Does your back hurt yet?
Service and parts professionals out there: this question “does your back hurt yet” is posed to you! This question comes from a golf analogy—when one player is playing better than everyone else in the foursome they are “carrying” the team, thus the question: “does your back hurt yet?”
In these challenging economic times when car sales are soft and consumers are stingy with their money, it is a good thing that the service and parts departments are able to carry the weight for many dealerships. Maybe, the better question is: “how is all that weight affecting your employees ANDyour customers?”
While it may be easy to say that “they” are all lucky to have jobs right now, employee’s attitude and morale transfer into their behavior. How employees behave can affect the amount of money customers will spend, their CSI score, and whether or not they will return.
Spend time on the front lines
One of the ways managers can impact employee behavior is to spend time interacting and working with them. This doesn’t mean that the manager does the employee’s job, but instead, provides positive feedback and reinforcement for the way they do it. Many managers only provide feedback when things are done wrong—starting with something positive and then redirecting behavior—can reduce the employee’s natural tendency to become defensive.
When things are tough, the managers’ presence on the front line can improve employee attitude, creating positive behavior with customers. Please see Sheila Woolsey’s article “Employee Behavior – Training, Guiding, Coaching published on pages 18-21 in the June 2009 issue of Fixed Ops Magazine for more information on employee behavior.
Implement more customer follow-up
One of the ways that dealerships stay in touch with their customers is follow-up. Follow up could include service advisors focusing on selling the value of the service at time of delivery and then calling the customer a few days later to see if they have any questions. Follow-up could also include service advisors personally calling customers a few weeks after recommended repairs have been declined.
Implementing some additional follow-up strategies can help to ensure that customers feel important and welcome. Relationship-building techniques go a long way toward customer retention and should not be delegated to support staff or BDC employees.
Get input from customers
Finding out what is most important to customers in these trying times will help to determine where to focus retention efforts. It is easy to assume that only discounts and reduced prices bring customers back. When customers express what’s important to them it is probably a good idea to listen. The front-line employees who answer the phones and/or set service appointments are a good source for gathering customer comments and requests.
Taking the time to speak with customers—both on the phone and in person—about what they need and want from the service and parts departments may provide some pleasant surprises. It would be interesting to see if time and money are being spent on the things that are most important to customers.