What To Expect When Starting Out As A Service Advisor

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Welcome everybody to your Friday drive by. I hope you had a great week and you're gonna even have a better weekend. This is when we answer your questions. I'm Chris Collins and this is Christone.

Hello everyone.

The phone number to call in if you have a question.

Maybe should be service related but relationship advice, whatever the number is. 8333-ASK A SK SDR 8333-ASK SDR. We're going to do two questions today. Let's do the first one.

I'm about to retire early, age 55, because I can and I want to be a service advisor. I'm currently a customer service manager in the insurance claims world. Have been for 26 years. I've ordered and read your millionaire service Advis and thought it was very enlightening and appreciated it. In fact, I thought that petting the dog was pretty much common sense. I didn't know that that's what I've been doing all these years. Anyway, what can I do or what should I do ahead of time to be positioned for a shot at this role without previous advisory experience? Again, the service advisor role is what I want to do. It's not something that I have to do. And I would be curious to. Any suggestions that you might.

To better position myself. Position myself for this role.

Thank you.

Yeah, great, great question. So my advice would be to go to a larger dealership and apply as an internal advisor or apply in their, what we call in the industry bdc, which stands for Business Development Center. But really it's making appointments for service. Now, being an internal advisor, you're gonna get familiar with the cars, you're gonna get familiar with the paperwork, you're gonna get familiar with what times different jobs pay, how we bill. But you're gonna be doing it in the safety of just communicating with a used car manager and the technicians and so you don't have live customers yet. Most of the time. What happens when you're an internal advisor is when an advisor is off, you can start covering the drive so you can start writing customers. But you already know how the computer works. You kind of know how, how the basic.

Functionality of a service department.

Performs is. And so either making appointments or being an internal advisor is how I would start and then move up. And I would say if you did either one for six months to a year.

You'Re gonna be ready to go. But that's what I would do in your situation. What do you think?

I like that. I don't even know if six months would. I'm Thinking about like the internal advisor is the muscle memory on how to work the computer system. And then I think that coming out of his background as working in the claims adjusting type stuff like you get it on how to deal with customers. So that part I think that he's gonna have. It's. I would say that you probably do it in three to six months, maybe a little bit faster. But you also, if he's not in a position to have to rush it, I totally get that. But I would, I would say that your chances of success are better if you don't hop right into being an advisor. So I do agree with that.

Well, I was just thinking like any manager that was going to hire him probably wouldn't want to move him until there was an opportunity. And so it might take a little while to have the right opportunity. But yeah, great question. Thank you. Thanks for reading the book. And it is funny that Petting the dog is.

Oftentimes thought of as groundbreaking.

It is universal though. Good luck too. It's great.

Let's go to the next one.

Hey, my name is Emmanuel. I've been a tech for about 17 years. I've been an internal and abused car tech for the past 12 and I just recently watched video on YouTube that you guys posted four days ago about if you should dedicate technicians to internal work and used car work. And it resonated pretty well. My question doesn't necessarily have anything to do with those two departments in general, but I did have a question as far as warranty work goes for dealership related technicians and dealership related repairs. If you have warranty related repairs such as AC condensers and the warranty department for the suggested manufacturer tells you to replace a certain part but doesn't give you like let's say an AC condenser, the rest of the parts that come to taking apart what you need to get to to get to the AC condenser itself. So if you have a three year old car that's been sitting and burning under the sun for about three years with plastic clips that are deteriorating and they have about $70 worth of clips that they're not replacing, who pays for that part? Does it become internal? Does it become service or parts issue or does warranty pay for it? Because lots of times warranty hasn't paid for any of those separate clips or any additional accessories or parts that you need to make the repair happen the right way that you would want it to. You have a broken clip, let's say you're going to get rattles and whatnot or covers aren't going to be seated correctly or not. But this question pops up a lot because a lot of warranty companies and manufacturers aren't covering certain additional costs for parts that technicians do need. And it comes down to excessive runaround where we lose a lot of time and we actually lose money by not jumping onto the next car while we're chasing to see what estimators and adjusters and warranty representatives would be doing ultimately.

So, Manuel, originally, when I was listening to the question, I thought maybe you were talking about a recall, but maybe he's talking about extended warranties.

Sounded like that.

Or insurance. And so.

The thing to kind of keep in mind is that the car is owned by an owner. That car is the responsibility of the owner. If the customer bought a warranty, it's. It's really. The warranty is to the customer, not to the technician. So now a technician has a specific expertise. A technician has a certain experience in doing things. And.

Christian earlier brought up a point about recalls, and I think this is relevant in a sense, and I'll kind of bring it back around. But it's happened to us many times where a manufacturer will announce a recall and the recall is on vehicles that are 15 years old. And so, like, for example, Dodge had a recall on what?

Airbags.

Airbags. To do the airbag, you had to take the dash out. The dash most of the time was going to crack or rattle after. And so what you have to do is you have to tell the customer, listen, there is a recall on your airbag, but it's only for the airbag. If we replace the airbag, there's a good chance your dash is going to crack, and that is not covered. And so by planting the seat up front and doing kind of what we would call almost in psychology, like a frame of, here's where we are. This is, this is the right way to do this. This is what your warranty covers. Then it's the customer's choice.

But your, your, your, your intentions in the question are, you know, are very sound and noble in the sense that you're going to do this job. You know, that there's a good chance the job's going to come back because you're not doing the. In the sense that you're only doing a piece of it. And it's an old. They're old parts. You know, same thing sometimes, like when you, when you take off a water pump and you put back on an old belt, right? So the belt isn't covered. Under the warranty, but call the customer. You're like, hey, while we're in there, you should put on a new belt, you know, and then if they decline the belt, then it was on them, right? And so I think really, it's in the. In how the advisors explain it to the customer up front. Understanding that the warranty covers a specific thing, but that specific thing involves other moving parts. And those moving parts with the age of the vehicle, everything on the vehicle is old. They all were born together, and they all grew up together. And so, in a sense, you know, once we get in there, other things, you know, need to be replaced. No different than hoses, right? It's like if you replace one coolant hose on a car that's 20 years old, coolant's gonna. The pressure of the coolant's gonna find the path of least resistance. You're better replacing them all because they all were born and they all grew up together, right? So it's in the frame up front. And understanding that the warranty covers what it covers, but it's the customer's vehicle. If the vehicle is 30 years old.

There'S no liability on our part to guarantee the other things that are being.

Touched Just because we're the ones doing the work on the car. I think, too, when I do treat extended warranty claims a little bit differently from the technician standpoint, Whereas I want to diag a comprehensive repair plan and then go on to the next car. Like, I never let an extended warranty car sit in a stall. And I wonder if maybe that's what he's used to doing, is that he's, like, waiting for the answer on that thing. Like, I'd much rather die that in a triage fashion, Build my estimate, give it to the advisor, give him some time to get it called in. Because if you've never sat on the phone calling the extended warranty company, it can be absolutely grueling, it can be a fight, it can be multiple calls. That's not the kind of thing I would want holding my shop up. And there's always more work to do. So I would probably do it that way first. But when I build my estimate, I would build it the right way, like, whatever the part is. And if there's ancillary parts that need to be put on, you know, you need to let the advisor know that that's the case. And then it's up to the advisor either to get it approved by the warranty company, which maybe happens in 25% of the time, and the other 75% of the time, the customer's got to be responsible for it.

But tell the truth.

Yeah, just tell the truth. The faster that you tell it, the better off you are, whether it's to the warranty company or to the customer.

And I'll tell you this, oftentimes the adjusters of the warranty companies are trying to cut corners. And when the customer calls them, they fold.

There's that. I've also, as an advisor, one of the things that I'll use with the warranty company is.

I've had them approve things that weren't covered because I could tell them, well, if I get this and this and this and put that part on, it reduces the amount of rental days that you have to pay for. And their total bill, their claim was less. And I've had them approve stuff like that before because I was reducing the overall claim.

But that would be the advisor.

Yeah, totally understand. But just supporting that, he put everything that the car needs on the list.

And you might not need it. You just are saying that there's a possibility, there's a 50% chance that when I'm in there, it's going to rattle or whatever it is. But you want to look at it like you're going into surgery. You want to have all of the approval to do what you need to do when you get, when you cut the patient open.

That's right.

You don't want to get in there, cut them open and then go, oh, we need a liver and a kidney or whatever it is. Right. Yeah. Okay, great question. Thanks so much for that. Thanks, everybody. Remember the numbers 8 3-33-ASK SDR and we'll 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 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.

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