In this round‑table discussion, the participants explore why automotive service departments are losing customers. They repeatedly point to a transactional mindset that treats customers as numbers, leading to a lack of personal connection and a feeling of tension in the service environment. Poor phone experiences—no answer, long holds—further erode trust. By contrast, they share anecdotes of customers driving past multiple dealerships to return to a location where they feel a genuine relationship, illustrating that loyalty is built on human connection rather than price or product. One speaker emphasizes that even when a product fails, a strong dealer‑service relationship can retain the customer and drive future sales. The group laments an industry‑wide “punch‑card” culture that has forgotten the importance of making friends and treating people like humans, and they suggest that intentional, relationship‑focused service is the key to reversing the loss of customers.
Chapters
What would you guys say are the biggest reasons why service departments lose customers?
They just, they just, they don't, they, yeah.
They don't connect on a deeper level, right?
Like they treat them like a number.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very transactional, you know, for sure. If we're trying to make a friend, right? It's, you know, most people go to the same barber every time that they get their haircut. They don't care what the price is, but they have some sort of banter. They have some sort of relationship with that barber.
There's no way you go to a barber.
They charge me the same amount for a haircut that they would charge Chris, I think. Really? I would if I was a barber.
But you can feel that in a store. I have a store that I've worked with since day one when I first started with you, and You go in the store and you can feel it.
Yeah.
You can feel it.
Yeah.
And I don't have a whole lot of stores like that where you walk in, you're like, wow, this is home. I would never go anywhere else. It's Newton.
You know, and you walk into, you know, some service drive sometimes, you can feel it, the tension.
Oh, sure.
Well, you can feel the tension before you get there. Like just calling and nobody picks up or when they pick up, they put you on hold. Like, You just can't really ever connect with anybody.
Right, right.
And people drive and go past dealerships just to get to that dealership. That's when you know you won.
Yeah.
When somebody says that, I go past 3 dealerships to come to you. Wow.
Yeah.
Strong connection. Yep.
I used to have a customer that drove all the way from St. George.
Wow.
All the way up to the Salt Lake Valley.
Nice.
Just to come to our store.
I think it's more about the relationship too than even the product. So even if you get a customer that maybe they had a bad experience with whatever they, and they had it bought back or how many times have we seen it? If they like the dealer, they, they'll go do the return. Like the manufacturer's buying it back and they walk right over to sales and buy another one because they love the dealer and love the service.
They're being taken care of though. Right. Like back to what Brian said about the intentionality. It's just really like sad that industry-wide that we've basically just kind of forgotten what it means to make friends and treat people like humans.
Yeah.
We just lose that. It's transactional. We get wrapped up in our own personal things. We go to work kind of like— I always look at it as where some folks are doing the punch card. Do the punch card, get on, sit on the desk, waiting for things to happen. I hate my life. Then I go back, punch punch it again and I walk out. You see it time and time again, but there is a way to flip that.
And I think, you know, to the point, you know, a Mercedes customer is different than a Toyota customer. In a way that's true, but at the end of the day, they're just a human, right? They just, they don't know what they don't know. They're uncomfortable in situations. And it's up to us at the store to make them comfortable and make them like us.
