Many times, many of your in store problems can be fixed by doing one simple thing. Change the culture of the store with the customers and with the employees,

I worked at a large Jeep stored that gave out a loaner car for every customer that came into service for anything including an oil change. Meanwhile we had a shuttle van that was used more as a parts van than a shuttle. I noticed many of the loaner invoices showed car being brought back with 10 miles or less on them. At the time, we had 97 loaners at a cost of $22 per day. We were also spending $15-$20k per month on Enterprise. When I got there, the store was in talks to have Enterprise move a location into our store to speed up the processing of the loaner agreements. We also had a full time loaner manager who did nothing else but take care of our 97 car fleet (at about $45k per year).

The first and best thing we did was install an Express Lane Oil Service. not only did customers love being out in less than 30 minutes but it saved s on cars. We also had the writers ask the customer where they had to go. If it was within 10 miles, we would take them on our shuttle. We ended up with about 40 loaners by the time I left and my Enterprise statement was less than $4k per month. We combined the loaner manager position with the customer service manager position and the owner was very happy with the financial statement.

There's many other instances where a culture change nay be in order. I had techs who were used to getting their checks just before lunch. They automatically added an extra half hour to the lunch breaks "to get to the bank" (even those who had direct deposit!). By 3pm each Friday there would be a group who I would say were very less than motivated. I changed check time to the end of the day. Once their bays were cleaned and inspected, they were given their checks and allowed to leave. This was a Union shop who cried about it for a couple of weeks and then it became part of the new culture.

So take a close look at the problems you have in your store. Are they people problems or is it just time for a culture chnage?