Why Service Advisors Are So Stressed Out | SDR #208

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. I'm Chris Collins, and this is Chris Joan.

Hello, everyone.

Lafferty, because he's gonna make you laugh, hopefully. Today we're gonna talk about why are service advisors so stressed out? Why? What's the cause of service advisors being stressed out? And then the list might surprise you, it might resonate with you. We're gonna talk about the news, some layoffs and a bunch of fun stuff, and why Christian is losing the title of Papy Chulo. It's being taken away. He no longer is Papy Chulo going to have to think of a new one. That and much, much more. Coming up on Service Drive Revolution.

I won't forget you, baby. I won't forget. Come on.

Even though I should or could.

Let me. Let me tell you why.

Context.

We're singing a sad breakup song at the top of the show because Christian forgot his fake anniversary. Well, I don't think you might be asking yourself, oh, Christian's married. No, Christian's not married.

We.

Well, how could you have an anniversary if you weren't married? Taking America back one relationship at a time. That you allow these frivolous things to creep into the relationship that you're celebrating a fake anniversary.

Yeah, it doesn't feel so fake to her because you've allowed that. Yeah, but I don't care. She wants to have a date.

Is she taking away your Papi Chulo title?

Still have the cup.

But she's. It'd be funny if she walked in here and took the cup.

Oh, my gosh. That would be so great.

So how much trouble are you in for forgetting your fake anniversary?

Like, it's tough because in situations like that, I find the humor, which then during those rough times, I start to laugh. So. So she's like, you totally forgot. Today was the two year anniversary when we started dating and everything like that.

So is this when you met her on Tinder or when you first went out on a date?

It was like, went out on a date, hung out. And then we decided that, like, it.

Was time to cross your mind to say, oh, no, honey. It was when we first met. Met on Tinder or whatever. It wasn't Tinder, but whatever the app was.

Yeah, the app that Matt hates. But. But yeah. So I think it's okay if. If a woman date on her just confuse her, say, oh, no. It's locked in her. It's. It's imprinted. Like she knows. August 20th.

What did you do last anniversary?

Also forgot. So I'm consistent. So I forgot.

Meaningless two Years in a row. So maybe before the third one, you tell her, hey, if we ever decide, if this ever progresses to the point that we get married, by the way, I'm never getting married again. Then we'll have a real anniversary.

Yeah.

Then you don't have to remember. You could just get it out of the way. Yeah.

Because I think that you remember the anniversary. Anniversary. But to me, it's really.

Yeah, it's. It's a real anniversary.

It's important to her. She considers it a real anniversary. It's my responsibility to remember to make her feel special on that day. So I. I feel like I completely dropped the ball.

Hard. Is it? You just put it on your Google calendar. It reminds you.

So it's a really great idea.

You really cared.

If only 12 and a half months ago I did that, if you really.

Cared, you would have done that. So you don't care.

So that's what. So that's what she said. She's like, you know, it really means you don't care. And what do I do? I started laughing because I thought that was a funny response. Right.

Because it's a fake anniversary. Like, how many. How many things are we gonna. You want me to tell you why I have such a disdain for fake anniversaries?

Do you have a. Do you have a day?

You don't. Don't answer a question.

Oh, I'm sorry. Continue on, please.

Do you want me to tell you clearly not why I have such a disdain for fake anniversaries?

I would like to hear it. Yes.

Because I used to own a flower shop.

And on Valentine's Day.

There, we would charge. We were in a mall, a pretty high end mall.

Yeah.

We would charge at the time $125 for a dozen roses. And there would be a line of guys from the time we opened until we closed on Valentine's Day.

Of guys there. And do you think that they were buying flowers and cards and chocolates because they wanted to or because they were obligated to?

Because they were obligated to.

Yeah. And so they're waiting in line, they're miserable. And then the flower association would come up with holidays. Like they were like, oh, let's invent one time I came to work and there were balloons all over my door.

Because it was boss's day and then their sweetest day. There's a whole lot of those things. Right. So they're.

They're purely created out of the knowledge that you can make people feel guilty about something. They shouldn't feel guilty About.

Okay.

Because it's pure guilt.

So you loop. You loop my anniversary into that. Now, that would make sense, because I also.

I'm saying, like, there's, like, Valentine's Day, there's Mother's Day, there's a real anniversary, which the guilt of that is enough. And then way, way, way, way, way down here is, oh, this is the day we met.

Yeah.

And I think that's a special day.

You've been brainwashed, I think.

Okay, maybe. But I also don't. I don't really make a big deal about the sweetest day and the Valentine's Day. Yeah. Because I truly do believe that. I think that you show.

You think I'm broken inside.

I'll get to that in a second. But.

If you're listening to this and not watching his face said, yes.

I think you've accused me of being broken.

I did not. But, you know, the whole thing kind of got me going. So I was walking home last night from work, and I stop in to this bar. It was interesting. I was the only one in there just, other than the bartender. And I just kind of flumped down on the bar stool. And I'm like, what do you have to drink?

She looks at me, she says, water.

I look back at her, I'm like, do you have anything harder? She pauses for a second, looks at me.

Ice.

You like it? I like. I love it. My favorite thing is when you start a joke with. I was talking to work. I don't know why. Okay, so so far we've established that you're susceptible to fake.

You know, fake holidays. That I'm broken inside. And you did my favorite thing. You started a joke with. I saw. I was walking to work, which I love.

It can only get better from here.

Yeah.

Like, we're headed all the way up. Plus, we got a good episode today.

Let's. Let's go to the news. There's some fun stuff in the news.

There is some fun stuff in the news. So let's start with this. It's so interesting. Right? So we just talked, you know, on a recent episode about the fact that there's a technician shortage. Right. And there's like, whatever. There's a ton of need for technicians. So Ford, their response to that is they're now laying off about 3,000 workers. Now, I had to read into it a little bit. They're all white collar jobs, but they're letting go of 3,000 people. And for those of you, this is a public service announcement for you kids out there, if you're going to school to be an engineer for internal combustion engines. You might want to rethink that because a lot of the.

Workforce in the internal combustion engineer, AKA the gas engine, they went bye bye. They're not engineers anymore, but essentially Ford is. Has pulled out the tape and started cutting some jobs.

Wonder how many kids a year graduate with engineering degrees. Right Degree. I mean, it's got to be easy to do other engineering. Engineering's engineering in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I'm sure. But I would think that like, you know, especially in those kind of those midwestern states like Indiana, which Purdue University is a big engineering school and a lot of the Mission School Michigan schools probably have been feeding for decades to the automotive companies.

We don't have enough engineers as it is. So I'm sure they can repurpose their knowledge.

I hope so.

But it is. That is interesting when you think about it. There's going to be more of those sort of layoffs. And I'm curious. So we talked about before about how Volkswagen wanted to lay off people because the electric cars take less head count or less people.

Yeah. It's way more automated, I think.

And so the problem for Volkswagen was the board or the unions had seats on the board.

That doesn't make any sense though, because it's kind of like the scorpion and the frog analogy.

I don't know the scorpion and frog analogy.

So the scorpion and the frog analogy is a scorpion walks up to a frog and says, hey, will you swim me to the other side of the river? I have to get to the other side. And the frog's like, no, you're a scorpion, you'll sting me. And the scorpion's like, no, I won't. And they go back and forth and eventually the scorpion convinces the frog to. To swim him across. He goes, hop on my back. They're out in the middle of the river. And then the scorpion stings him. And the frog's like, why did you do that? You just killed us both. And the scorpion's like, I know, but it's what I do. I'm a scorpion. It's like the union's willing to take down the whole thing.

Right. The best thing is to. Is to accept the idea that what you want is a healthy, profitable company. And maybe that means less jobs, but in the end it means secure jobs.

Yeah.

So it might be less, but they're secure.

Right.

And so we got to wonder with Ford and GM and their deals with UAG and all that, I think that they'll have more Leeway. But the next thing will be that.

I think so, too. It's going to be this next 24 months. I mean, stay tuned. It's going to be very, very interesting stuff. So. But that. That's in the news. And then kind of a fun little conversation. So.

The Monterey Car Week was very recently, and DeLorean showed up with one of their cars, which is cool. So the Monterey Car Week has really turned into a big party. It's a lot of showcase. There's some really cool stuff there. But the DeLorean, they partied like it's 1985.

So if you're not familiar with the DeLorean, it's the car from Back to the Future.

That's right.

Also, famously, Mr. DeLorean was shipping them with kilos of cocaine in the door.

Value add is what they call that. It was the first value add on a car. But it's really cool. Like, they talk about it. One is, I think the car is really neat, but more so that Monterey week is turning into, like, a party. It reminds me of kind of like those, you know, how the Oscars after parties are more famous than the Oscar ceremony themselves. It was like, the same thing. So, like, the car companies are running out, like, these really awesome Oceanside Airbnbs and stuff like that. And, like, it's really about who throws the best party, not who has the best car. So I thought that that was interesting.

It's an interesting move that DeLorean is. Is gone, Right? So he's dead.

Yes.

And so somebody's buying that name and then producing an electric car. Way smarter than starting one from scratch in the sense that people already have a script for DeLorean in their head. And so the design of it is, look, you know, pretty cool.

Yeah, I thought it was really.

And they're still doing the Gulf wing doors and all that that it had originally. So kind of a smart business move, really.

Oh, just the name and all the nostalgia that it brings is super smart, I think.

And I guess if you get them going a certain speed, you can go back in time.

Right. It used to be 88, but I think with inflation, is probably 110 easy.

With an electric car. Yeah.

Okay.

Let's talk about why service advisors are so stressed out. I think this is a fun list. You're. You're going to listen to this and be like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's going to be a lot of them on here that are going to resonate with you. Understanding that service advisor. The service advisor position Is.

Tough job.

Yeah. I think you could make a really good case that it's one of the most difficult ones in the store. So, you know, it depends on what position you have in the dealership.

What would you say is the most. This is always a dumb conversation, but let's just have it. What would you say is the most difficult position in the store?

I've gone, I've honestly, I've probably answered this question two or three different ways. I think that service advisors up there, I think being a tech is a hard job and I think that running the store is hard. So right now I would say that with all the communications with customers, I would say that advisor is probably number one right now.

You don't think sales is harder?

No.

Really? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Think about the market right now. Right. Like people are just buying cars.

Oh. I was thinking like, you know, historically not.

But even, but even historically I would say that I thought that being an advisor was way harder than being in sales.

Okay. Why are service advisors so stressed out?

Ready to start this list? Number one, there's probably some that we forgot, so.

Oh yeah, if, if you think of something we forgot, post them in the comments. I would love to hear what you guys think. Number one is writing too many ros.

We see that continuously that.

We'Re asked to train service advisors because they don't follow up, they don't communicate. And what we've done as leaders is set the advisors up for failure, for more to go because we think they can write. I mean, I heard one the other day when I was doing a strategy session. The advisors were writing between 30 and 40 a day.

That's just insanity to me. And I think that's the scariest thing is that. So we bring these. CSI is inconsistent, weird, but we bring these people in, we start to let them get a lot of reps, they get better in spite of the environment we turn them into. And then instead of kind of saying okay, get good at these 15 or 20 or 25 ROs, then we just start piling it on more and more. There's never an end. The better they get, the more we pile on. Yeah.

Then the next one is that the service advisors don't have tax. There's, there's a shortage of technicians, as everybody knows. But what happens is when service advisors can't get work done. So let's say you wrote up.

20 hours today and 10 of them don't see the shop until tomorrow. You're not going to call customers and sell an eight hour job when you have cars that came in yesterday that haven't seen the shop yet. You're just not like all the advisor training in the world. If you don't have enough capacity in the shop to get the work done, you're, you're not going to sell more work. Especially when CSI is so important. So they don't have enough production to get the work done that they could, they could sell and then parts.

Yes. So even if they do have the people, then they don't have the stuff.

Yeah, they don't have the parts. Which quite a few manufacturers right now are really struggling with the parts side of it. And so, you know, the advisors are the ones that have to communicate that to customers. And we've seen recently like customers that have been in loan cars for like four or five months waiting for a part, which is crazy. Next one is that they're out of control.

They just. Yeah, they're running everywhere. There's no, there's no chickens with their heads cut off. Polloca basa. That's right.

What?

That's chicken without a head.

Yeah, chicken without a head.

That's right. Yeah.

But don't you think that part of why they're running around is all they're riding too many?

Yeah, that's an effect, not a cause for sure. It's all those things then equals they're out of control.

Which then takes us to the next one is they're reactive. So most service advisors are stressed out because they're reactive. So they're waiting for the customer to call them instead of framing the customer or calling the customer first. And you can tell a department that service advisors are writing too many ROs. And this is the case by just standing at the phone at lunchtime. If the phone is blowing up at lunchtime, then the service advisors either haven't framed or they haven't called or communicated with their customers, but they're reactive, not proactive. So in our service advisor training in the circle of trust, we talk about a two hour call, but calling the customer, even if you don't have anything to say just to make them feel safe and know that you're, that they're on the radar instead of in purgatory. The next one is they're unhealthy many different ways.

So they're smokers or vapers in a lot of cases. You know, we, we joked or we just talked about the lunch thing. I can't tell you how many times I see advisors don't get to take a lunch on an 11 hour. 11 hour shift, they don't leave their desk. Right.

Which means unhealthy food. It's pizza or whatever you can grab.

Because you don't care what it is. It's just there. It's just something to try to fuel you up. I put in parentheses, like, have another Red Bull. Like Red Bull owes the automotive industry a huge thank you. Because I'm going to say that financially that service advisors support monster Red Bull. Like who knows what's in those drinks, but it can't be good long term. It's the only thing I can think of. It's amazing.

99% of the people listening to this have a monster next to them right now.

Yeah. Hi, everybody.

By the way, the first time I had a Red Bull, I was a service advisor.

You know what I. Speaking of that. You know what I. You know what I hate is when you're texting and then a bicyclist breaks your windshield.

Yeah, I would hate that too.

Yeah.

Continue on. Yeah, Never mind. The next one is their punching bag. Yeah. Which kind of goes hand in hand with. They never get acknowledged unless stuff goes wrong.

Yeah. Those two things definitely go together.

Yeah. Like service really in a lot of ways, especially in a dealership is, you know, mushrooms. Keep them in the dark and feed them.

Yeah. I just think that that's when you think about an advisor. Like, when does someone come and talk to them? So the customers will come and talk to them when they're really angry. The managers will go out and talk to them where they're really angry. The techs come and talk to them when they feel like they haven't done something right. Like it's a whole lot of negative reinforcement. There's. And that's, you know, you do that literally if you work a five day shift and you work 11 hours a day, it's 55 hours a day of just getting punched.

Yeah. The next one is they aren't trained as well as a Starbucks barista. And so most of the training that service advisors get is from the factory. That maybe is product knowledge or warranty process, that sort of thing. But think about if you're doing something as a career, as a job, and you're doing it over and over again and your results are very unpredictable and you only get acknowledged when things go wrong.

For the most part in service, you're fixing customer problems. Right. Customers are breaking down, it's inconvenient, so you're fading a lot of heat and stress all the time. And so the function that training can play in that is if you teach them a couple things that make them more effective, it raises their self esteem and they start to have more fun. But you know, being a service advisor in certain departments can kill your self esteem because no matter what you do, you're set up to lose by how many hours you're writing, by the fact you can't get work through the shop. It's just, you know, and the turnover at the advisor position is insane because of that. So.

Yeah, they aren't trained as well as a Starbucks barista. The next one is, that's a great.

Point though, is that I can't tell you what percent it is. But so much when we go into stores is about raising self esteem. Not just advisors though. Everybody like when we feel better about ourselves, the product's just so much better for the customer. It's so nice.

The next one is they don't know what they're selling, which is totally, totally true on many levels. So the first level being that they have very little product knowledge so they don't know why they're selling, you know, coolant or a fuel induction service. Like one thing that I've always seen be very effective with selling induction services is having a tech break the top part.

Apart, showing the advisors how much is in there, putting it back together, doing the induction service and then showing them and even having them drive it before and after because there's a noticeable difference in performance. And so they don't really understand that. Then the second part of this is they don't understand what they're selling in the sense that even if they do think they're selling coolant or they're selling a water pump or tires or whatever it is, the magic in being effective at whatever you're doing as a career is to understand the outcome and the emotion of it, right? Like we always say, like Apple wouldn't be successful if they were selling hard drives and ram. They're selling a lifestyle, right? So let's say you're a service advisor at a BMW dealership, you're selling lifestyle, right? If you're a service advisor at a Toyota store, you're selling peace of mind, right? Or value in that sense. And so really understanding what you're selling, not not selling the commodity and maybe at the end of the day what we're selling is a relationship, God willing. Yeah, that's a good one. No one understands that it is one of the most difficult jobs in the store. Many have home lives that are not what they would like. So I mean it makes sense that if it's chaos at work, it's probably going to be chaos at home. If you're unhealthy, if you're not eating well, that is going to make you more prone to react to things or overreact.

Yeah, I think that, and maybe this was like, this was probably aimed a little bit more at myself. I just remember, you know, as an advisor being, being married and working like an 11 hour day, 12 hour day, then the hour commute home and like there's a bunch of stuff to do, but you got nothing left in your tank. And of course things are going to start to get. Yeah, I like the idea that if it's chaos at work, it's chaos at home. That actually is probably right on. And I can tell you that I lived that for a little bit, but.

That was, that makes me think of that Sam Kinison joke about, you know, Jesus wasn't made.

It's funny, you guys should look it up, but I can't do it like Kinnison. But he says, he goes, you know, Jesus wasn't married. He goes, there's no way a wife would believe that. You left on a long weekend with 12 guys and you come back looking like death. Where have you been? And where are those 12 losers that won't get a job?

It's such a great joke.

Oh, it's the greatest.

Yeah. But if you, if you, if you have, if your job is giving you low self esteem, you're unhealthy, so you're going to be more reactive. The hormones in your body are all messed up because you're not eating right, you're not exercising, you don't feel good. You, you're not winning day in and day out. You just feel like you're going to war. And so you never really have any wins. You're not acknowledged for things that you, you know, nobody's coming up going, hey, great job with that customer. Because most of the time, things that advisers do with customers, nobody even knows. Right?

Yeah. If it goes well, nobody says anything.

Yeah. And so, yeah, your home life is usually going to be a mess.

The, yeah, this is the.

The funny one is most advisors don't know how they're paid. And it's so funny because when you talk to a service manager or you talk to a dealer and even they pretend like they know, but they don't know. Like, I do this all the time on strategy sessions. I'll be like, how are the advisors paid?

Silence.

There's this pause and it's like, well, it's On a sliding scale. And then it's all this if come maybe. And they're, they're trying to manage the department through the advisor pay plan, in a sense. And so it's like literally the range of what the advisor could make is. And you know, not only do you have to make the pay plan simple, you have to explain it to them until they understand, like over and over and over again. But there's a lot of leverage in the advisors having a pay plan that they can easily figure out. And they know that, hey, the work I do today.

I'm gonna see, you know, the effort that I'm putting in today, I'm gonna see in my paycheck. The other one to you with they don't know how they're paid is if, if they're paid on a group thing.

Oh yeah.

Why have we never. It never works. I, I'll tell you though, I always wish it worked. Every time I've been convinced to try a group pay plan where the advisors are splitting the percentage or whatever it is, I, I, in my heart, like, I don't know, there's something about me that's like, hey, that would be so cool if like you were a team and everybody was like, yeah, like all.

Six people were, yeah, this guy's really.

Good with, you know, difficult customers. And this guy can just write volume and like, you know, like if everybody brought their unique thing to the table and you all covered each other, whatever. But it just isn't reality.

Yeah.

Just never, it never has worked out. I've never seen that work out.

I would say that just from by.

Never, I mean never.

Yeah, not once. I've been hearing it more lately than.

It'S just a reaction to poor systems. So it is interesting how many weird things we're coming up with as an industry to fix the fact that we don't have techs.

Yeah, we're not fixing that.

How many times somebody calls us and they're like, we need advisor training. And then I get on a strategy session with them and they're like, we need you to come in and train these advisors because the customers are mad, they can't communicate and this and that. And I'm looking at the thing and it's like, okay, you're booked out three weeks and I do the average ros per day on the advisor really quick. Like, how many are the advisors writing per day? And I'm like, the last thing you want us to do is train your advisors. What you want us to do, which we're really Good at is help you find tax.

Not. I mean, I don't know how many times I've said that in the last four months. And there's a long, awkward pause, and then they're like, oh, I think you're right. Like, it won't matter if we. If we train the advisors to sell more, do more. If they can't get the work done, we're just going to make the customers upset.

Do you think that that's because a lot of people out there have convinced themselves that they can't hire techs, therefore, then they go to the triage. They, like, accepted that. That's a. It's a fact. You can't find tax.

Yeah, well, they say it like that, even though we say that all the time. I mean, it's funny. People will say on the strategy session, they say, I know I'm not supposed to say this because they've listened to the show, but we can't find text. And I'm always like, okay, well, we'll help you find text. It's not. Won't take that long. And it doesn't. Right. Like, how many. How many texts do you think we have added to our clients? I don't know. I know you were talking about a number in a group, but I know Jimmy Captain added, what, four, seven, and 30 days. Yeah. And so that's a tiny number compared to all of our coaches across the board.

I was in last month. I'm pretty sure I don't have the exact number. I might be off by one or two, but we're actually closer to 70.

Yeah. Which I think I thought we were 50. Right. And you thought maybe that was a little high, but it would depend on the month and how many new clients we have coming in and all that. But has there been a situation and I would. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say it's ever easy, but has there been a situation that we haven't been able to hire techs?

Not if we're following all the steps in the system. The times that we don't hire, taxes, when we.

Even then we can recognize we're not doing it and fix it. Yes, but has there ever. You might have to get involved. I might have to get involved, but is there ever been a time where we didn't hire tech?

No. At the end of the day, if we want text, we get text. Yeah.

So sometimes our clients convince our coaches somehow, I don't know that it's impossible, but it's not. It never is. It's funny. So.

To that point though, I do think we're seeing weirder pay plans. We're seeing weirder stuff, but trust me, the fix is not weirder. Pay plans, not more complex, is more technicians creating an environment where you, where techs want to stay and where you can get new ones. That's the secret to the future. I've been saying it for a long time, but all of these weird things that we're doing to treat the symptoms make it worse, they don't make it better.

Also the thing I see is that there's a lot of turnover at the advisor position because we're pushing in harder on the advisors instead of understanding that no matter who the advisor is, if we haven't built the capacity, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Would you agree with that?

100%.

Okay, so they don't understand how they get paid. And then the last one we had on here, more system and programs keep getting piled on to their job responsibility. They're the catch all.

Yeah. Writing an RO today is not what it was 20 years ago.

What? Christian, what do you think about tablets.

Exactly?

Did you just ask me what my pay plan was for my advisors? Because I felt like I had that same blank feeling.

Yeah, it's like tablets aren't. Tablets aren't the answer. I'm sorry, they're not. It doesn't mean that they can't work, but they're not a fix all if you can't get your advisors to do walk arounds. Now, a tablet isn't going to help with that. It's going to actually in most scenarios it makes it worse. And so it's garbage in, garbage out. If you can't do it with a piece of paper and a pen, you can't do it with the tablet and vice versa.

If you can, you can, right?

Oh yeah.

So those that are switching over because their requirements or whatever, like what we're seeing with the best of the best is that it didn't matter.

They can adapt, but that's because they have a system in place.

Yeah.

And so. And they also have some sort of leadership where those sort of things aren't negotiable because they've conditioned their team to change, to adapt and to commit. You know, it's not like, oh, we're doing it for a week and then it's gone. And that's all about the leadership more than anything else.

I love that.

That's a great list.

We'll just recap it really quick. So why are service advisors so stressed out? Writing too many ros. No text, no parts reactive, they're out of control, they're unhealthy, they're a punching bag. They get acknowledged when stuff is going wrong. They aren't trained as well as the Starbucks barista. They don't know what they are selling. No one's unders, no one understands that it is one of the most difficult jobs in the store. Many of their home lives are a disaster. They don't understand how they get paid. And we just a catch all for more systems and programs from the manufacturers or whatever it is. But great stuff. That was fun.

If you have any more, like I said, post them in the comments. We'd love to hear your ideas and we will see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the 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 you in the next video.