Customer pay R/O sales drop

[GaryE]

Over the past 2 years we have had a remarkable customer repair order sales drop. We have lost 30% to 40% in the two years and have tried all sorts of marketing ideas to get the customer to come in.
The complaint the service writers tell us is that the customer doesn't have the money to repair or maintain the car. Major maintenences are not getting sold. We used to do 3 or 4 60k and 8 to 10 30k maintenences a week.(We are a small import store.) Now we are lucky to do 2 30k maint. per week and maybe 1 60k every two to three weeks. We are writing more CP R/Os than ever, but mostly for oil changes.
The service writers are the same and our CSI is great!(We do't buy our CSI). Our parts and labor price increases have been minute.
*****A strange coincedence? Our new cars sales have ballooned from averaging 40 to 50 cars per month to 170 to 200 per month in the same time period. But this wouldn't take away that much in service sales would it? If so, the CP should be back in 6 months to a year? What else could it be? Any good ways to track this loss? This is hurting my wallet.

[Chuck Hartle]

Hi Gary,

This is a good one. I went through this several years ago. Chrysler vehicles, in the early 90's, stunk. We lost market share and repair business for almost 4 straight years. Once Chrysler started putting out some good product in the mid 90's, things started to explode, very quickly.

Even though you have the same writers, this could be more of a problem of chaos in the service drive. To more than triple the vehicle sales, your UIO should at least had your warranty triple in this time frame. With such a huge increase in car sales, it might be that the writers are overwhelmed to the point that they have become order takers instead of sales people. One of the lost "arts" we saw with our writers was having the time to 'upsell' customer needed sales. They had less time to sell and spent most of their time just managing the phones and appointments that we overwhelming our service department.

We solved this by hiring a appointment clerk, and a full time booker. Our appointment clerk would make most of the appointments and stagger them 15 minutes apart and leave 30% of the shop open for holdover vehicles.

We also hired a full time "service department operator" who answered all the phones for our service advisors. We found that more than half of the calls were for information that could be handled by our shop foreman, appointment clerk, or dispatcher. This gave a writers a lot of time back to manage the workload and the ability to communicate and effectively sell services to the customers.

One other thing that has hurt over the past few years is the information published in the owner's manual. This information usually has the recommended service intervals and they have increased dramatically.

Based on your growth, you should be able to capitalize on the huge growth. This might be a good question to post over on the service manager forum. I would bet that you get some great advice from there. If you are concerned, I can assure you that the service manager should share the same concern. After all, service and parts sales go hand in hand....

Chuck Hartle'

[Gary J. Naples]

Hi GaryE,

Before jumping to any conclusions about the reason behind the drop in your customer ROs, ask the customers themselves why they aren't buying. Forget what the service advisors are telling you. Not having money for repairs might apply to some, but certainly not all. They could be giving excuses and not reasons. Find out for yourself. Get together with the service manager and devise a little phone survey and simply ask the customers.

Its impossible to devise solution(s) without first knowing the real problem(s).

Gary J. Naples
GNA

[Farfinator]

2 quick thoughts come to mind:
1. What is the lease vs buy % for the vehicles out the door? You may need to adjust your approach accordingly. If you find a high % of leased vehicles you may want to explore incentivising a completed maintenance book by affording it some turn in value, for instance, to encourage lease customers to observe suggested maintenance.
2. The "ALL OR NOTHING DILEMMA" Virtually no one in this profession seems to be able to recognize that there can be compromises. There is a point between free and suggested list. There are service options between oil change and 30K. If a customer turns down a major, the advisor must be trained to consider selling a smaller chunk. Perhaps a minor tune this time and schedule a tire rotation and brake inspection the next and the coolant flush the next etc. More often than not, the customer will bite on the smaller pieces and appreciate the opportunity to "fully" service the car, but in smaller bites!
Chuck makes a very good point, do your advisors have the time and resources to upsell? A service secretary or lot guy might liberate some valuable time. Creating a small service quick reference to aid selling the smaller chunks could also help.
Managing the $ per/Ro daily also helps. Constantly encourging/coaching the upsell. Monitoring and reviewing the progress with advisors daily, if necessary. Not in a threatening way, but simply to let them know that performance in that area "IS" critical, will continue to be monitored and reviewed until objectives are met. Mentioning it one day without reinforcement rarely has a impact.