The vehicle multi-point inspection is a BANK ACCOUNT for building high levels of customer retention, trust and profitable service sales. The inspection process has nothing to do what you sell today but what you SELL FOR LIFE with each and every service customer. Used CONSISTENTLY and EFFECTIVELY your customer retention, relationships and service sales will increase substantially.

Make sure that your service team is utilizing these 12 best practices with the multi-point inspection process:

1. Every service customer whether they have 5 or 500,000 miles, warranty or maintenance or repair should have a multi-point inspection process performed.

2. The multi-point inspection form should be presented during customer write up, shown to the customer and made part of a walk around inspecting tires, wipers and lights with the customer.

3. Your customer should be made aware that 'Your technician(s) will complete the inspection while their vehicle is in for service to ensure that their vehicle is safe and dependable" and that you will let them know of the inspection findings.

4. Have your customer "Sign" the multi-point before they leave the dealership. This is critical as the customer is now very aware of the inspection taking place, what its value and reason is and they have an EXPECTATION as to hearing about the results and they are committing and signing to authorize it.

5. On Known Concerns such as a routine service or maintenance perform the inspection within the first 15 minutes of servicing the vehicle. Do not wait until the service is done then perform the inspection and turn it in. This gives you an opportunity to present conditions and any 'needed" services before the vehicle is out of the service bay and still in service and therefore puts you in a better position to sell needed service or maintenance NOW. Once the vehicles service is complete and the car is out of the bay, your ability to sell "needed" services today drops substantially.

6. On repairs and or diagnostics perform the inspection after the diagnostic but before the repairs are complete or at least before the vehicle has left the shop and the same conditions apply.

7. Always point out GREEN good conditions first before you do YELLOW services needed in the future and RED services needed now.

8. Be prepared to prioritize services based on yellow and red conditions and give your customers "Options" if they apply first rather than hit them with a big ticket with no options or priorities at all going in. This is HUGE as we are selling service for life here and if a customer has to ask you after you make a HUGE sales presentation what they really need now and can wait to have done later and then we tell them. It’s too late and we risk losing their business for good.

9. Make sure the multi-point inspection is personalized with all of your customer’s information at the top of the form. Have your advisor and technician also signs their names to it as well. Personalize the effort and your customer will further trust and respond to the results and come to expect it.

10. Make sure you have a check valve in place with your advisor, booker cashier etc. to STOP any inspection that may have been missed or are incomplete before the vehicle is delivered to your customer.

11. Make sure all inspection codes and conditions are entered into your customer’s service history. Remember we are conditioning your customer what to expect and your advisor team will have more information to predict and recommend future and current services and maintenance requirements as well as meet your customer’s expectations. This is also a critical element when it comes to the CRM systems you utilize to correctly populate the maintenance reminder that your customer receives which points out needed maintenance and future tire, brakes and battery needs and conditions.

12. Make sure your customer is given the white multi-point inspection copy fully filled out during active delivery