Eliminating the Service Cashier

[mjb]

In my store the cashiers are have other responsibilities ,scanning ro's and handling parts customers and also if you stagger your advisor's work hours I could see situations where the customer could end up talking to an advisor who wouldn't know all the details about the transaction. Like most stores these days we are also looking for ways to get leaner. The position we eliminated was the make ready mgr. The RO's he used to generate are now being written by the serv advisors and the percentage we use on the adv pay is less than what the mgr. salary was
and if vehicles coming end slows down were not out any money on that position. Some other advantages to this was there is always someone there to write the ro's and the trucks go through the shop faster and are easy to track through the dispatch system ( we are held to 48hr turnaround to new sales)The make ready ro's also offer the advisors a chance to make some easier money than usual
ro's dealing with insurance, ext warranty and customers.

[Paulp]

To robc: the 30 to 50 ro's include lof, pdi and customers. No internals I have another consultant doing internals and a mobile service van. We work on a 4 day 10 hour schedule. We have 3 teams of 7 techs. We actually call our cashiers csr's. They book all tickets, write all po's, arrange all rides for customers, call all extended warranties, file all copies, call all customers the day after, set up appointments and cashier. This lets my service consultants write tickets. Being I have a fairly small shop, 16 bays. I have to make the best of what I have. My csi top box is normally in the 68 to 72 range so we do ok.

[richardwright]

To Paulp: Do your csr's have any knowledge of what has been done to the vehicle, and why it had to be done? The reason for my question is because it seems your csr's do all the work that a service consultant would normally do. If your csr's were the ones who wrote the tickets, you wouldn't need a service consultant. If seems to me that your csr's are the actual service consultant and your advisors are no more than techs without any labor.

[Paulp]

To richardwright: My csr's have little knowledge of what's been done to the vehicle. The service consultants are the first person the customer sees. They physically cannot get to the cashier without seeing the consultant. Plus the consultant is right beside the customer during the cashiering process.

[robc]

That's a very unique repair order flow from what you describe. It sounds extremely efficient to put through the amount of work that you are. It sounds great. I especially like that you've removed all the "administrative" stuff from the advisor's plate and put that on the CSR - that leaves the advisors to do what they do best - talk to customers and recommend service. Don't feel that you have to reveal your whole system or map out the entire repair order flow, but are the CSRs partnered with an advisor?

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** Rob, Editor WD&S **
Help is only a message post away!
robc@dealersedge.com

[Paulp]

The advisors, techs, porters and csr's are all mapped together as a team.

[Jeff Novick]

We have a Honda dealership, four Service Advisors, writting aprox 25 repair orders daily. The Advisors are the cashiers. Each has there own cash drawer and credit card machine. For us it works really well. At first the Advisors did't like it much, but they are now used to it. It's great having the customer see the advisor when picking up their vehicles. We have all seen Advisors "hiding" when they have a problem. This eliminates this concern completely. While the Advisor is "cashing out" the customer, they radio a Poter for the vehicle. By the time the transaction has been completed, the customer's car is right outside the door. We have six stores and our Dealership is the second one on board. We are planning to have the others follow.

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Jeff Novick
Parts & Service Director
Miller Honda

[This message has been edited by Jeff Novick (edited 01-19-2003).]