Maybe you are one of those extraordinarily lucky shops with a long-term, capable and highly motivated service advisor who does all the things you want done, exactly as you want them done. But for the vast majority of shop owners, getting that right man or woman often can be a lifelong quest that far too often leaves us frustrated by having the wrong person doing the wrong things.
Our service advisor is the most important staff member in the building. Nobody else spends so much time interacting with our customers, and nobody else has such a great ability to either make us look good or to make us look horribly bad. The very first thing we have to understand is that service advisors are grown not born, and like any staff member, it is up to us to define their role, set expectations for their performance and most importantly of all, provide them with relevant training so they can achieve all the things we expect of them. An important first consideration in hiring a service advisor might be how this person will react and interact with our customers. Remember that our service advisor, for good or ill, is the face of our business, the person that our customers will interact with most frequently. We want to be very sure of this person before we put them out there, representing all that we have done and accomplished since opening our doors. A few careless words could destroy relationships it has taken us years to develop.
Measuring Confidence
Far too often we look at our service advisors as warm (or not so warm) bodies standing in front of our customers and think very little about what we are asking of them and even less about the negative impact they could have on our operation. Background and abilities aside, we have to hire service advisors with reasonable confidence that they can stand in front of our customers and do a credible job representing our business. If we have those doubts during the interview process, then we need to address our concerns and either proceed with confidence that this person is a good fit or go with our gut and pass on candidates who do not present themselves as willing or capable of quality customer service. Dealing with our customers is the most important skill and ability for any service advisor; far too often this is ignored or overlooked. Repeatedly, I see shop owners and service managers hire based on automotive background with little or no consideration given to an individual’s ability to engage and interact with customers.
We spend days and weeks making sure our new service advisors know every function and nuance of our shop management system. We spend days and weeks teaching them how to write service and making sure they are getting every possible hour of billable time into their estimates, but we regularly neglect to talk to them about how to interact with our customers and what our expectations are for customer service. We rarely provide them with guidance or oversight. Customers buy when they feel a connection and confidence in their service advisor, not just because we have a great process and certainly not because we are quick and efficient. People buy from people and buy because they feel comfortable, confident and engaged. What key or function in your shop management system deals with making your Service Advisor into a successful salesperson? I believe that training our service advisors in those directions is an important step.
There are many in the automotive repair world who believe that a smooth and flawless process and getting our customers in and out the door as efficiently as possible is the most important thing. However, there is much more to be said for engaging and wowing our customers with an extraordinary customer service experience that not only gets them in and out efficiently, but also has them feeling pampered and well taken care of. It takes a bit more time and effort to get to know your customers, a few moments longer to understand what their concerns are today and to advise them of repairs and services that will keep their car safe and reliable well into the future, but this extra effort gives them great reasons to keep coming back. Extraordinary customer service is not just about getting them out the door today; it is all about having them want to come back tomorrow or next week or next month. This is what an extraordinary service advisor can and should do.
Fixing Those Who Are Broken
If you have a service advisor who does not approach our customers with an effort toward exceptional service, you need to work to realign his efforts in that direction or replace him. If you are looking to hire a service advisor, hire with exceptional customer service in mind and automotive background aside, hire based on service aptitude. I have seen far too many seasoned, knowledgeable and experienced service advisors who were as unfriendly and confrontational with customers as they could possibly be. Knowledge and experience mean very little if you cannot engage and connect with our customers. They mean even less if we are not able to make our customers feel good about coming into our shop and giving them great reasons to come back. Customers can go anywhere to be treated poorly. Retention is what a quality service advisor gives us and that has little to do with automotive knowledge or background.
Like everything else in our shop, nothing is important unless we say it is. If having our service advisor(s) engaging our customers and going the extra mile to provide caring and attentive customer service, we probably should mention that. If going the extra mile with our customers and talking to them about factory maintenance services and ways to make their cars safe and reliable are important, it would undoubtedly be a good idea to mention them to our service advisors. Furthermore, if our service advisors are falling short in meeting our expectations or lacking the skills to provide the extraordinary service we had envisioned, it would certainly be a good idea to get them the training they need to get them there. Nothing paves the way to accountability like training and having our service advisors accountable to a higher standard of customer service is a very, very good thing.
I have been writing about a favorite restaurant that my wife and I have been going to for many years. It is very expensive and way out of the way, but several times a year we show up there because every time we go we are treated like royalty from the moment we walk in the door. We know we are likely to pay much more here and know we have to drive 40 minutes out of our way to get there, but for more than 15 years we have been going here because great service makes it all worthwhile. The very same thing goes for service our customers. If our customers feel important and taken care of, they won’t see us as an inconvenience and won’t be as concerned about our prices. The value of great service makes it all worth their while.
Your shop can and should be just like my favorite restaurant and your service advisor is the one who can make all of that happen. When customers are made to feel taken care of and made to feel special, great things can happen.
It’s 8 o’clock; what have our service advisors accomplished today? What are we going to do about that?
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