DealersEdge Professional Forums

I know a lot of Toyota dealerships are adding "appointment takers" as assistant service advisors. Does anyone have any thoughts about this trend and/or success/failure stories?

Thanks!

Linda
Linda Graham Hansen
Auto Dealer Focus www.autodealerfocus.com

I've heard that a reservationist can more than pay for themselves in the following ways.

1. Service writers have been known to load up monday and intentionally make friday a light day. A reservationist will fill the schedule without false capacity.

2. For some reason, the same time that a writer is busiest (7-9 am and 4-6pm) is the same time that the appointment calls come in.
Which is worse (rhetorical), to tell the customer to hang on while you tend the phone, or to answer the phone and say 'service, please hold' and keep working with the customer in front of you.

3. Writers untrained in the art of scheduling througout the day will say 'bring it in the morning' and have a mad rush of 10 customers at the same time. A skilled reservationist will set times throughout the day.

4. The whole 'hot potato' game of who's job is it to get an appointment tied to a receipted special order.

5. A reservationist can assist in other ways that improve CSI and marketing efforts. Follow-up for tomorrow's appts, missed appts, sor's, reminders, etc. The list goes on and on. If done correctly, can replace the cost of a 3rd party follow-up system with an in-house employee.

Without a doubt a must have in ANY store.
I implemented this roughly6 mos ago. $/R.O shot up almost $42.00 over night across the board. Any dealer that does not have this person on staff for the $30k it costs is missing out.