Upselling in Service Dept

[stevef]

What experience/opinion does anyone have concerning a Service Dept tendency to avoid upselling during busy periods when appointment times are a couple days out or more.
I'm a PM at an MB center. MB has sold a ton of vehicles in the last couple years. Consequently, we have a lot of CSI customers that we need to service promptly. This reaches critical levels in the summer months and as Service Advisors see appointments being pushed out more than just a couple days they develop the mind set that if they do upsell other needed items or service they are using hours they don't have. I'm trying to get a handle on whether this is valid. Anybody?

[MBailey]

Steve,

Sounds like you have a shop scheduling/production problem here. Find out from the Service Manager/Director what the tech efficiency is averaging. (Clock hours worked vs. hours flagged). If it is low, perhaps the techs are not being dispatched properly or are spending too much time on unproductive items. (You could offer to deliver parts to the techs to help with this, if this is an issue).

If your tech efficiency is at or above guide, then shop loading would need to be looked at. Are most of your appointments being set heavily toward one portion of the day? (8AM Syndrome). Are there too many being booked each day? How far out are appointments being booked?

If that looks ok, then you either need more techs, or need to be open more hours per week.

Good, ethical upselling practices should NEVER be cut out for the sake of production. Customers have the right to be told what is wrong with their vehicle, and Mercedes customers are extremely sensitive to this, as I'm sure you well know. (I have experience with BMW/Porsche, so I know the profile well).

Your dealerships' reputation is at stake. To forsake your customers trust for the sake of CSI numbers will definitely cost you in the long run.

[Gary J. Naples]

Hi stevef,

MBailey makes some excellent points, particularly with regard to the proper care and maintenance of your customers vehicles. My own experience with MB customers showed that they were very loyal to shops that paid attention to emerging vehicle problems or needed repairs that the customers were unaware of. Moreover, they never had a problem paying for reliable recommended services.

If your shop is indeed performing at peak efficiency and it truely cannot handle the additional work maybe the owner and service manager should discuss extended hours (night/weekend or a combination of both) to accomodate busy times such as the summer months.

Gary J. Naples
GNA

[Malk]

To be quite frank, unless your service department is booking at least 2 weeks ahead, working on a five technician workshop your service advisors must be looking for upsells. Maybe they should be introduced to a bonus structure. If you fancy knowing some real upselling methods let me know.

[joe r]

If you shop is running at peak efficiency
it sounds like you need to add hours or techs. If it is year round more likely you
need to add techs.
We have a bonus plan for the techs called
bonus bucks. For each hour upsell between 2
and 4 the tech gets one dollar. Upsell five
hours or more it doubles. Paid in cash on Friday.
I also have a pull board in parts. If the tech upsells $100 they get a pull off the board. It has 50 spaces and the are worth $5, $10, $20 and $50. When the board is empty the is a $100 prize. Paid from the cashier at time of upsell.
Each board costs me $500 but results in
about $9000 in customer pay parts.

joe r


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