Why Your CSI Sucks | SDR #261

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. Today we're going to talk about why your service advisor, CSI is inconsistent. Talk a little bit about some things we have going on. The news is fascinating today and a great conversation, but more importantly, why you don't want to invite Christian to dinner. That's. That's the real theme here.

Why.

And if you're curious, so stick around. That and much, much more is coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

We did go to the lake, which is an interesting story that I cannot wait to share with you.

I wonder what makes it interesting.

But before that, let's just talk about IRSM live. So the irreplaceable service manager live lecture series that we are doing every other Tuesday. Going pretty good, pretty fun. If you're not there, you're missing out.

And a lot of people are in the turnout.

I'd like to say go to Chris Collins Inc.com to sign up, but we don't know what the hell we're doing here. And so that will just get you more confused. So maybe DM me on Instagram or Facebook if you want to get in on it, and we'll send you a link. Hopefully we can do that.

We can do that for sure. This is crap. I've got a link.

We need to redo our website. If anybody knows somebody who's good at social media and websites, we are looking for help because we cannot seem to figure it out.

And we want an amazing website and. Yeah, best of the best.

Okay. Now let's talk about the lake.

I can't wait to see it.

So there's a part of this story you don't know.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

You've been holding out on me.

Well, I didn't want to make you uncomfortable.

Oh, yeah. Let's go for uncomfortable on the air.

So when you were coming.

So my mother.

Is.

In the lake house up north. Lives there with. With my stepfather. And.

I've been up there a bunch. I tried to be there every month during the summer Jet skis. Having fun.

I'd say you were successful. Right.

And then I wanted Christian to come experience it one, because I. I think that you need a little connection to nature.

Yeah. That's fair.

Which I think we accomplished.

Yeah, 100%.

That's great. And the second one is just a little, you know, we could. We could talk and.

Basically come up with some ideas. Right. Because it's a different environment. So I tell my mother that I am bringing you and your girlfriend and she says, are they married?

Okay.

And I said, no. And she doesn't want somebody who's living in sin.

Well, in her house.

Which makes the next part of the story even funnier.

Oh, great.

So you're in her head. You're categorized as a person living in sin, which by the way, you're with me, so.

Right.

It's not. I'm living in sin also.

Okay.

So don't feel, oh my God, feel bad. But that was a conversation, definitely. Yeah, it was hard. And so then you can understand the next question. Was this heathen that's living in sin that you're bringing up to you the lake, what is his position on saying grace before dinner?

Okay, this is great.

So that's where you come into the conversation. But you didn't know the, the part before that.

Wow, I'm so sorry that that put her into that frame, but it's a. Yeah, okay.

But really, you understand that it's just her way of getting at me.

Yeah, yeah. She's a master of this, by the way.

Tons of respect for your mom. I mean, I, I, I don't even know if I caught all of it, but I definitely caught some of.

Never felt any of that because she is a great host.

She's so caring. The things.

One of the things you said to me right away is you're like, oh, I get where you get the host that you.

Yes. Cuz as a host, you're always making sure that everybody's got what they need, that they're having a good time, that there's not something else that could be done. And I don't know how you do it. You can have a hundred people in your house and it seems like you're checking on everybody at the same time. And your mom has that same skill.

So it's interesting that you point that out because I believe that the person who had the most effect on me when it comes to hosting was Don Crevier. I told you that he was an incredible mentor, incredible host, incredible attention to detail, very much cared about people having a great experience, whether it was customers, employees, whatever it is. He, he was amazing at that. And so I think the combination of the two. But you're right, my mom is, she.

Definitely started the core because maybe, maybe Donnie taught you how to do the a bigger group because that part of things is special in itself. But your, your mom has the whole like, making sure that everybody feels really good and special. I left feeling.

So you get there and you have gifts and on your bed you had cookies.

Yep.

All kinds of stuff, right?

Yeah. The sweetest sweet note. Everything like that. It was.

It.

I felt super welcome going into like staying in the home of a stranger that I'd never met before and. And never once did I feel like a stranger.

Yeah, she's good at that. And so then the question from my mom was, how does Christian handle grace? Because we have to say grace before we eat dinner. And I said to her, and I think this was on the phone, I don't remember. I said, oh, Christian's easy, mom. Just, he'll. He'll go along with, you know, whatever.

Little did you know.

So then we get there. So the first thing we do when we get there is we go jet skiing.

I don't know that we were jet skiing 10 minutes and you ran into me.

Which doesn't happen. The lake is huge.

The idea that it's an eight mile lake.

Yeah. The idea that the jet skis find each other. He bumped. He bumped into me. Nothing crazy like there's no damage.

We floated into each other.

That I can see, I believe. Okay, then there's a part of the lake, and I didn't tell you this, there's a part of the lake at the end that is like an. A long inlet that has a boat launch at the end. But the houses. And I would say this inlet's about a half a mile and pretty, pretty thin. All of the houses are close together and the water is kind of shallow through there.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of kids playing. And so it has a five mile an hour speed limit. And so we're riding around the lake. Hey. Christian bombs it bombs right past the speed limit sign going. You had to be going 40.

I was going 45.

Yeah, 45 down this inlet. And I couldn't catch you because I.

Had to stop in the five mile an hour zone, call it 45.

And then it was. There's no service. Was cutting it out.

Yeah. But the, but the calling was enough because first off, I was amazed. So we.

We didn't feel weird that you were going fast and everybody else was slow.

I. I realized pretty quickly and that I'd done something wrong. I didn't know what I'd done. But you had that feeling. Yeah. And it was like this just doesn't look and feel right. And then you called me on the cell and I was like, okay, I know I did something wrong now. And then I pulled over and the first jet ski I've ever been on that has Bluetooth, which was amazing. I couldn't hear you. But it was cool that it Was worked and that acted as the break. And then we kept doing that thing.

You could talk on the phone.

Yeah. But we. We tried calling back three or four times, but finally Chris texts me and says, hey, this is a no wake. You can't go five miles an hour, come out. And then he puts dot, dot, dot, slowly. Which was great. So then it took me, you don't know, two, three hours to get from where I'd written at 45 miles an.

Hour out to when we went back through there slowly. Just cruising around the next day. Did you see all the signs from people about.

Children don't play dog? Yeah. Yeah. So the people in that part of the lake are not the most open, I would say.

Yeah.

But that. None of that is the funny part. The funny part is. So then we're sitting down for. I want to say this is the second meal.

Yeah. Because. Because. Because your mom did the prayer on the first meal.

Right.

And so then somehow you volunteered to say the prayer, which made my mom's day. Like, oh, my gosh, he wants to say. Great. He wants to. And I was surprised. I was like, okay, this is. This is fun. Like, and it all seemed very, very organic and nice. And then you. So Christian.

Christian has a different view of God than everybody else.

That's probably fair.

So a lot of people to believe in God would have to think that God is all knowing.

Omnipresent, I believe is the phrase.

Yeah. Christian does not believe that. Christian believes that he's reading the news to God.

He's got a lot on his mind.

Yeah. I think another thing to point out is most of the meals are a little later than I would like them.

Okay. So, like, you're hungry by this time, it's seven.

Like, I'm already, like, kind of like, hey, what's going on? Right.

Yeah.

And so I'm hungry. I'm ready to eat. And Christian.

Has this style of grace where he goes through the menu and thanks God for every individual item with adjectives and explanation.

Sourcing.

Often sourcing. Yeah. Which is.

Hilarious, but. But annoying at the same time. So then for the rest of the trip, if there was a chance Christian was gonna say grace, I would jump in.

Yeah.

And go, dear Lord, bless this food. Thank you. Amen.

Chris wasn't happy. He was a prayer blocker. Yeah. Like, it was funny how intentional you were about making sure that you stopped.

Because I could see the gleam in your eye a couple times, and I was like. Because once you did the first one, that took forever. You would have to Top it. I know you, you're not gonna go the other way.

The funny thing is, is that before we ate, I, I was actually going around looking at what we were going to have as I was formulating my prayer in my head and I, it was going to get, it was going.

To get lag out in front. Yeah. The other thing that you loved is when we, we were having lunch and we'd already started eating and then my mom joins us and we hadn't said. You hadn't said grace.

We will not do that again.

And then so then she says grace and mentions that she would like to bless the food that's already been consumed and what we're about to consume. Which you thought was hilarious.

I thought it was great. I love that she did that. She is crafty like that.

Yeah, she's funny.

Yeah.

We had a good time though. That was a blast.

Yeah.

Really fun. Okay, let's get to what, what's in the news.

A little bit of a discussion for last, but this is a follow up on a news story that we talked about where the city of Chicago was suing Hanang Kia over the thefts. And I did not know at that point in time that.

That there was, there was multiple web or there was multiple lawsuits against Hana and key about this, there's actually a class action lawsuit and essentially they, they threw it out. They said, no, we're not going to, we're not going to do a class action lawsuit. Because now normally you would think that that's a good thing for Hyundai and Kia. What I learned is that Hyundai and Kia were the ones that were trying to propose the settlement because they're trying to mitigate their losses.

So. But it weren't thrown out.

It got thrown out.

So quite understood how you could sue them for.

That. I mean it's kind of.

It feels more like something would happen in California.

Yeah.

In the sense that what you do is you defund the police.

Lower the morale of the police and humiliate them to the point where they don't want to do anything and then sue somebody else for the fact that there's high crime. Like you can't sue Kia for the fact that were not prosecuting crime and you know, it's not their fault.

Right. Yeah. So I thought it was interesting. And the, the thing, this is a, remember you were talking about they were giving people the club.

Like was that you that was telling me that. But is a, is a safety device. They're handing people the club, which is that thing you put on the steering wheel. Yeah. Guess how many of those they've given out? How many Hundred ninety two thousand.

Oh my gosh.

That's a lot of clubs. But essentially, so the judge says 200 million. It's not going to be enough. Go back to the drawing board and they're going to have to come up with a new dollar amount because it's, it's not enough money. And I don't know if Hyundai and Kiera made of money but like the amount of money that they're spending, spending now on the theft thing and the amount of money they spend on the engine replacements. I don't understand how the company's in business.

And then they win JD Power awards of quality which I think is really.

Interesting. Super interesting.

Okay. This was one of the things I thought was also really funny because I remember we did the, there was a YouTube short that came out that was talking about that you and I were talking about prices going down in the industry and somebody put price is going down. Fat chance.

This is in Yahoo Finance if you've ever heard of Yahoo before. New car market prices are about to plummet due to oversupply. Oops.

You know it's going to hurt as a. Use cars the most.

Yeah, this is kind of a quick one. Tesla is opening up a diner in la. So like a charging diner.

Oh yeah, it was really. The waitresses are going to roller skates. They have a drive in which they're gonna play like 20 minute movie clips or something.

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. It's super smart.

Kind of right by where I live.

Yep. So it'll be on. Yeah, it'll be on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.

Bypass the Tesla Charger on our garage wall over that. But yeah, but I think it's experience.

But I think it's a really good idea and it was one of the very few complaints I had about having an electric car was time to charge. So what if they made it kind of fun and interactive? I thought that was a really, really good idea. So great marketing. Yeah. So he's, he's again way ahead of everybody else. Now this is something that I'm pretty interested to hear your opinion on. This is out of mozilla.org and it's official. Cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy.

What's that mean?

Yeah, I'm headed that way. So they collect tons and tons.

Say grace.

No, not quite. But maybe one day. Actually one day I can do an example for everybody. But they collect too much personal data. So 25 out of 25 car brands are collecting more data than necessary. And they use that information for reasons other than to operate your vehicle. Now, here's the great thing. 84% of all car manufacturers sell the data that they don't need to collect, that they collect about people. And the list that I've got here, this was fascinating to me. So they're collecting information on medical information, genetic information, sex life information, how fast you drive, where you drive, and the song lists in your car.

How do they get your sex life information?

It doesn't say, but I thought that was fascinating, that that was it. But they, but they're using all that information to, to sell it.

They're selling all my medical information. I don't know.

Like, how does Hyundai get my medical.

So here's my thought, and I don't know if this is true. If there's any tech people out there, let us know. My thought is, is that when you connect to the Bluetooth, to the car or like the car player or whatever the things are, I wonder if it's scoping your phone for all that information.

But my sex life isn't in my phone.

Yeah, fair enough. But I don't know how they do it completely, but I think it's fascinating that. Well, maybe if you do like dirty text messages and stuff like that, that would be collected by the car and then sold to somebody.

But. But yeah, so just kind of beware that. That, that's out there. The brands just said that they, they did, 25 brands. And then the one they did point out is Tesla in Toyota are the worst. Mercedes, Benz, Honda, Ford are the worst or the best. They're all, they all, they're all terrible.

What about Range Rover?

I don't see Range Rover on here, but there's a thing about Tesla is if you don't like how much information they collect, they're happy to turn off the connectivity thing, which is what you need to run the car. Basically like that little satellite.

Yeah. So they will turn your connectivity off, but you'll lose all mobile applications, updates, remote services, Internet, radio, voice commands, web browser functionality, all goes out the door if you don't want them to collect the information.

Well, none of that matters in my Tesla because you can't browse the web while you're driving.

Yes, that's true.

It's useless.

Yeah. So are you surprised by that?

No. We've had. We have somebody on our team that has mentioned to us quite a few times that Tesla is collecting data that most people don't understand.

Yeah, that's what I know.

Toyota or BMW. Like, I don't know.

Yeah, maybe it'll get better with time. And my uncle always used to say, you know, time heals all wounds. Great man. Terrible paramedic.

You ever think about working a joke into your prayer?

Yes. Not with your mom though. Never with your mom.

Really?

Yeah. Sometimes I'll throw a shot at Claudia for the TV shows that she watches during prayer. And I don't say them directly to her, only during prayer because. So I don't know.

You guys say grace when you're.

Yeah, that's how it started.

The only time I say grace is.

Oh, okay. I know. We do the grace every night.

I feel like a 12 year old kid more than mom.

It's funny how fast you fall into that frame. Like, I just didn't want to. I didn't want to get in trouble.

Yeah, right.

That was fascinating.

She has that thing. Okay, let's talk about why your service advisor CSI is inconsistent. Christian, why your service advisor CSI is inconsistent.

Ooh, there's sounds like a list is coming.

I have a list.

I do too. I'm curious if we match.

So the first thing that I think we should establish off of the top of this is that I believe that CSI is a measurement. I also believe that the most important measurement is retention.

Correct.

And both of these things should be taken seriously and pursued and we should try to have the best customer experience.

And if we're doing it right, both should be high.

The other thing that I would say is in pursuit of this, we're managing perception and feelings. So the fact that we got the oil change done in 30 minutes or the fact that we repaired the car or whatever is irrelevant to overall perception. Of course, so many times I've seen that we. Like I've seen a couple times we wrecked the customer's car and still got perfect csi. I've seen times where we went over and above fixing something that wasn't.

Covered or whatever it is, washed the car, did a good job by the measurement of something was broken and it got fixed for no money or goodwill or whatever and got a zero on csi.

Yep.

I've seen somebody's dad come in, get written up by their son and he gave his son bad csi.

I've never seen that before.

I have.

That's terrible.

So that being said, it's about perception. We're managing perception and feelings more than transactions. And I think a lot of times our approach to this is we're barely getting by doing the transactions and so we lose perspective of the fact that this is more of a measurement about feelings. You want to come back somewhere that you like and trust people versus oh well, they got the job done. Mm. Would you agree with that?

100%.

Okay.

Maybe the, the first thing that we get wrong about this is we think that if we want customers to come.

Back.

That the advisors are the first part of this. But the truth of the matter is the shop capacity in a lot of, in a lot of dealerships is more important than the advisors in the sense that if you're booked out two or three weeks, two things are, are going to happen. One is you're going to have customers that perceive it's difficult, especially if it's something that they got to drive around for two weeks with some sort of issue. Right. So they're going to see it as an inconvenience. The second thing is, is when people have an emergency, you don't have the capacity to squeeze in something.

Yeah, they're just said that the fall in line.

So the first part of this is having enough technicians and shop capacity to meet demand. And just like salespeople or anything, you want one more tech than you think you need because there's always drive in, you know, unforeseen upsells tech on vacation.

Somebody calls in sick or whatever stuff. Yeah.

So it starts with technicians. Second one is more important than the advisors is the system. In a system that isn't built on volume, that's built on quality, we often in, in our industry perceive that we're successful when we're busy. Busy is not a measurement of success. A measurement of success is high retention, happy customers, and it should feel easy. Right. Slow is fast in a lot of ways. So we need to focus on a system that is built for quality. A lot of times our systems like service drive, Jito and the things that we do in the drive will handle high volume in a. In an ordered manner. That takes chaos and kind of turns it into the perception of ease.

Yeah. It sends that message to the customer and says we've got a game plan for you.

But it's about the system. From the time we make the appointment until the customer takes the car. That system needs to be devised for quality and perception and follow up and hand holding more than just volume.

Great.

Now when we talk about volume, oftentimes we will have a quick lube. We have our least talented text and advisors handling the most volume in a. Hey, just see how, see if you can do it, man. Or there's no real thought to it, it's just line them up and knock them down. And we feel like, oh, we came in and we worked super hard and we did a lot of volume but you know, we made no friends. We didn't make any money either. And we just moved a lot of time and effort around with very little to show for it.

It is so funny how many times I've had that happen. And it just, the lesson just keeps going over and over and over again. Right. So I started my career selling cars. So I spent seven years on the variable side, which for some of the people in fix was like, oh, that sounds terrible. But um, I actually liked being on the variable side. But I realized so quickly that the clients that were the happiest were never the clients that we didn't make money on. Yeah, the happiest clients were the ones that spent a lot of money and those happy clients that spent a lot of money. And we, you know, did really well in terms of profitability on the deal. They sent me their friends which also made it really easy to sell them cars too and everything like that. But every time I had a customer that like would just grind us down and like we'd sell a car, a new car well below invoice and then we'd overallow on the trade and then give buy rate on the the financing, they'd then put a Google review that they got ripped off. And I never could understand that until I went back to service. And anytime I had a customer that came in for a free oil change and they came in, we got em in, got em out really fast, they left unhappy. So uh, writing more of those doesn't make a lot of sense when you're talking about CSI and retention.

Yeah.

So the RO account, how many are the advisors writing a day? If you have advisors writing 20 ROS day in and day out, you're going to have inconsistent csi. It's rare that there is an advisor that can handle that sort of volume and have good csi. They are out there, but it's not something that you can scale. And if you're ever bringing in new, you know, people from outside the industry to become advisors, you're going to burn them out.

Oh, it's frightening because that's all you have to do.

You know, they're sprinting from day one and they never really get a chance to build any sort of system or, or feel for it.

So to me.

That'S, that's it more than anything. And I would say that the thing that I want you to Pay attention to in. In this conversation is all of these things that we're talking about are things we control as managers. It has nothing to do with the advisors are training. The advisor training isn't going to work if we don't have the capacity. The advisor training isn't going to work if we don't have the systems in place. The advisor training isn't going to work if they're writing 20 a day. And so most of the. Even though we blame the advisors and texts most of the time when we're going into a service department that struggles with csi, the problem is us in management, not the advisors or the techs.

Yeah. We set up a system to get poor csi.

Yeah. And then the outcome of a lot of these things that we're talking about is more comebacks, more inconsistencies, a terrible communication because you only have so much time, you only have so much focus and you have your least talented employees touching the most customers, which is never a recipe in any industry for anything good.

It's funny that we double down on that because it's not just the advisors that are inexperienced. We also give the car to an inexperienced tech. Like the whole thing, it's set up for disaster.

Yeah, that's great.

I'd writing too many ros is number one for me.

Yeah, I think it goes hand in hand.

Right, Good. What else you got on your list?

That's it. And I would encourage you, if this is something you're struggling with, get in. Irreplaceable Service manager Live, the lecture series. We're going to be talking about csi. We're going to be talking about systems, pay plans and all that. It's an opportunity for you to learn something. And also we've priced it so the individual service manager that wants to learn can out of pocket pay for it himself or herself. Themselves.

Themselves.

I like themselves.

Good.

And that's it.

So do you want to end on a noticing prayer or no?

No, never. I'll stop to death. It's like eating with you. Saying prayers like intermittent fasting.

Okay. I was gonna say it's a blend of like Billy Graham and Julia Child.

No, it's. Intermittent fasting is a better. Thanks you guys. We'll 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 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-S 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 in the next video.