A short YouTube conversation (Chris Collins and Chris Jones) listing "naughty" behaviors observed in dealership service drives for 2020. Key negatives called out include managers/parts-related lapses, recurring "could not duplicate" diagnostic failures, not communicating recommended repairs (leading to declines), and a victim mindset during COVID. The hosts balance criticism with recognition that many teams "stepped up," and they close by suggesting the opposite behaviors form a "nice list" and teasing a follow-up episode about technicians becoming service managers.
Chapters
Okay. This was your idea to talk about. Actually, your original idea, I think, was to come up with a Christmas naughty list. And then we decided, well, we should have a nice list. Yeah, with the naughty list, you gotta.
Have the good and the bad. I'm always thinking about naughty.
Yeah. Okay, so let's go through our naughty list for 2020.
Okay.
What did service managers, advisors, techs. What were the naughty things that happen then? A lot of these on the list aren't exclusive to 2020. They just happen.
They may have been around for a little while.
Okay, the first one that we have on the naughty list is managers wearing their seatbelt.
That's right. No shortage of seatbelt inventory and manager offices.
Now, is this you picking on parts managers again?
No, I think that it can be either parts or service manager.
You guys gotta know something that's really great. We just did some training on the truck side, and guess who plays the parts manager in the training? They can't hear you. Raise your hand on itunes.
Dang it. Chris Jones.
He's playing a parts manager.
I ran some awesome reports.
Did you put anybody on hold?
Twice.
Have you seen some of the comments where people are asking for more parts content?
Yeah, for sure. It's coming.
How's it coming?
I think it's on its way.
We're gonna start doing parts training.
I think we should really. I like parts. It's growing on me.
You're just saying that.
You play a parts manager in one video, and all of a sudden.
All of a sudden you're a parts manager. You're like, I'm not. I'm not a parts manager, but I. I slept a Holiday Inn.
Right? That's exactly right. Fill rate.
Okay, next naughty thing is. And this came from our. Our team here. Well, Kosh got really, really passionate when we were making this list, and he didn't know the term for it, so he said it a different way. But I said, you know what that is, is that some C and D could not duplicate because he keeps taking his Toyota in and he can't get it fixed.
Right.
And they keep blowing him off. And so he's. He's really, really frustrated, but could not duplicate not taking the time to quality control, go for a ride with the customer, get the foreman or tech out to go for a ride with the customer. Just not really caring and just kind of, oh, it'll go away.
Yeah. I always think that, like, could not duplicate is basically us saying to a customer, you've got nothing better to do than bring your car into me. And tell me you have an obscure problem like that. We got to be better than that in general. And that's not just about techs. That's everybody. It's the information we collect. It's how we communicate with the client, and then really committing to figuring out what's wrong with the vehicles.
And then this one goes two ways. Is customers not being updated, and then customers not being in safe and dependable vehicles. So one thing that I like to do when I go into a service department is I'll go pull their declines, and I'll just call customers and ask them, hey, why did you decline the brakes? Or whatever was recommended? And most of the time, what the customer says is, oh, they didn't tell me about it until I came to pick up the car. And so they were never told. And so we can't keep customers in safe and dependable vehicles if we're not communicating with them instantly while the car is there, while the tech still has it on his rack.
Give them the chance to do the maintenance or do the repair or whatever it is. But it's more efficient for the tech. It's better for the customer, and at the end of the day, it's better for the business overall.
Yeah. I have to believe that the customer would prefer to do more stuff in one trip. Their time isn't valuable to them. So coming back.
Has a consultant told you that that is true, or is that just your feeling that customers want to save time?
It's my feeling, but I could.
Is that based on your feelings as a consumer or just your generalization of the humankind?
A little bit of both, I think. Personally, my time is really valuable to me.
I love for people to waste my time. When I'm a customer, it's maybe my favorite thing.
Yeah. You can't think of anything you'd rather do than have your time wasted.
Oh, super entertaining. Like, especially when businesses are disorganized and they can't get it together.
I bet you love that a lot.
You know what it tells me?
What?
We'll always be in business.
It's job security. Somehow, like, it all comes back to you.
Yeah. We will always be in business.
That's what it does, right?
Oh.
Okay. Here's another one. What about victims?
Where we were talking about this earlier on. On another show. But it is interesting that with all the things that happened this year with COVID and politics, the economy.
I mean, in some cities just completely being shut down, and the difference between the departments that set records and had their best year ever and did more than they did pre Covid. And the ones that didn't was just their mindset of being a victim or not.
And they might have been 20 miles away from each other. That was the craziest thing to me. And the. The thing that was really encouraging, at least with what we got to see. There are almost as many heroes as victims, right? Where I think there are typically a lot more people play the victim card. But there was something about this last year that we got to see a little bit more people put on their capes and be heroes. Oh, yeah.
Some really stepped up.
Yeah. So I'm super proud of a lot of people. I think that they definitely just didn't. No matter what was happening, they persevered. And that was really a lot of fun to watch.
I wonder if anybody will really step up on the ugly sweater contest. I think that's gonna be a mixed bag.
We may have intimidated everyone just by having the.
See, this isn't even my ugly sweater. I got ugly like this. This actually, you know, looks okay.
Yeah. See to me, like, this is European.
It came from Europe.
It's.
It's about coffee. So it's this guy I follow.
He.
He made it. It's the coffee guy. I forget his name.
Oh, nice.
Yeah. But you. You didn't know that this. That was pour over coffee going into a cup.
No, but it makes sense now that I see it.
Coffee in the Christmas spirit. You put a little tequila in your coffee, it makes it more.
Christmassy.
I like it. Forget the fancy eggnog. Let's just.
This isn't the ugly. My ugly sweaters are more kind of like what?
You're right. Yeah. See in this one, this is. I don't know if it was European or not, but definitely came off of a frame French site called Amazon.
What's that mean?
A m a Z O n. A.
M a Z O N. Amazon.
That's funny. So then that was the last one. Being a victim.
Nice.
What do you think about that?
I think it's a pretty healthy list of naughtiness.
So you can do your own nice list because you can just do the opposite of that, right?
Yeah. I think that it's important to talk about that. That for every seat belted manager that we saw, we also are really, really seeing a lot of people getting on the nice list by being actively engaged with their team and really being leaders in their department and in their stores. In their shops.
For every person that can't duplicate a concern, we've got technicians going above and beyond. And interacting with customers and really, really making the customer feel like they're important and their time is valuable. Not updating or communicating with customers. We've got people that are going the exact opposite of it and using all forms of media to communicate with customers. So, yeah, you're right. For everything on the Naughty list, there's equally as many people on the nice list.
I'm excited, too, because we have an episode that we're going to do for you coming up that is.
Why technician or can technicians become service managers?
Yeah, it's a great, it's a great topic.
Kind of fun. 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 next video.
