A Ford service advisor asks Chris Collins and panelists what makes a service department work. They point to net profit, customer retention, quality treatment, intentional processes, and keeping employees as the real markers of success.
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Hello and welcome to the big show. This is your Friday drive by where we answer your questions. The Phone number is 8333 Ask SDR. You could think of this as.
Psychotherapy for the auto industry.
Yeah, Chicken soup for the soul.
How you doing, Chris? Joan?
Great.
I love Fridays.
Let's say it one more time. 8 3, 3 3, ask SDR. That's the number. 83 3, 3, ask SDR. If you have a question. Let's go right to. To our. Should we call them a victim?
The inquiring minds.
Hey Chris and Chris. Sean. I'm a service advisor at a high volume Ford dealership and I was calling in regards to two questions I have for you both. My first question is what are some of the key features idealistically of a perfect running service department?
My second question is what makes a good service department good versus a bad one?
Well, whatever is happening in the service department on a day to day basis, there's a positive or a negative outcome. The positive outcome would be that they're highly profitable, so 50% meant to gross and that their retention is really, really high. So depending on the brand. But how many customers want to come back? What's the customer experience? So the two most important measurables are our customers coming back, what's our retention and are we profitable? Are we making a profit?
Yeah, that's good. And then I've heard you say this before, but I want to reiterate it again. You can tell whether or not a store is healthy by how they treat the customers. I think that that's probably something that's really important. Like your employees. When dealership's really, really good, you see a reverence for the customer. Never fighting, never arguing, never trying to be right with them. It's literally just the customer's an honored guest when they walk into the dealership. And I would say too that when you have a store, like if you're saying how can you tell if it's good or bad when you walk in? If there's intentionality everywhere, there's nothing left to chance. And there's no that that organized chaos or whatever it is that people try to use that as an excuse for why they've got.
Yeah, but still the outcome of that is what?
Profitability, retention, good csi, employee retention, all that stuff goes along.
Yeah, that's a good one. So yeah, profit, not gross profit, net profit, after the bill T. Profit.
It's one of my favorite things.
Any profit.
Yes. I love any profit.
I love financials. It's Just don't you get excited when you get a financial breakdown. Cell phone. Okay, well, thanks for the question. I hope everybody has a great weekend. And make sure you tune in Monday for the big, big, big, big show. Huge show where I'm positive we get into some deep, deep conversations about Christian's childhood growing up in Illinois.
Yeah, that reminds me. There's a. Have you seen that new series on Netflix? You know what's funny is you always like, I don't know if there's ever been a time where you're like, hey, have you seen that? And I've been like, yes, I've seen it. I don't know if you notice that or not, but, like, you're always eight shows ahead of me. But there's this. There's this new series. It's on.
It's on male bladder issues, and it streams nightly.
Funny. My buddy who, you know, and I, all the time, we're like, we're talking about, like, how many times did you have to get up and pee in the middle of the night or whatever.
We're like, God, like, this is what we talk about, like, health issues.
It's so frustrating because you just want to sleep.
When are you getting your next colonoscopy? It's like, as you get older, it just sucks.
Oh, you're getting a good one this time.
We seem to be drinking Ensure.
Racing in those little wheelchairs.
Yeah, Metamucilex.
Oh, so funny.
Ah, well, on that note, thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time on Service Driver 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 833-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.
