The Lost Customer

Dealerships will spend thousands of dollars in advertising bring in new customers on low margin labor operations such as oil changes. This month let’s look at the placing the focus on retaining the customer by providing excellent concern and care for them.

No Time to Do It Right

I feel fortunate to see so many different dealerships and how they do business. One of the things I hear often is the staff doesn’t have the time to perform processes correctly. The reality is without the right processes so much time is wasted with no way to place the cost of doing business that way. The advisors scramble to put out the latest fire pulling a technician off this job to work on that job. They feel the battle of their job is to act like a fireman and constantly put out fires. It’s like a dog chasing their tail only to find even when they go faster it is never caught. The customer in all of this is inconvenienced by the lack of disciplines and processes and generally doesn’t keep coming back to the dealership for service.

They can be inconvenienced anywhere so they hit the road looking for a repair facility that simply will do it right. Why would take over 1.5 hours to have a customer waiting on their oil changed to be completed? Does your shop time service to check customer wait times? Do you have a system that performs follow up contacts with the customer to see how your dealership performed? The customer must feel cared for the moment they arrive and if the staff fails to meet that expectation you will lose the customer. It won’t matter how low cost your oil change is if your customers feel abused by your processes and how long they wait to be serviced. Would your staff say they don’t have the time to do it right?

Sincerely,
Rob Gehring, President
Fixed Performance Inc.
rgehring@fixedperformance.com

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