Over the years, the new car dealer service department has developed quite the reputation for lying, cheating, misdiagnosing and just plain old bad service. Of course, this reputation didn’t occur because all service departments are golden, much of it is deserved. Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of great people working in the service industry, but there are almost as many losers as there are superstars. Why is this?
I’m a firm believer that the lack of training is the cause of most service department failures. Training should be a no brainer, but the reality is that most new service advisors receive little if any training. A Chrysler dealer I worked for years ago said that it takes 3 years of front line work to make a real service advisor, yet my training was “there’s your computer….now write work orders.” Unfortunately, this is the training that far too many newcomers receive.
The position of Service Advisor may be one of the toughest jobs in the auto industry. The advisor has to be an organizational whiz, know the different maintenance requirements for all vehicles he sees, needs to be an effective communicator and the combined qualities of a baby sitter and a shrink. Often a flustered, poorly trained advisor will blurt out the first nonsense that comes to mind when asked a difficult question rather than seeking out the correct answer. It is human nature. The advisor doesn’t want to look like he doesn’t have the answer so he makes one up. When he is caught, the consumer feels like the scumbag has lied.
The consumer ultimately bears the brunt of this lack of training and that’s inexcusable. So what is the consumer to do? How can the consumer get solid service advice? That’s what we are going to attempt to help with in this series. Some of the advice will be common sense, some will hopefully make sense and a fair bit may be flippant and tongue in cheek. The intent for all of it will be to help you help yourself to get the best service ever.
4 comments ↓
I totally agree, I was originally trained the same way. “Here’s a clipboard and there’s a customer’s car, go be a Service Advisor”. Fortunately there is a school in southern California that has been training people to become top quality Service Advisors for the last 8 years. Concept Schools, Inc. has a 5 week training program for people wanting to become a Service Advisor and a 2 day seminar for existing Advisors. Concept Schools, Inc. also works closely with CSI Automotive Solutions Group to provide on-site training to dealerships and dealer groups who either cannot afford to have their small staff off the service drive or have specialized training needs that are better delivered to employee’s on the job. Both companies emphasize customer service and integrity in the service drive. You can go to http://www.conceptschools.com for more information if you’re interested in a career as a Service Advisor or to further your skills if you are already an Advisor. If you’re a customer, ask your dealership or local repair shop if their Service Advisor’s are Concept Schools, Inc. Graduates.
infomercial aside, Joe is right. there are a number of schools appearing across the country to properly train advisors. one of the problems we see up here in canada is that the training is often too basic for the new advisor and dealer principles don’t see the value in paying for ongoing training of more experienced advisors.
One of our biggest challenges is getting dealer principals to spend money on Service Department training. From what I have experienced it’s because most dealer principals have come from the sales department and have very little understanding of how fixed operations (service, parts, body shop) work or how they effect the dealers bottom line. Part of the problem comes from the manufacturers themselves. Even though the vehicle manufacturers want high service customer satisfaction the truth of the matter is the manufacturer only makes money on new car sales and the sales of parts, it makes no money from service (this was actually stated to me by a district service manager from a major manufacturer while I was a service manager). So while a manufacturer may push the importance of customer satisfaction to the service department management that push does not seem to make it to the dealer principal. What the dealer principals repeatedly miss is the fact that sales sells the first car and the service department sells the rest. If a service client is unhappy with the service they receive they will not only not purchase another car from that dealer they will most likely not purchase that vehicle make again. Dealer Principals cannot afford not to train their service staff.
No truer words have bend spoken by service managers. I have bought 5 new car in my lifetime each from a different dealer the first three cars were Chrysler products and I have experienced good to excellent sales experiences but the after sales experience has been poor to good at all but the latest dealer ship. The latest car is just a year old and so far I don’t feel like or know I am being lied to, they are a little pushy with unnecessary service e.g.. brake cleaning @ 15000 km . I have a marine engineering back ground and have worked on cars,boats, snowmobiles and motorcycles as a hobby for 20 years and when a service department starts BSing me I start doing the maintenance my self or take it to independent shops. That has a lot to do with why we don’t see brand loyalty like when I was a kid. My grandfather , father and uncles were all Dodge guys up until about the mid 1980 s now they drive Toyota cars and ford and GM trucks moving from dealer ship to dealers ship looking for the best sale experience / price because the service department at the last dealer ship was not worth sticking with the same brand. They have tended to stick with Toyota as a car brand but move from dealer to dealer.
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