Convenience, Value, Speed and Transparency and Trust have been around a long time. The difference between now and then, is that the volume of information and abundance of choices for service available to the customer has increased exponentially. I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember a time when these five were not important to a service customer.

Competition is fierce in the service business and these are the expectations you can capitalize on if done properly. A service department that delivers on these five expectations will crush the competition.

When dealerships had a monopoly on the information and repair stream, if you wanted to know something about your car, the maintenance, the recalls or the anything else, you had two choices.

Go to the dealer (or call them) and ask questions or get your hands on a magazine or other periodical that had information on the brand you were driving.

That has changed since the information age began. Customers can use a smartphone and in less than five minutes, research your dealership (and the brand), find the answers they were looking for (hopefully) and book an appointment without breaking a sweat. No muss, no fuss.

How we present ourselves to the customer and follow through on delivering the customer experience in this information age determines how successful our service business will be. So, let’s look at these five customer expectations and put together a game plan for your dealership.

Convenience is not just scheduling. It’s scheduling plus saving the customers time plus providing alternate transportation plus comfortable lounges and workstations plus immediate inventory of spare parts, plus, plus, plus.

Gone are the days of coffee and TV in the lounge as the standard for convenience. If you are not constantly looking for ways to be more convenient, you are behind the power curve. Here are five things you can do right now.

1.) Sign up all your advisors and parts people for texting through their workstations. It saves time, saves missed opportunities to repair the vehicle and most importantly, your customers expect it.

2.) Sign up for repair order review and pay by email. You can get a service integrated into your DMS that allows your service advisor to send a completed copy of the repair order by email and get payment before the customer comes back in to retrieve their vehicle.

3.) Pre-pay and schedule all special-order parts appointments. If you are going to have the parts next week on Tuesday, book the appointment with the customer. Chances are everything will go as planned and your customer will appreciate having their vehicle repaired in a timely manner.

4.) Pre-write all service appointments every day and have them available on the service drive to go over them with the customer when they arrive. It speeds everything up and the customer will thank you for saving their time.

5.) Consider using Uber or Lyft instead of a shuttle. You can set up a business account and provide your customers with a faster and easier to use service than waiting for Sammy shuttle driver to get back from taking Grandma Jones 30 miles out to the farm.

Value is important. Too many customers think that dealership services are too expensive. When a customer says to you “No thanks, I’m going to take it to my mechanic” what they are really saying is “No thanks, you did not give me enough value to want to spend my money on repairs here.”

Building value starts the moment the customer comes into the service drive. If a customer sees you only as a commodity, you will be treated as a commodity… available anywhere, nothing special, generic, who cares, price positioned, no perceived value service.

Here are five things you can do to build value.

1.) Train, train, train. The service visits per year have gone down from a high of 2.7 – 3.3 visits per year in the 90’s to .9 – 1.2 visits per year now. Why on earth would you let an untrained, uncoached, semi-professional advisor talk to anybody?

2.) Get competitive on 10 common repairs. Because every brand is slightly different, you need to do a little research. What are your most common repair items? Compare your prices to the dozen or so aftermarket repair shops within a three-to-five-mile radius of your dealership. Get your pencil out, make some pricing adjustments and start getting close. You do not need to match the prices exactly! You just need to be close.

• Basic Oil Change.
• Wiper Blade(s) Replacement
• Cabin Filter Replacement
• Engine Air Filter Replacement
• Tire Replacement
• Battery Replacement
• Timing Belt Replacement
• Basic Brake Pad Replacement
• Brake, Power Steering and Transmission Fluid Exchange

Factory-Recommended Services

3.) Use your brand knowledge and the service sales process to present a maintenance reminder and a multipoint inspection to every customer. They may try another shop, but once they get a taste of “We don’t do that here,” they will be back.

4.) Make a point of reminding them what they get at no charge on every visit. Just add a line to the repair order and tell them “car wash-no charge” and “27-point multipoint inspection-no charge”. You build value through demonstration. Point it out to them!

5.) Do more than expected. There is a great book titled, “The Simple Truths of Service” by Barbara Glanz and Ken Blanchard. This one book explains this concept far better than a thousand words written by me. Get a few copies, make it required reading for your service team.

Speed is not just how fast you can go, it’s how fast and accurately you can provide a service. We live in a speed-driven service society – one we have never seen before.

If you remember a time when people sat on the front porch with their neighbors, when phones had a dialer, when movies required attendance, when information was in the library, and service was personal then you have grown up in this information age like me.

Now the expectation is…how fast, how accurate and when can it get done…and by the way…if you don’t do it the right way…I’ll give you a bad survey.

Since speed of repairs is so important to customer satisfaction, here are five things you can do to speed up your service experience.

1.) Pre-write all your repair orders, maintenance reminders and have them available on the service drive for the advisors to use when the customer comes in. This is the second time you have read this. It makes a big impact on the customer when it looks like you know what you are doing.

2.) Honor the word and title “Express” in your Express Service. This is a scheduling, staffing, time management intensive challenge for the service department. The more competent you are here, the more trust you build with the customer. Hit your promise time every time!

3.) Use a scheduling system, just not “Bring it on in any time after 7 a.m.” You can’t be fast if you are not tracking and managing your service schedule.

4.) Staff appropriately. Nothing worse than a customer coming in to get service and there is no one to greet them or work on their vehicle.

5.) Make sure you have the right mix of A-D techs. Nothing slows the repair process down like Tommy the New Tech getting an intermittent fault code diagnosis on a new model year vehicle.

Everybody says they want transparency, and nobody can properly define it. I’m here to tell you, we’ve had transparency in this business since I was a wee lad in service.

We just never called it transparency. We just called it “information and explanation”… you know…doing your job. Letting the customer know the how, what, when, where, and why by using the maintenance reminders and the 3 C’s, aka “Advising.” It hasn’t changed.

The perception is that we (us) in this industry have made efforts to conceal things from the consumer to gain a sales or price advantage. So, customers believed we were not transparent. We’ve never changed or did anything different, except, we labeled what we did before with one word. Transparency. And the expectation is that we will be transparent.

Here are five things you can do to provide transparency.

1.) Put the 10 competitive items (listed above) on your website. Not the specials, not the “free car wash with every oil change”, get the word out on your competitive items.

2.) Provide every customer with a maintenance reminder. “Here is what your vehicle is due for today Mr./Ms. Customer based on your vehicle’s mileage and history along with the factory-recommended service designed to provide you with a safe and reliable vehicle and carefree driving experience.”

3.) Make a list of amenities, laminate them and leave them everywhere. Give them to the advisors. Customers will pick them up and read them while they are getting their repair order written up.

4.) Give complete estimates with the multipoint inspections. For example, when the technician is done, and she/he gives the multipoint back to the advisor and there is a yellow caution checked on “Brakes, next service,” go ahead and give the customer the price on replacing the brakes at their next service right then. Save them a phone call and build trust.

5.) Give completed 3 C’s on the repair order. No one can read and understand half of the stuff we write already, and incomplete repair stories just make it worse. Think of it like this…if your grandma can read and understand it…it’s probably ok.

Lastly, trust is earned. It’s not given lightly. Let me ask you this: What do you think is the most common feeling every customer experiences when they pull into the service drive? Confidence? Happiness? Expectation?

Maybe. My contention is that the most common feeling every customer has when they come into the service drive is fear. Even if they have been to your service drive for routine maintenance from the very first day of ownership and everything has been perfect on every service visit, when they come in, they still have a little fear.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of being taken advantage of. Fear or incompetency or arrogance. Fear of not getting their vehicle back in the same condition they brought it in and the way they like it. (Everyone reading this has been on the receiving end of the “They changed my radio stations” call.)

You must get them to set aside the fear and trust what you are doing for them. They need to trust your judgement, diagnosis, recommendations, repair path, charges, and arrangements.

Here are five things you can do to build trust on every service visit with every service customer.

1.) Provide the customer with the information they are seeking. If it’s a maintenance reminder, a recall notice, a repair notice, a service special…you get the picture…give it to them.

2.) Make the information stream obvious. Post it, print it, position it, and provide it. If it’s not on your website, it should be.

3.) There is a service drive sales process. Use it. If you are just winging it, it means every customer that comes into your service drive gets a different experience every time they come in. That builds distrust.

4.) Become better listeners. This is a skill set. We all need to be better. Here are five ways to become a better listener:

 Stop what you are doing and pay attention to the speaker

 Use non-verbals and facial expressions to encourage them

 Offer solutions and ask for feedback

 Confirm the details

 Smile

5.) Follow up. Then do what you promised to do in the follow-up. Then verify that what you promised to do, got done. The customer will be satisfied…no…THRILLED with the results  because nobody is doing this.

Trust is earned. You will need to hold everyone accountable for doing things the way you want them done if you have any hope that this will lead to repeat customers and an increase in revenue.

This is our service business now: convenience, value, speed, transparency, and trust. If you are not focused on capitalizing on these five key components to building a better service business, it is going to be a rough couple of years for you as the car business goes through another downward cycle.

About the Author

Leonard Buchholz has helped hundreds of business owners, dealer principals, general managers, service managers, and directors build high-performance service sales teams, increase profits, RO count and CSI and decrease expenses by using the service sales process and targeted, direct training to make fundamental changes in their service operations. EMAIL: leonard@carbizcoaching.com