How Service Depts. are Adjusting to Doing Business During the COVID-19 Crisis

Presented by Steve Kwiatkowski

Your Peers Have Come Up With Creative Ways to Remain in the
Service Customer’s Mind and to Alleviate Their Fears.

Steve has been talking to your fellow fixed ops managers… many of them… about how they are
faring during this difficult time. In these many conversations he has uncovered many unique and creative ways to overcome the barriers to the service business created by the attack of this virus.
 
This presentation will review ways in which other service departments have succeeded in keeping their business in operation and employees on the job. Whether you are open now, or planning on how to restart the business when the critical days past… All these ideas are worth considering… all the more so because your peers have already made them work. 

Steve will Explore:

How to maintain customer communication – what to tell them – how to reach out to them
How to promote a “We’re Open for Business” message
How to reassure the customer of your new cleaning regimens – Overcome their fears
How to organize and staff a Service Valet Concierge so that customers do not have to come to the dealership
How to employ under-utilized dealership employees in these efforts
How to organize a “mobile repair” unit to perform some simple service off campus
… all with a lot more “How To” detail

It’s no secret that service department customer pay and warranty dollars are declining

 A lot of those ‘decline’ factors are just simply outside of your control

Longer oil change and fluid intervals are a big contributing factor, and more reliable vehicles impact both customer pay and warranty dollars

…leaving Service Managers often lamenting that there’s just nothing much to sell any more

…other than a bump from a recall from time to time, the overall trend for both service sales and profit in definitely down

But you can only cut expenses so much

Too often, we see service departments seeming to accept decline as inevitable, as sales and profit grind down, cutting expenses often ‘to the bone’, in an effort to try and ‘back-into’ a profit or fewer losses

…sadly too often short or poor staffing is the result…and a rushed and incomplete customer experience…leading to further declines in sales, profit, customer retention and CSI

Take a few minutes to see where ALL your service sales opportunities are

…with existing customers that are already coming in

So how about helping customers buy more

The bad news/good news is that in our dealership evaluations it’s very common to see over $1,000 per day in profit just walking out the door

…a lot more in stores doing over 500 customer pay RO’s in a month.

 Customers are simply not being educated on the need for, and benefit of

ALL required maintenance services and needed repairs

If only they knew about them, they would have been happy to buy

If only somebody asked…the right way

So the real solution is to improve your Service Lane Selling Process, tighten up the gaps, and with it deliver a smooth and easy customer experience that’s consistent and stays that way, month after month, year after year.

Join us in an online meeting to take a look