A healthy and thriving service department is like a sturdy backbone supporting a dealership, particularly during economically challenging times. When car sales are weak, a strong service department maintains customer loyalty and keeps profits strong.

Though important, service can be an area that consistently leaves customers wanting, says Cory Coler, a member of the fixed-operations product planning team at Reynolds and Reynolds.

Coler has a unique perspective on service department challenges. Before joining Reynolds, he served as a National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence certified adviser and Toyota certified assistant service manager at a Toyota dealership.

From his experience, poor service at the reception desk is among the things that drive customer dissatisfaction in the service department. That’s because most customers bring in their cars early in the morning or on weekends.

“Now you have a bunch of people in the same place at the same time, and the check-in process becomes a bottleneck in getting vehicles into the shop,” he says.

Technician work assignments and the multipoint inspection that determines needed repairs are also areas for improvement. Service advisers must gather repair need information and parts details in order to assign work to technicians. Accurate information also enables them to communicate repair timelines to customers.

Add scheduling issues to the mix of things that delay service objectives, according to Skyler Chadwick, director of product consulting at Cox Automotive.

“If dealerships are not scheduling correctly, they will have to carry over a service job, like replacing a transmission, because the technician didn’t get to that work on the day they promised.”

Delays and a lack of communication increase customer dissatisfaction, Coler stresses.

“People today are busier than ever,” he says. “But with the rise of services like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Postmates, customers’ expectations are higher than ever. Today, more than ever, dealerships need to incorporate technologies that build efficiencies throughout the service process.”

The top technologies the two experts recommend are scheduling tools and check-in systems.

Streamline Scheduling

Before a customer even comes into the dealership, poor scheduling can cause delays, Chadwick says.

“Often, dealers haven’t looked at how they are scheduling their customers and how that scheduling flow impacts other parts of their businesses. Scheduling is an area where many dealerships struggle. They don’t know how to set it up correctly or what will increase efficiency.”

He explains that well-rounded scheduling improves capacity management through asking questions like:

• How long will this job take?

• When will the customer arrive?

• Do we have enough time to take on this work?

• Do we have the parts to do the job?

Better scheduling requires dealers to consider how many technicians and service advisers they have and how many service hours in a day that equates to, advises Chadwick. They also need to know how long specific repairs take.

“The path to moving cars through the shop quicker is making sure you’re scheduling your appointments by service hours,” he says.

Let’s say a customer comes in for vehicle diagnostics and an oil change. Knowing the oil change will take 30 minutes and that check-engine-light diagnostics will take an hour helps the shop accurately schedule its time.

“Now I can look at my hours and determine if I have enough time to focus on the customer experience,” he says. “Or will taking on that customer put my capacity over to the point where I must carry over 10% or even 20% of my work for the day?”

Scheduling tools can help. Cox Automotive’s Xtime solution includes one that allows customers to schedule service appointments on the dealership website, autoloading provided information into the dealer management system.

Such detailed data helps dealers direct appointments to the right service team. For instance, heavy duty work goes to the heavy-duty team, express teams handle oil changes, and the detail team for car detailing.

Whether Xtime or another scheduling tool, a scheduling system shouldn’t list too many options as customers schedule appointments, Chadwick says.

“If the tool gives too many choices, customers will pick up the phone and call the dealership because they cannot find what they want. I tell dealerships to make their online scheduling as easy as possible. Give the customer a short list of choices and ask them to tell you more” in a short written field.

Chadwick also recommends including pricing in the scheduling tool. “When you display pricing, you show transparency and build trust,” he says. “A scheduling tool that also schedules down to the vehicle make and model also simplifies things because the system only shows customers options that are available on their vehicles.”

Still, not every customer is going to schedule an appointment in advance or even be on time for the appointment. Some will just show up with a problem and expect prompt service. Another way to address workflow within the shop, maximize efficiency of technicians, and speed up customer service without turning anyone away is by automatically assigning the work to technicians, according to Coler.

Technician Dispatching, a tool in the Advanced Service suite from Reynolds, looks at the technician’s skill level and workload before it assigns the work, ensuring technicians are being treated fairly, given repair orders they can handle, and that work continues to flow smoothly, even on the most chaotic days.

Such tools can work together so the shop can increase capacity without extending hours, needing to build more bays, or hire more technicians.

Working on the customer’s timetable is vital, Coler says. “Telling the customer you don’t have the time to help them because your schedule is full, explicitly or by proxy because there are no appointments to choose from in the scheduler, could lead to losing that customer for life.”

End Chaotic Check-Ins

Today consumers can perform various self-service tasks, such as checking out groceries or booking a doctor appointment online. But they still can’t self-check in their vehicle for repair, according to Coler, who says that’s a missed opportunity.

“Being able to incorporate the consumer into that process is more important than ever. Today’s consumers want to be part of the process of getting their car fixed.”

Technology to expedite check-ins should top dealerships' technology lists, he says.

Reynolds zeroed in on ways to speed up check-ins so that customers do not have to wait for an adviser to become available. The first step in the endeavor was months of deep-dive research into the service check-in process. The company surveyed customers for their perceptions and interviewed dealership service managers to learn more.

“With this survey, we aimed to understand the importance of the check-in process and find out if dealers’ perceptions aligned with their customers,” Coler says.

One area interesting finding is that 90% of dealerships reported an average check-in time of one to seven minutes per customer, but when customers were asked the same question, just 55% said their check-in time fell within that window, and 13% said check-in took more than 15 minutes.

Customers also want self-check-in. In fact, 26% of respondents said they would use self-check-in all the time, and 44% said they would use if it they didn’t have questions. Their No. 1 reason for the sentiment was the perception that it would be faster, 30% of respondents saying they felt that’s the case.

Those customers indicated that technology could easily handle the questions asked of them during check-in.

“There are many things a customer can share with a kiosk,” Coler says. “This is where the service adviser gathers customers’ information, such as name, phone number and email. There are a lot of really great service advisers who consistently gather this information and update it in the DMS. But often it’s just an illegible handwritten note on a repair order and no one can use that information.”

A self-service kiosk, such as one from GoMoto, prompts the customer to enter contact information and repair needs as part of an automated check-in process.

“Now the service adviser has the right phone number and email to contact the customer,” Coler says. “That’s really important, because if a customer’s vehicle is on the rack, and the tech finds things that need to be repaired, we need to contact them. We also need to contact them to let them know the status of repairs.”

Inaccurate or missing contact information obviously delays communication. Customers then perceive the dealership isn’t working on their cars because they haven’t gotten an update, according to Coler.

“Many times, the reality is the dealership would love to communicate with them, but no one collected their contact information. Making sure we have good contact information is paramount to setting the stage for the rest of the repair process.”

Even worse, if a dealership can’t reach the customer, Coler says the vehicle may be taken off the rack.

“The only thing a dealer has to sell from a technician’s perspective is repair time,” he explains. “Repair time is as valuable to the dealership as the customer’s time is to them. Having technicians sit idle while they wait for a response is not possible. Dealerships will have to push the vehicle back out the door and move on to the next one, which can lead to additional delays.”

A kiosk also helps dealers customize service and sell more, he adds. The kiosk might ask the customer if they need an oil change, a wiper replacement, or a different service.

“A kiosk can present those options and increase upsells by as much as 20%. Automating the upsell process via a kiosk makes it consistent. Every time a customer goes in, they are presented with the opportunity to add other service items.”

Proper Parts Management

Scheduling and check-ins should include making sure parts are in stock, the service experts say.

“One of the biggest things a dealership can do is put more emphasis on choosing a technology partner that is OEM-connected and has recall integrations,” Chadwick says.

A connected system enhances recall management. As soon as a recall appointment is made, the system notifies the parts manager, who checks if the parts are on hand. If there is a three-day lead time on parts and the appointment is the next day, the parts manager can reschedule the appointment.

“The same goes for other repairs,” Chadwick says. “By being connected with the parts department, they know the parts are on hand, and they can fix the problem.”

With a larger recall, such as the Takata airbag recall that impacts hundreds of thousands of vehicles, dealers should keep parts in stock, so recall repairs happen quickly when an appointment is scheduled.

“One of the ways you can become more efficient is doing a lot of the prework,” Chadwick says. “Knowing that parts are on hand for a repair eliminates service bottlenecks.”

Cultivate Better Communications

Other digital tools can also enhance customer communications to speed up repair decisions, according to Chadwick.

He explains that using a multipoint inspection tool that captures video and still photos speeds up customer responses.

“We’re seeing a six-minute response versus one to four hours with these tools,” he says. “When a customer sees a video with a technician talking about an oil leak or a leaky radiator hose, worn brakes or other issue, complete with pricing, they respond faster, especially if that communication is via text.”

Faster responses speed up repair times, he adds.

“We are easing the pressures on the service adviser, who no longer has to make phone calls and wait for a response. We digitized the experience and put repair decisions in customers’ hands, meeting their desire to be a greater part of the process.”

Another way to speed up service is a communications system that connects to a financial institution to let customers apply for service financing for that $2,000 set of tires or $5,000 transmission.

“Now the dealership is providing a way for them to pay for the service,” Chadwick says. “The dealership gets paid, and the customer gets great service. In my opinion, using multimedia in this way speeds customer response times, because a technician that is not turning wrenches is not making any money.”

Ronnie Wendt is an editor at F&I and Showroom.

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