Kevin, 57, wants to move from field technician to service advisor. The shift isn't about age but mindset: advisors document and investigate problems instead of fixing them, juggle more tasks, and manage customers. You need enough product knowledge to talk shop without slipping back into technician mode.
Hi Chris. My name is Kevin and I am a 57 year old field service technician for a copier IT company. I've been doing this for over 30 years. I have a pretty good rapport with my customers, so my customer service skills are there. But my question is I've been interested in doing, doing advisor work. There's a couple positions available in my area and they say no prior experience is required. But my question is, at my age, how do you feel about going into that line of work? As you said in your previous shows, the advisor doesn't need to know how to fix what's wrong with a vehicle. That is the technician's job, which I can totally understand that with my background in customer service and my ability to communicate with people. I'm just wondering how you feel the jump would be for someone in my situation. Again, I enjoy the show.
My name's Kevin, so a couple things, Kevin, come to mind instantly for me. Same for you.
Yeah.
So the first one I would say is when you're going out to clients, fixing printers and that sort of thing, you're usually for the most part, I know there's exceptions. You're dealing with one customer at a time and although being a service advisor can appear like you're dealing with one customer at a time, you're not. You're dealing with all the customers you wrote before, the ones that are in the shop, the ones you're writing now, the ones that want to come in and are on the phone. And so there's a lot more going on. And it's harder to just be in the moment with the customer you are with. And so that's, that would be an adjustment period. It's just different is all it is. It isn't that you can't adjust. I don't think Your age of 57 has any, any relevance in this whatsoever.
I'm gonna be 50 and I don't, I don't think that seven years from now I would have a hard time writing service personally.
And then you kind of got the part. So you're obviously a fan of the show. And listen that the hardest part for somebody that's technical is to turn off that switch of fixing. Instead of fact finding, you're more of a private detective, investigator, as an advisor and documenting that information than you are a problem solver or a fixer. And so right now you're, the customers are telling you what's wrong and you're instantly fixing it. You're going to have to shut that part off and retrain your mind to just document, investigate, ask questions, verify things like if they have a noise or something, you want to verify it before you give it to the tech. A lot of times, yeah. But.
You know, being a service advisor can be very rewarding, very fun, and you're helping a lot of people if you know, if you have the right mindset. So I wouldn't advise against it. What would you say?
I don't advise against it either. I, I think I might have a little bit of a different opinion on the technical aspect of service advising. Because as much as I agree that if you're a service advisor, don't speak to your customers like you're a technician because they're not going to know what you're talking about. I think service advisors, whether it's the copy printer, it side or it's the automotive side, that there should be at least like a base level of some sort of product knowledge because your customers are going to ask you questions and if you have no idea what they're asking, it's not really going to help build that rapport. But there is that fine line of how much do you share with the customer or how much knowledge should you have as a service advisor before it gets to a point where you're already fixing it in your head or you're telling the customer how it gets fixed, you know, So I think there's a balance and it takes a very specific.
Kind of training or experience to be able to walk that line.
Yeah, that's good. Awesome. Well, good luck, Kevin. I hope you do become an advisor and have a lot of success and call in maybe and update us and maybe we can have you on the show after you do it for a while and we can talk about what the transition was like and how on or off are we. Yeah, in our, in our description. Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving 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.
