EXTENDED SERVICE HOURS

[GEO]

NEED FEEDBACK FROM ANY SERVICE MANAGERS WHO HAVE EXTENDED HOURS (2 LATE NIGHTS UNTILL 7:30). HOW DO YOU PAY PIECE WORK TECHS AND ADVISORS??? DOES THIS HELP WITH YOUR BOTTOM LINE OR WE JUST WASTING TIME IN TRYING THIS? ANY COMMENTS OR ADVICE WILL BE APPRECIATED.

[btk]

I am open until 900 pm mon-fri. My advisors are paid off what the shop does-not individual pay plans-so it was no problem getting an advisor to work 1200-900 shift. Same with the techs-after 1200 pm the work was dispatched to that team of 4 technicians that work till 900. A big mistake I made at first, was to pull an advisor off the day shift and not add anybody. It put alot more stress on the morning shift advisors and TSI and sales suffered-I realized this pretty quick and did add another advisor during the morning shift. I increased my overall expense with an advisor and p/t cashier who worked 5-9 and a hybrid parts/advisor person about 10,000 a month. We were having great repair order growth before and after opening late-so it is hard to say if it helped the overall business. But customers do like it and use it.I look at it like Saturday customers-we all have customers who come in Saturdays and use us for Saturday service only. The customers who use your late hours will be the same repeat customers. You just have to committ fully to doing it and hang in there for a good 1-1 1/2 years before you can really judge it effectiveness and of course, advertise the hell out of it!!!!

[zsmith]

btk - that's a good point about adding staff. All too often parts and service depts. are expected to increase our working hours - Saturdays, nights, even Sundays, without increasing staff. Example, a store open 7:30 to 5:30 (10 hrs) adds evenings until 8:30 and 8 hrs Saturdays. That means they're going from 50 hrs to 73 hrs, 40% plus increase in hours. Can't be done without an increase in staff!

[Mike Vogel]

The demand from your customers needs to be there otherwise it will fail.
Have your cashiers do a survey of your current customers and see what day(s) and hours are convienent for them. That will help determine if it is the right move for you to do. Every store/area is different so do your homework first to save headaches later.

[MIKE MACCAR]

Our Volkswagen store is open till MIDNIGHT Monday through Friday. Our first shift start at 7am till 3:30pm. I have 2 advisors in at 6am and they work till 4:30 i have 1 advisor come in at 11:00 am and he works till 9:00pm (because our 2nd shift rush is from 5pm to 9pm and i have 1 advsoir that works from 1:30 to 10:30 and i trained our parts counterman to write as well and he covers the counter from 10:30 to midnight. We have 4 technicians on the midnight shift. we pay advisors a salary plus commission on hours turned in the shop and our techs are 100% flat rate. We average $45K IN LABOR SALES ON OUR 2ND SHIFT.

[carwars]

Its great if you have the work to support it and the added expense that come with it.It is even better if you have carryover during the week.If your operation presently is not covering the existing hours availible then all your doing is moving existing work around at an added expense.It is great if you market to commercial as you can service their vehicles during their off time.I have done this in the past,only problems were getting parts,having employees staying late because you really don't have a quit time until the night jobs are done so that they can be picked up in the a.m.Also as time went on the trucks kept,getting bigger and are always loaded so having proper equipment and talent is another expense.It definitely will get you through the slow times.