Service Customer Care Center

[Steve Finell]

So, your dealership has spent a ton of dough implementing Argis. To install, $10,000 and $3,000 +/- monthly. Your techs are finally on board and following the rules. Your advisors are putting forth the effort and some customers are buying. Time to move on to the next big ticket aid to selling more.

Wrong! Look at the database you're growing. The car is back in the customer's garage and you know what it needs. It seems, this is as far as it goes. What about follow-up? What about scraping every last penny out of the pipe you've spent a fortune on? This is a opportunity, not a lost sale!

With whatever upselling tools you invest in, make sure you're prepared to complete the course. Everyone says it but, who is doing it?

Are your advisors following up? Should they? Or, would a better use of their time, and talent, be spent face to face with customers on the drive? If you work the program, your advisors won't have time to call to get customers in because they'll have one customer after another all day long in front of them. So, who's going to do the follow-up on your Argis/MPI?

Not Internet Sales. They exist to sell cars. They exist to feed the salespeople on your lot the qualified buyers they need to sell to all day long.

If advisors are to service what salespeople are to sales then what's the service equivalent of the Internet Sales Department?

And.... discuss!

 

[JohnScott]

So, your dealership has spent a ton of dough implementing Argis. To install, $10,000 and $3,000 +/- monthly. Your techs are finally on board and following the rules. Your advisors are putting forth the effort and some customers are buying. Time to move on to the next big ticket aid to selling more.

Wrong! Look at the database you're growing. The car is back in the customer's garage and you know what it needs. It seems, this is as far as it goes. What about follow-up? What about scraping every last penny out of the pipe you've spent a fortune on? This is a opportunity, not a lost sale!

With whatever upselling tools you invest in, make sure you're prepared to complete the course. Everyone says it but, who is doing it?

Are your advisors following up? Should they? Or, would a better use of their time, and talent, be spent face to face with customers on the drive? If you work the program, your advisors won't have time to call to get customers in because they'll have one customer after another all day long in front of them. So, who's going to do the follow-up on your Argis/MPI?

Not Internet Sales. They exist to sell cars. They exist to feed the salespeople on your lot the qualified buyers they need to sell to all day long.

If advisors are to service what salespeople are to sales then what's the service equivalent of the Internet Sales Department?

And.... discuss!

Ive been walking into a lot of dealerships looking for a service writers positions, and I cant see why you couldnt have a service advisor or advisors set up to chat online with customers visiting the service page.
If it got to the point that you have a line out the door, ie. no time for service advisors to work the chat, then basically thats that. You're only option then is to hire someone specifically for monitoring the website. But Ive yet to walk into a dealership with that "problem". Maybe its the market Ive been visiting, but there seems to be a lot of hand sitting going on at the dealerships I walk into.

To me, if I were a service advisor, I would want to be spending every spare minute generating new business, its a no brainer.

That being said, when the customer is there, in front of your face he better be your one and only priority. What a disaster it would be for someone to be dealing with a customer face to face and asking him to "hold on" while you finish up a chat.

 

[Alex Snyder]

I cant see why you couldnt have a service advisor or advisors set up to chat online with customers visiting the service page.

Steve and I are working on that. It should happen very soon, but not with Service Advisors - our Service Customer Care Center (BDC).

 

[JohnScott]

Steve and I are working on that. It should happen very soon, but not with Service Advisors - our Service Customer Care Center (BDC).

Could you please expand on that? Im not sure what you mean by "not with service advisors".

Service customer care center? Are you talking about something online?

 

[Alex Snyder]

We have a BDC that handles appointment setting and calls for Service Advisors. A BDC is a group of people who generally work like a "call center". Does it all make sense now?

 

[JohnScott]

We have a BDC that handles appointment setting and calls for Service Advisors. A BDC is a group of people who generally work like a "call center". Does it all make sense now?

Another question, if this BDC center is handling all the calls for service advisors does that include upselling? And if so, what do the service adivisors do? aren't they then just cashiers? are the call centers calling the customer after the tech has checked the vehicle or is that the advisor?

Or is this "call center" just setting the appointments? You say "calls", could you be more specific?

 

[Alex Snyder]

The call center is setting appointments and the service writers are still performing their jobs in the traditional sense - they just aren't handling the initial setups and questions. The service writers also function as cashiers. "Calls" are incoming calls and follow-up after the RO closes.

 

[JohnScott]

"Calls" are incoming calls and follow-up after the RO closes.

Do the advisors have the option to do the follow-up themselves? If it was me I would prefer to do it myself.

You build a better relationship that way.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Yes.

 

[Coretta Britannia]

I used to work in a UPS call center and the first thing that they did was take me into a room with a couple of managers and ask me questions about how I would deal with customers.They wanted to make sure i had a pleasant speaking voice and could answer questions off the top of my head.