my average repair order is about $1,000. And what I see is we'll have a repair done on a car and either still be with us at the shop or later down the road, customer coming back on what they would say, a repeat issue, and it's usually something else that's wrong with the car. How would you go about explaining or providing that information to the customer when they see it as the same problem? And if it is something different, how do you go and prove to them that it's not? Is there a way that you can still instill trust with your customer, letting them know, hey, we're, we're working on your vehicle and taking care of these problems kind of one thing at a time. And we have to do it in this order for testing purposes versus having them think that we're just trying to sell them a bunch more work. I really appreciate what you guys do and look forward to hopefully hearing your answer.

Some guy in parts, everybody in the department.

But then some know his name.

Some guy in parts.

Being a former parts guy, how does that make you feel?

That was a straight dig. I felt like he might have known that I was sitting in and.

Yeah, that's funny, Sam, right?

Thanks for the great question, Sam. So let me give you another example and then I'll tie this together. When I was a service advisor early on, I would write up customers and then the technician would bring me an inspection sheet filled out that, hey, this car needs this and this and this different than the original problem, right? So let's say Subaru customer came in and it was for their 90k and they had head gaskets leaking and all kinds of other stuff. And I would call the customer and say, hey, you, you need these things on the car. And oftentimes I met a lot of resistance. And the customer would be like, I didn't ask you to look at that. Like, even, even if it was going to save them money.

Right?

Like, I, I didn't ask you to look at my tires and tell me they were bald. And it was kind of, you know, kind of discouraging in a sense, because you think you're doing the right thing and then you're met with all this resistance and then.

Figured out that if you tell the customer, write up, hey, I'm going to have my technician do an inspection, I would actually hand the customer the inspection sheet, let them hold it. Like, I don't. They would look at it. And they would look at all the stuff.

And I would say, I'm gonna have my technician check it out. If I find anything, I'm gonna let you. I'll let you know. Just being the good guy while it's here kind of a thing. And then when I called the customer, I had, I had a little spiel. I would say, like how I would do it. We call it the table of contents in our advisor training, like, how I would present that. But it became very effective in my closing ratios were very high and customers were very happy because I changed that one thing earlier and then I framed it. And so I have a lot of experience with BMW and I know, like, say, for example, you replace a coolant hose, they leave, and now the radiator top is leaking or whatever. It's, it's. I mean, the great thing about those German cars is they break. Try being a service department for Hyundai or Kia, they don't break. So it's all in the frame up front. You got. It's how you present it to a customer. Like, hey, we're gonna replace these hoses and repressurize the system. But all the parts were born together and they all grow up together. And there's a chance that coolant will find the path of least resistance. But as it appears now, this, this should take care of it. But leaving that open loop that this is what it looks like now, but not making now final, like, this is the fix, because, you know, you're. The average age of the car in your shop is something like 10 years old. There's no such thing as a guaranteed final fix on anything. So.

It'S all how you frame it up front. If it gets to the point where you're arguing with the customer to lose, lose, it's too late. Like, then, it's just. Then you're just in a situation like even if you're right, you lose, you know.

So.

I think it's in the frame up front, or that's been my experience more than anything else, is not making it final and leaving it open. Like, hey, this is what it looks like for now. But, you know, all the hoses are born together. The coolant system, you know, the belts, everything, it's got the same wear and tear on it. So when things start to go, they start to go. Now, being an advisor in a dealership, your segue there would be, hey, it might be time to trade it in. You're probably not going to do that from your position.

But it's not your Car. It's their car and they, you know, they're taking responsibility for it. So open loop is what I've found to be effective. There's. Did you guys add anything to that?

No.

And a parts guy.

Some guy.

Would Anna. Parts guy. Add anything to that?

Some guy.

That was so awesome.

Some guy in parts.

Some guy in parts.

So the thing that I wrote down was that just remember that he's like, well, when the car comes back and the customer says that it's related, I wrote down perception's reality. So the first thing you have to understand is that the customer doesn't know cars well enough to know what's a comeback and what's not. They just know that since they paid you a whole bunch of money that this thing is going on. So I think that you have to approach that as a, let's figure out what's going on. It would never be my intention to have you spend money with me, fix stuff, and then you leave and come back. It doesn't help you, it doesn't help me. But what does help both of us is figuring out what's going on. So I always promise that we're going to get the answer before I start to talk about what's a comeback and what's related and what's not. Because the main thing is, is you want the customer to feel like they've been addressed immediately and that they're a top priority. So perceptions, reality, remember that. And I think that at the end of the day, and Chris did a great job with the inspection thing, but what I've noticed when I'm talking to shops or dealerships, either way, if the shop is having a lot of cars like that come back, I always go back to questioning the quality of the inspection because especially a shop like you're in where you're a BMW specialist, those techs should know the cars like the back of their hand, so. And like everything, they've got personalities, so they should start to have commonalities in terms of things that they need. But if we're not doing quality inspections, you'll have more of those comebacks, not less.

I was walking to work and I saw a fish with eight eyes. And I thought, what do you call a fish with eight eyes?

And we will see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. 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 that's offers chriscollinsinc.com. i'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.