For the first 100 years of the automotive industry, the main thing you heard about at 20 group meetings, conventions and regional dealer gatherings, was customer satisfaction. With a decline in automotive dealerships and an increase in aftermarket se

Proper documentation has been a frequent theme of my articles. Dealerships face potential pitfalls if they fail to document all customer visits accurately. I have tried to offer readers explanations as to why each and every visit by a consumer should

The hot ticket these lean days is attending some type of “service sales” workshop, webinar, or similar rodeo, teaching dealer service professionals how to create and sell additional flat rate hours during the service drive reception proce

Tom Restino gets it! Restino is general manager and vice president of operations for DePaula Chevrolet in Albany, New York. I had the privilege of meeting Restino a couple of months ago when I was in New York training a group of automotive profession

A knowledgeable and successful friend of mine and I were discussing prosperous organizations versus, well, not so successful ones (i.e. Marriott vs Ramada). We reviewed obvious differences we all experience such as employee attitudes, facility appear

Which is harder: knowing or doing? Almost everyone understands that “doing” is harder than “knowing.” I agree, but the first step in the knowing/doing process must be, by necessity, “knowing.” It is the height of absurdity to demand that

I just finished up an initial round of service advisor training for a large dealer group and was surprised to see that not only did they not employ properly constructed factory based maintenance menus, they were not even aware of the benefits to both

Last month, my article focused on helping you hold your people accountable to your service processes. Odds are your dealership has sound processes in place, but is it time to do a process “makeover?” In other words, is it time to update and refre

Many dealerships or manufacturers have a formal or informal policy with respect to “goodwill” or customer satisfaction repairs. Usually dealers perform these repairs because a problem is not covered under warranty, the warranty covering the vehic