Digital Dealer - January 2019 - 43

A SYSTEM THAT FLAGS RECOMMENDED
SERVICES THAT A CUSTOMER DECLINED TO HAVE
PERFORMED AS 'RECOMMENDED NOT DONE' OR 'DONE
ELSEWHERE' CREATES A LOGICAL POINT FOR YOUR
SERVICE ADVISORS TO FOLLOW UP FROM."
convenience fits your service department, and where
exactly the added revenue
comes from as a result.
Of course, the first challenge that springs to mind is
that, by nature, the service
repair industry exists in a
world of inconvenience.
Nobody wants their vehicle
to break, and most people
don't want to take the time
to have their vehicle maintained.
So, dealership service
departments are working
from an inherent disadvantage in that there is an
involuntary aspect to your
whole interaction with the
consumer. They're only
there because they have
to be.
An additional challenge
facing dealers is that the
service repair industry has
traditionally been a reactive
industry - existing simply to
fulfill the incoming requests
of consumers, with service
advisors viewing their roles
more as order takers than
moneymakers or relationship builders. By design,
this has put the responsibility on the consumer to
identify a need and initiate
the subsequent interaction
by reaching out to the repair
facility.
Facing these kinds of
headwinds, how do dealers
approach increased business through convenience?

Expanding hours in your
service department certainly
helps make it easier for
consumers to do business
with you, but to really
maximize your share of customers' wallets, you need to
take the responsibility from
them and make their experience truly convenient.

staff on the value and
importance of the upsell. In
an industry that sees over
300 million repair orders
written per year, imagine
the revenue impact of
adding an extra hour of
labor to each for upsold
services.(1)
 RECORD IF THE

I advocate for a five-step
tactical approach that reprioritizes the service process
for customer convenience.
By investing in such a
system, you also ensure
that your service department will make the most of
every maintenance or repair
opportunity by managing
the upsell process, promoting better communication,
equipping advisors with
sales tools, and measuring
results.
The five steps to the
tactical approach are:
 1: IDENTIFY NEEDED
SERVICE. A system that
incorporates a multi-point
vehicle inspection while
building an estimate
simultaneously eliminates
misquoting and saves time.
 2: PROPOSE THE

that flags recommended
services that a customer
declined to have performed
as 'recommended not done'
or 'done elsewhere' creates
a logical point for your
service advisors to follow
up from. It also keeps the
customer relationship alive
regardless of what services
are or aren't performed
during a given visit.
 FOLLOW UP IF THE

THE TACTICAL
APPROACH

SERVICE TO THE
CUSTOMER. In addition to

recommending appropriate
service, a system that
supplies your advisors with
powerful customer-facing
tools also refocuses your

SERVICE WAS ACCEPTED
OR DECLINED. A system

SERVICE WAS DECLINED.

Flipping the old reactive
model into a proactive one
shifts the responsibility
for continued interaction
from the customer to you,
making the process more
convenient for them while
enabling you to keep in
touch and show that your
service department genuinely cares - a win-win.
 RECOMMEND THE
SERVICE AGAIN AT THE
CUSTOMER'S NEXT
VISIT. As I mentioned

earlier, having a built-in
process for following up on
any recommended work
D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

that wasn't completed
during a previous visit
maximizes your opportunity
to grow customer wallet
share. It also provides
additional opportunities to
pursue valuable upsells.
Alone, none of these
steps may seem particularly
revelatory. Taken together
as a single, streamlined
process, this system forces
your service department to
procedurally do the right
thing every time - and helps
management measure the
entire process.
By institutionalizing a tactical approach that prioritizes consumer convenience
while eliminating inefficiencies and increasing upsell
opportunities, you empower
every advisor to follow the
same steps as your best
advisor.
Do you think you'd sell
more customer pay service
if that were the case?
Source:
(1) NADA 2017

JAY HARPER, director
of product planning and
development at Naked Lime
Marketing, oversees the team
responsible for the strategy,
direction, and market position
for all of Naked Lime's dealer
services. He formerly served as
the manager of XtreamService,
managing the hiring, training,
and development of the
XtreamService Marketing
Services team. EMAIL:
JHarper@nakedlime.com.

JANUARY 2019

43
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Digital Dealer - January 2019

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