Anyone doing sales and service delivery's? How do you handle this issue?

[Rick Buffkin]

My question is this.... If you have a sales and service pickup and delivery program and you deliver the vehicle to the customers home maybe after hours, How do you secure the key to the car if the customer isn't home to take delivery? It could be for sales or service. Or, what is your process for securing the car key? If the customer services their vehicle with you and uses the pickup and delivery program do you store an extra key at the dealership for the customers vehicles? Do you have a lockbox that you give to the customer and use that. I'm curious.

 

[Mitch Gallant]

My question is this.... If you have a sales and service pickup and delivery program and you deliver the vehicle to the customers home maybe after hours, How do you secure the key to the car if the customer isn't home to take delivery? It could be for sales or service. Or, what is your process for securing the car key? If the customer services their vehicle with you and uses the pickup and delivery program do you store an extra key at the dealership for the customers vehicles? Do you have a lockbox that you give to the customer and use that. I'm curious.

Pick up and drop off is a great service but in an instance where the guest isn't home when we pick up and drop off it must be extenuating circumstances and someone we've done business with before.

The liability and chance of issues go through the roof w/o face to face transfer of keys and autographs. A super well documented and guest acknowledged receipt is critical to avoid issues. That said, we just ask - "whatchawant us to do w the keys fam?" on a drop-off w/o someone home and then text a photo.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Thanks Mitch. We just got our haulers in a couple weeks ago and got all the wraps completed. We will be offering after hours pick up and drop off delivery for service. Prob some sales but mainly for Service. We were thinking about providing a lock box for the customer to keep the keys in. Another idea was for us to make a spare key and keep here at the dealership. But, that could get real expensive real quick. I'm trying to get an idea of what most dealerships do. I like your idea of texting a photo. Do you guys keep those images in a database as well?

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Thanks Mitch. We just got our haulers in a couple weeks ago and got all the wraps completed. We will be offering after hours pick up and drop off delivery for service. Prob some sales but mainly for Service. We were thinking about providing a lock box for the customer to keep the keys in. Another idea was for us to make a spare key and keep here at the dealership. But, that could get real expensive real quick. I'm trying to get an idea of what most dealerships do. I like your idea of texting a photo. Do you guys keep those images in a database as well?

To the database question... yes, I hope... It's via the CRM so there's record but I've never had to go back and use them so I'm not sure if there's a clock on it's life. Trying to keep it all in one place... even though we're paying for at least 4 texting platforms that are baked into various systems. craziness...

For the afterhour keys there are a couple really slick solutions and the "secure key lounge" Tekion promotes and offers is being installed here as part of our renovations. Really looking forward to that. We had been using a kiosk which was garbage but that was intent on service and body shop. Lot's of digital kiosk systems could really add a layer of security, convenience, visibility, and a solid guest experience.

We've played with the idea of a valet key, especially for large fleet operations that we service regularly but the cost of keys and the number of variables just makes my sphincter contract out of fear.