It’s that time of year again … Fall?  Thanksgiving?  Halloween? No. Even better, Tire Season! 

I like to call this 911 time in the car business.  It’s a time when the phones are ringing and customers are trying to get in for an appointment at your dealership.  This is a very valuable time when it comes to the data game.  We have some big opportunities and you can take advantage and make the best of Tire Season in your store.  I have heard from customers too many time around tire season that they tried to book an appointment and were quickly turned away by their local dealership.  “I just bought my car there, can you believe they wouldn’t put on my snow tire because they were too busy?”  We can sometimes be our own worst enemy and drive our best customers away and force them into seeking a third party service provider. 

Here are 5 Easy Steps your dealership can take to capitalize on the season and not lose customers.

1. Get Help!

You know your Service Department is going to be super busy and this is not the time to spread your people thin and risk ticking off what might be your most valuable customers.  Recruit some extra help for the phones (look at who you already have that could help during busy tire season; part-time reception, staff you might use for inventory, accounting personal that may want extra hours.  Dealerships need to start doing more cross training.  There is no reason that a Salesperson or Business Office Staff or any staff couldn’t understand the shop schedule and learn to set a service appointment.  This is the time to ensure your collecting all the data on the inbound.

2. Do More!

Look at extending service hours during this time.  A longer day Saturday, one or two extra evenings will allow your shop to accommodate some extra tire swaps and allow techs some extra time inspecting brakes while the tires are off anyway!  Get your team on side and avoid alienating them by getting them involved.  I hear staff complain when they are not involved in the process; ‘I was told I have to work extra.” Get their ideas on how to accommodate everyone during this season.  Be creative like reminding staff the holidays are coming and help them save (bank if for them) and offer some incentives for team members who put in extra hours.  Reward their hard work!   

3. Work your List!

This may seem obvious, but you can’t start looking at the tire list soon enough.  If you haven’t started, right now is the time.  Call everyone on your tire storage list and don’t take no for an answer.  Book out and book early.  Aside from your tire storage list, what about your people who have their tires stored elsewhere?  You may have a great service CRM that is building a work plan for your Service Appointment Coordinator, but a great way to make sure you are not missing anyone is to run a list of closed repair orders with a tire swap (careful you may have more than one op code; on rims, off rims, inside the winter/spring special etc.)  Run it for last spring (March to May) and the fall before (October to January) and this should pick everyone up who had their tires swapped out in your shop, but don’t forget about any new or used car deliveries that may have taken a set home in the trunk. 

4. Don’t say “We’re Booked”

Okay we may be swamped, but this is no reason to throw out good process.  We should be starting with our customer’s phone number every single time, no matter what.  We may be booked out for a week, but our answer to “can I get my winter tires on tomorrow?”  still should be “thank you, I can help, may I start with the home phone number for your vehicle?”  You may say, my people are doing this, but are you sure?  Are you checking what is happening on your inbound service calls?  You might be surprised when the shop is full the baby is getting tossed out with the bathwater.  What about right at the service desk with walk-ins?  What are your customers hearing in parts where they might be pricing winter tires?  Get everyone on the same page on checking info before telling customers when we can accommodate them.  If you find an outstanding update, recall or important due for service item you will not only increase the pay on the R/O, but build value in the appointment for next week.

5. Offer Choices

Avoid introducing a negative too early and apologizing for availability of the next appointment.     Give the customer something they can say yes too!  Never ask the customer when they can come in.  This is guaranteed to set us up for failure during tire season.  Offer two or three choices for people to pick from.  We are accustomed to making choices we make many every day.  Our brains are trained to pick something in threes; one that doesn’t work and then we make a choice of the best option between the two.  “We can help you at this same time next week or I have an evening appointment or are you in town next Saturday?”  Don’t forget to get creative with drop offs, shuttle, test-drive loaners or dropping people at transit, when their car is at your store for the whole day you can probably fit it in!  A room full of waiters is not what you want this season.   

Recently, I got a great picture posted on my blog from a young guy I sold a car to way back in 2008.  He heard about me via an online forum.  Would that be called a digital referral?  I’m sure online forums are a good place to do some prospecting.  Are there any enterprising salespeople hanging around these online enthusiast clubs?

So I didn’t actually meet this gentleman until he came to pick up his new car; he drove 400 hundred kilometers from his home to take delivery.  A reminder that customers will travel … don’t let your people dismiss long distance prospects they will make the trip.  Most of the transaction was over email and we used the phone just to confirm the vitals.  Back in 2008 you might think a person who used an online forum to find a sales person and complete a sale almost entirely via email might be buying an environmentally friendly car … a Prius maybe?  That hip, green car with drivers the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher and Nancy Botwin.  Nope.  This vehicle is not so, um, well ... fuel efficient to say the least.  Power is more this car’s story with infamous drivers the likes of Bo Duke or Jay Leno.  With a 6.1-liter HEMI V-8, producing 425 horsepower, I wouldn’t add economy to the list of features, but if you were to compare how much gas the old Hemi engines used we could practically call this one a green muscle car.  Sorry, I get a bit excited talking about the Challenger SRT8 it’s got a big trunk and I could get a two-door now that my daughter is out of a booster seat; I think I’d look pretty cool loading the groceries in it.

The bottom line here is that online word of mouth or should I say digital referrals are the most effective and least expensive way to market anything.   Happy customers love to tell others about their great experience and are fiercely loyal.  There is nothing like good old fashioned service to a get a referral and it only makes sense the online community is spreading the word or should I say transmitting the message?

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Dead people don’t appreciate it.  That’s my advice for dealers.

Because I genuinely care about any customer base I am helping a dealer talk to, it breaks my heart when we do it so badly.  How badly?  Well I just got an ear full from Mrs. Jones.  She  informed me despite her calling into the dealership and letting  ‘someone in the service’ know that her husband passed away when it first happened two years ago, we have continued to phone and snail mail her home asking for her husband and using her husband’s name.  Every time someone calls the house from the dealership she has told them that he has passed away, everyone apologizes, she tells me and I really don’t want any apologizes I just want you to stop asking for him and sending me mail with his name on it.  They had two vehicles she explains and they were both in her late husband’s name.  She tells me she has asked more than once to have her own name put on the (insert plain domestic sedan here – although this problem is certainly not limited to domestics) and that the truck her husband owned has long been sold, but yet we continue to mail out service reminders for this pick-up.  It hurts to be reminded she tells me, with a crack of emotion in her voice.

A highly personalized invitation to a private sale with her husband’s name all over it went out in the mail last week and this is the reason I am calling her today, to follow-up on this expensive, customized invite.   I listen closely to everything she tells me and I make notes.  I apologize once again and I personally promise her the minute I get off the phone it will be my priority to fix our error and not to bother her again.  She tells me we have told her something similar before and doubts she will deal with us moving forward because obviously no one is listening.  I tell her I understand.

The receptionist, whom I ask, is trying to stock in a vehicle, finish licensing and deal with the dealer trade driver impatiently pacing in front of her desk.  I am asking her between the phones ringing if she can open the customer profile (I made the call off a printed list that showed Mr. Jones as an active customer).

After she transfers a call to Parts, I ask her if the parts department has a direct line.  Of course she tells me and I offer that she could gently suggest to her caller that they could save themselves some time by calling the parts number direct.

She stops what she is doing and stares at me.  “That’s a great idea that guys calls here a lot” she says, “I should tell him to call parts directly” she thinks about it for a minute, “but my manger doesn’t like me changing anything I say on the phone, will you please explain this to him?”

I sigh, I didn’t mean to complicate things and re-directing front line incoming phone traffic is a project for another day and this day is melting away along with my appointment ratio, but I have made Mrs. Jones a promise and I am going to follow through.   She finally pulls up the customer on the dealers DMS (no CRM here kids) and we can see both cars are clearly in the deceased name.  There are notes on the customer in another screen and in the 30 key strokes that are allowed for notes in this system it says the customer is passed and real customer is Mrs. Jones.  Now these notes would print out on a R/O, but obviously would not stop the name coming up in an data pull and if no one checked the notes when calling for service reminders, you’ve got a perfect storm.

“I didn’t write that.” The receptionist says defensively and tells me she does not know how to change a name on someone’s profile.  That’s fine I tell her, I am not trying to blame this girl, who tries to do what her manager tells her and looks spread thin as it is, I am simply looking for process and clearly there is none for this type of data change.  The service cashier who has been listening to part of our conversation jumps in and with a few keys strokes shows us how to make the customer ‘inactive’ that way they won’t come up on any lists or get any mailers.  I sigh again because something tells me this is a regular occurrence and explain that shutting off a customer is not helpful.  I explain that we need to orphan the truck off the profile, change the name to Mrs. Jones and check in the OEM site to make sure it reads the same way.  They look at me blankly; neither one of them has access to customer update on the OEM system.

I watch over the Service Manager’s shoulder as he changes the name on the profile to Mrs. Jones and deletes the truck.  He tells me that the truck isn’t gone forever and the system will pick it up again if the new owner shows up for service at some point in the future.  In a system I know better you would have to put the truck into an Orphan Profile, but I’ll take his word for it that this one will save it by simply deleting the vehicle.  I am more familiar with the owner update on the OEM and between us we manage to update their information as well.  Their normal policy changing OEM information is to give out the toll-free customer service number to the OEM and ask the customer to call in and change it themselves.  I wonder if he has ever called one of these manufacturers numbers himself.

He assures me that he will train the staff on how to handle this for next time.  I’m not sure if he’s just giving me lip service on this, but satisfied that Mrs. Jones will not receive a phone call, service reminder or recall notice in her deceased husband’s name from either the dealer or manufacturer I can return to my original task with a clear conscience.   

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