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Service Appointment Setting

Kari Lewis

Green Pea
Jun 22, 2010
3
0
First Name
Kari
How effective is your online service appointment forms? Are people still picking up the phone and calling in to set an appointment the old fashioned way? Or are dealerships trying to push more walk in service to compete with the independent shops? Just curious!
 
We're definitely pushing more walk-in service right now. We also do have a web-based form that gets emailed to the appointment coordinator. Walk-in and appointment customers are handled completely separately where the former is for "express" services only like oil changes. Anything larger requires an appointment. We don't have any software yet that lets the customer set their own appointment, and haven't found any requests for that type of software in my stores.
 
More Honda customers setting appointments online than our domestic brands. Almost always maintenance related, or recall related. On average 15-20% of routine customer appointments are set online. Our music on-hold also suggests our service customers use our online scheduling tool, that has helped.
 
Every service page on our websites has an appointment form. Also for the last two years we have been very responsive to the customers who have submitted on the form, so customers have become more comfortable using the form and knowing their appointment has been set, and when they arrive the appointment will be ready.