Whenever I visit dealerships, I often see technicians standing around at the parts counter or waiting to talk with service advisors. This is a waste of your technicians’ time and billable hours.

I’m not blaming the technicians. I’m blaming managers and directors who aren’t enforcing the use of an electronic dispatch process.

I don’t care if it’s manual dispatch or auto dispatch. A dispatch process typically involves three steps. More than likely, you currently have the tools and technology in place to implement this dispatch process, but you’re not doing it because (insert excuse here).

First, let’s take a look at the current dispatch situation in most dealerships.

A car comes in for an oil change. Upon inspection, it’s discovered a new drive belt is needed. The tech walks over to the parts department to find out if the part is in stock, and what the price is. Once the tech gets the information, they go find the service advisor. If the advisor is busy, the tech usually waits because he doesn’t want to come back later.

When the advisor is free, the tech tells him the car needs a belt, the part’s in stock and gives him the price. Now the advisor has to stop what he’s doing and get hold of the customer to get them to approve the belt.

The customer’s approval may take a while (hopefully the advisor texts the customer instead of playing phone tag). The tech might wait for a few minutes, then walk back to his bay. Upon approval, the service advisor walks over to the tech to let him know, then the tech goes back to the parts department and has them pull the part. While the tech waits for the part, he chats with other techs or the cashier.

When the part is pulled, the tech goes back to the car and starts the job. The walking around and waiting has cost anywhere from 8 to 25 minutes. If that happens on 5 cars a day, that adds up to 2 to 3 hours of productivity. That’s one tech, one day.

How much more revenue would you make if every tech gave you 2 more billable hours a day—without forcing them to work 2 more hours a day?

This outdated process is unacceptable, but in most dealerships it’s the way it’s always been done so the attitude is why change it? Did I not mention the extra 2 billable hours per tech every day?

If that sounds appealing to you, here’s a better way to dispatch.

More than likely, your dealership management system (DMS) has the following features, which you’re paying for but hardly ever use.

-Service merchandising

-Service Pricing Guides (SPGs)

-Internal chat or texting feature

It’s time to learn how to use these features. Here's your new dispatch process:

A vehicle comes in for an oil change. Upon inspection, it’s discovered a drive belt is needed.

The tech opens up the vehicle estimate in the DMS and finds a button that says SPG, short for “Service Pricing Guides.” If you can’t find a button, ask your DMS provider how to find this information. Click on the button to open the SPG.

The tech searches the SPG system for drive belts for the make/model of the vehicle. The SPG lets the tech know if the part’s in stock and what the price is.

If the SPG indicates the part is not in stock, the tech knows they won’t be performing that repair today. Save the estimate and move on to the next job.  Notify the service advisor by sending a chat or text with the customer name and the word “estimate.” The service advisor is notified there’s an estimate needing review. When he opens the estimate, the advisor sees the part isn’t in stock. He reaches out for customer approval so they can order the part.

If the SPG indicates the part is in stock, the responsibility of verifying there’s a part physically in stock falls on the advisor. The advisor has the parts number right in front of him because it’s on the service estimate. He chats or texts the parts department to confirm whether the part is in stock and confirms the price. He then reaches out to the customer for approval.

Upon customer approval, the advisor opens up the customer estimate, turns it into an RO, adds the line and sends a chat to the tech with the customer name and “OK to do the job.”

The tech is notified, opens up the RO and clicks on a button that says “Parts request.” He types into the box, “Please pull this part.”

A really good parts department delivers the part to the tech, so the tech doesn’t have to leave his bay. A not-so-good parts department will pull the part and leave it on the counter for the tech to pick up.

Notice how the tech hasn’t left his bay one time with this dispatch process?

If this sounds complicated, it honestly isn’t. It’s the easiest thing in the world and eliminates so much waiting time. We always think it’s easier to do things the same old way, but it’s really not. It’s far more efficient to use the technology you already have to improve your results.

If you follow this process, your techs will work more hours without ridiculous amounts of overtime. Less loitering and more doing is good for your bottom line.

This is such a pervasive problem. At almost every dealership I visit, as I sit in the accounting office going through parts invoices, I notice that half of the invoices have the words ‘cash sale’ as customer.

If you ask the parts people why there are so many ‘cash sale’ invoices, the typical response is “I don’t have time,” “We’re too busy,” or “They’re just buying one part, we’ll never see them again.”

I wonder how they know they’ll never see that customer again. Did they ask the customer where they live? One thing’s for certain, with cash sale written on the invoice, there’s no way to know where that customer lives or if they might ever come back in.

Parts customers are your customers, every bit as much as service and sales customers are your customers. Most dealers pay a lot of money to outside agencies to mine their data so they can market to their customers. I’m no marketing expert, but I’m guessing that response rates to a postcard campaign mailed to ‘cash sale’ are pretty low.

Another reason ‘cash sale’ invoices are bad is because they can cause problems when the customer wants to return a part. Just because your policy states that you must have a receipt to return an item, doesn’t make it a good idea.

What happens if the Mr. Cash Sale wants to return his part but doesn’t have his receipt with him? Is he out of luck? That’s not the definition of good customer service.

On the other hand, if you take the time to write down a customer’s name, address and phone number every time you sell a part, that customer is in the system. All he has to do is give his name or phone number, and you have a record of his purchase, and you can happily give him his refund.

Sorry but I just don’t buy the excuse that parts employees are so busy they can’t take one minute to enter in a name, address and phone number. The customer certainly doesn’t mind. We’re all used to going to retail establishments and providing our names, phone numbers and email addresses when we purchase items. Why should it be any different in a car dealership?

Unfortunately, every dealership management system (DMS) makes it easy to set up a customer called ‘cash sale,’ which means that the dealer and/or parts manager has to get involved to create and enforce a policy to stop this behavior.

If it were me, I’d have a zero-tolerance policy, meaning 0% of parts invoices should have ‘cash sale’ as customer. If you’re a really nice guy, you could set the parameter at 1% to 5%.

If you don’t think this is a problem, take a look at the last invoice from your marketing agency. How much money are you paying them to mine for customers, and to purchase third-party lists? Now count up all the ‘cash sale’ parts invoices from last year. How many customers did you lose the opportunity to market to?

Just because a person comes in to buy a part doesn’t mean you’ll never see them again. You never know, that person might have a friend or family member who’s looking for a vehicle. But one thing’s for sure: you’ll really never know if you keep allowing your parts staff to get away with writing ‘cash sale’ on half your parts invoices.

Here's what I've noticed in dealerships: the problem isn't just a lack of training, it's the general lack of a thought process that any training is needed.

At dealerships, we often take people who do their jobs well and make them a manager. The problem is, we don't teach them how to manage. The job of service manager requires an entirely different skill set than the job of service advisor or technician.

Of course, these skills can be learned, but it requires training. When you're promoted to a management position, you're not supposed to do your previous job any more. As a manager, your job is to teach the people reporting to you how to do their jobs well.

You're also supposed to figure out how to keep your department profitable. Again, this wasn't your job in your previous position, but now it is. In order to learn this new skill, you need training.

Factory classes teach advisors and technicians what they need to do for the factory, but that's only a small fraction of everything that's required to do the entire job of advisor or technician.

Here's the problem with lack of training. A new employee comes to work on day one. The boss shows him or her around, then gives that employee a list of tasks they're responsible for.

The new employee has no clue how to do half of what's on the list, and the boss looks really busy, so they ask a fellow employee how to do it.

The employee has half an idea how to do the task, because they had to figure it out themselves a while ago. The old employee teaches the new employee. The untrained is training the untrained.

Now the new employee knows how to get the task done, but probably not in the most efficient manner. They also don't have any context on why the task needs to be done, or how that task affects customers or other employees.

This sad story is repeated every day in dealerships across the U.S. You take a perfectly good new employee, who was as promising as a blank canvas in Picasso's studio. They were willing and eager to learn, and learn they did—all the wrong things and all the bad habits.

Then three months later you blame the employee for ineptitude or lack of productivity.

I always like to draw comparisons between the service department and sales departments. In sales, training is part of the culture. Sales meetings are held every day. Bagels are brought in by the bucket load. Here are ten different ways you can sell a car, how to get a test drive, how to overcome an objection, how to connect with customers.

The same thing should be happening in service, with service advisors and even the cashier. They need to know more than how to do a list of tasks. There are a hundred nuances to these positions that can make the difference between just doing a job, doing a job well and knocking it out of the park.

If you want your employees to knock it out of the park, train them. And train your managers how to manage.

The next time you're tempted to blame an employee or a manager for poor results, ask yourself—do you have a right to blame them, when you never taught them how to get the results you want?

If you’re in a leadership position, it's your job to make sure your employees learn how to do their jobs in the most efficient way possible. It's your job to instill passion, dedication and desire to do that job well. It's your job to check on them, mentor them, answer any questions and most of all, train them. If you don't have the time, and nobody else has the time, hire an outside trainer. Truly, it's worth the investment.

Finally, when you do train your employees, don't just train them for today. Train them for next week, next month and ten years from now. Train them like the future success of your dealership depends on it, because it does.

Recently I was sitting in an office with a service manager and a few advisors. Someone walked in and said, "The balancer's not working again." The service manager's shoulders kind of sagged as he responded, "OK. I'll call someone."

He then told me the balancing machine was 25 years old and on its last legs. It had been repaired numerous times but the dealer wouldn't approve the purchase of a new one. "You're kidding," I said. He wasn't.

At another dealership I visited, the alignment machine wasn't working. Their options were to spend $1,000 to fix it for the umpteenth time, or to invest $3,000 for some better parts to fix it. But they really needed a new machine, which granted, could cost up to $60,000. However, you guessed it, the dealer wouldn't approve a new machine.

Now, most dealers I know enjoy the fruits of their success and there's nothing wrong with that. They have big houses, wear expensive suits, several cars, some have boats and some even have a plane (or at least they travel first class)! But I can't help thinking that the money to buy all these fun toys should be money that's left over after investing in critical equipment repairs and/or new equipment for your business.

Yes, investing in a new balancing or alignment machine is expensive; however, it would allow your employees to do their jobs faster, more efficiently and with better results. Not to mention that nice, new equipment is a boost to employee morale and helps to improve customer satisfaction.

In another dealership, the printer in the F&I office was so old the employees had to smack the heck out of it in order to get it to print. Is that a good image for your customers, while they're eagerly waiting for the deal to be done so they can drive off in their new car?

There's an old proverb, you have to use the right tool for the job. You want your employees to dig a ditch, but you expect them to do it with their hands, not a shovel.

When you own a car, at some point the cost of the repairs passes a tipping point. You realize that it's cheaper to buy a new car, or even if it's not cheaper, the risk of breaking down by the side of the road isn't worth it to you. The time, effort and aggravation of having to maintain an old car isn't worth it to you, so you decide to invest in a new car. 

Are you using these same calculations with outdated equipment in your dealership? What's the time, effort and aggravation of your employees who have to deal with this old equipment? Anything?

Oh, and the computers. My goodness. You want to talk about pain and hurt. How many times have I been working with someone to help them maximize their DMS software, and I say click on that button.

Then we wait. Spinning circles go around and around, as a six-year-old computer tries to process software designed for a computer processor that's probably 50X or 100X faster.

Now, I realize that throwing money at problems isn't always the answer. When it comes to equipment, you have to be able to define the difference between a complaint and a real problem.

A complaint should not always be treated the same as a problem, unless you first verify it is a problem. This requires coming down to the ground level and either figuring it out yourself, or having an expert figure it out for you. Are the balancing machine and alignment machine really beyond repair? How much have you spent repairing them in the last two years, and does it make more sense to buy new?

Is the printer really too old? What is the cost of lost productivity and a negative customer image, versus having to spend $400 for a new printer? Same with computers. A nice, new computer costs less than $1,000 these days and would probably literally double or triple your employees' productivity. But even if it doesn't, wouldn't the cost be worth it just to ease the aggravation experienced by your employees, having to deal with old and outdated equipment on a daily basis?

Sometimes I hear people say things that get me pretty riled up. One of the phrases that bothers me most is "That's not my job." Whenever I hear this, I immediately know that person is not a team player, bad for morale and a poor representative of their company.

I was boarding a plane not too long ago, and saw an older fellow who was having trouble closing the overhead compartment bin. There was no flight attendant nearby, but a gate agent happened to be on the plane. When the man asked the gate agent for help, the gate agent said that wasn't his gig, or something like that.

Really? How hard is to go out of your way for five seconds and help an airline customer who is, by the way, the reason that you have a job in the first place?

Recently I was at a dealership and a customer wanted to return a part, but he had lost the receipt. The parts guy basically told the customer that he didn't know how to find the receipt and didn't know how to return a part without a receipt, so he couldn't help him.

Really? Here's a tip. If you don't whether something is allowed, if you don't know how to do something or if you don't know the answer to a customer's questions, go find someone that does know. Your ignorance should never be the customer's problem, and it won't kill you to learn something new.

Here's another tip. If you work at a dealership, your job is always, always to take care of the customer. It doesn't matter how mean that customer is being to you; chances are they're only being nasty because they didn't get the proper customer care in the first place.

Just because a particular task isn't written in your job description doesn't mean that it's not your job. Your job is to always chip in and help your teammates if they need it. This doesn't mean you're being taken advantage of or that you're a doormat, or that you're overworking because you're doing other peoples' jobs.

Another version of this phrase is "That's above my pay grade." If you're not authorized to make a decision, find someone who is. You might not be an expert in everything, but you probably know who is, so go ask them.

The definition of teamwork is to work together as a team in order to achieve a goal. At a dealership, you have many tasks and responsibilities, but your only real goal is to keep the customer happy. Your second most important goal is to help your teammates.

It might not be in your job description to pick up trash, but if there's trash lying around in in your dealership, pick it up. It might not be in your job description to help solve a problem in your department, but it's your job to help the dealership you work for to be successful. That's why you were hired. It's also good for job security.

I recently had a dealer ask me to help him solve a problem. He was losing about 10 sets of car keys every month. Apparently, his employees couldn't keep track of them. Now, I worked in dealerships for 25 years and I never once lost a car key. How does this happen? Pure laziness and lack of a process.

Coming up with a process to fix the problem is easy. Create a sign-out sheet for employees to sign the keys out and sign them back in. Hold the employees accountable for following the process. Sometimes you have to create negative consequences in order for a process to stick. If you find out there's a particular employee who flaunts the process, it's probably time to part ways with that employee.

All this advice comes with a caveat: it's not always the employees' fault. As dealers and managers, you have to continually mentor people. We can't expect employees to give us the results we want if we don't properly train them. Sometimes employees genuinely don't know what they're supposed to be doing, because nobody bothered to tell them.

You might think it's just common sense to know how to take care of a customer. But sadly, not all people were taught or were born with common sense, so they genuinely don't know. Never assume that an employee should know how to do something.

The lesson here is that when you hear an employee utter that most annoying of phrases, "That's not my job," don't automatically place all the blame on the employee. Ask yourself, have you done a good enough job of training this person to understand what their job really is? If not, you have some work to do. If the employee knows better but just has a bad attitude, it might be time to look for a new employee.

Does your dealership sublet rental cars to customers? I've noticed a pretty common problem that might be causing your dealership to lose money.

When a customer rents a car from you, the proper procedure is as follows. First, open a repair order (RO) and enter in the dollar amount for whatever the rental car costs. Next, create a purchase order for the rental car company. In most DMS software the dollar amount from the RO will auto populate the purchase order.

The way it's supposed to work is that the customer pays you for the rental car and your dealership pays the rental car company—say it's Enterprise—for the rental car. No problem, right? Everyone gets paid and everyone's happy.

Here's where the problem occurs.

An employee—let's call him Rick—calls Enterprise and orders a car for a customer. He doesn't know the exact dollar amount to enter in the RO because he's not sure how long the customer will have the rental car. For now, he puts in $0.

The $0 gets transferred to the purchase order. Rick gets busy doing other things and forgets all about the customer with the rental car, and he forgets to update the dollar amount on the customer's RO.

The customer returns the car in three days, the cashier looks at the RO and figures the rental must have been comp'd. The customer walks away paying nothing and your dealership just lost $100 or $200 or whatever the agreed upon amount was.

However, you still have to pay the rental car company, because they are not going to accept a purchase order with a $0 amount.

Even worse, if the customer's vehicle is still under warranty, your OEM will reimburse you for rentals cars. However, you won't get reimbursed if you never file a claim.

This happens more than you probably think. The same thing happens with towing services, but not nearly as often as it happens with rental cars.

Do you believe that your employees are smarter than this, and this would never happen at your dealership? Do you think your customers will insist on paying for their towing or rental car services when the cashier smiles at them and says, "No charge"?

Just for fun one day, go through your sublet and towing service ROs from last month, and see if you find any with a $0 amount.

When employees don't do their jobs, dealers can easily lose hundreds, if not thousands per month.

Fortunately, there's a simple policy change that will stop this behavior and the bleeding of your money.

Always, always, enter a dollar amount onto the RO. Never, never, write $0.

If you know the amount, then write the amount. If you don't know the amount, then the amount entered should always be $10,000.

Whaaat...you're probably thinking.

Yes, $10,000.

When the customer returns the car and goes to the cashier, what do you think happens if the RO hasn't been updated and the $10,000 is still on there? The cashier will know the amount is wrong and will adjust it to the proper amount. You'd think they would also do this when the amount is $0, but for some reason $0 doesn't seem to bother them. $10,000 is a big, bothersome number.

I have taught this technique for 13 years and it works like a dream.

Actually, there was one time in that 13 years when the $10,000 charge made it all the way through to accounting and was posted. Four people saw it, and either never noticed or questioned the high amount. Yup, that's how much your employees are paying attention some days.

It wasn't a big deal; the dealership simply reversed it out and fixed the amount. But virtually 99.999% of the time someone will notice the big $10,000 number and the proper amount will be charged to the customer.

Try implementing this policy and see how much more revenue you bring in for rental cars and towing services.

Some dealership employees forget they work in the service business.

Recently, while I was talking to a service manager, one of his employees sent a message that a customer needed to talk to him. The manager shrugged and said something like, "I'm on my time. I don't care." He then proceeded to complain about customers who dropped their cars off early, before the service lane was open, and had the audacity to want to be let into the service department. Not a chance! This service manager made the customers wait until 7:00 am exactly.

Wow. I wonder if the owner of that store knows that decisions are being made daily based on what's convenient for his service manager, as opposed to what's convenient for the customer.

The scary thing about this kind of attitude is that it's probably trickling down from the manager to all of his service employees. If this is the example that the manager sets on how to treat customers, how do you think his employees treat customers?

Dealership employees, this is a fact of life. You volunteered to work in a service industry. Meaning, your entire business model revolves around making and keeping customers happy.

Is it really that big a deal to make sure that coffee is ready by 6:45 am instead of 7:00 am? Is it a huge hardship to unlock the door, greet the customers and explain to them that although you're not quite ready for them yet, they are welcome to sit in the lounge and have some coffee while they wait?

If you invited friends over for dinner, would you make them wait outside until you had dinner ready? Of course you wouldn't. You should treat your customers the same way that you treat friends and family (assuming that you like your family).

I traveled to another dealership with a small parking lot and no parking spaces around the dealership. As I drove onto the lot, I saw an empty parking space with a huge sign stating "NO PARKING. Dealership Vehicles Only."

Really? Having a space for your customers is not as important as having a space for your shuttle van or parts truck? Those vehicles do not need to be that close to the building. Your premium parking spaces should be reserved for your customers, not your employees.

If you work at a dealership, the only reason you have a job is because of the customers—even the mean and nasty ones. So, it's time to start re-thinking priorities. Every single thing you do every day should be for the benefit and convenience of your customers, not for your own convenience or benefit.

Oh, and that includes not dropping f-bombs in front of customers. You are in a professional workplace with colleagues, not hanging out at a bar with your buddies.

Mr. Dealer, if you're wondering why you don't have more loyal customers, start with observing how your employees treat customers. That includes looking in the mirror and examining your own attitude and treatment towards customers. Do you treat them like family and friends, or like a major inconvenience? If it's the latter, an attitude adjustment is in short order.

It's 7:00 a.m. and your dealership's service lane is filled with customers and their vehicles. As a service advisor, your job is to greet these customers, check in their vehicles and get them on their way as fast as possible.

What happens when your phone rings? When you're in the service lane and the phone rings, you have two choices. You can choose to answer it and ignore the customer in front of you or the customers who are waiting to see you. You can choose not to answer the phone and ignore the customer who is calling to ask for a price quote or set an appointment.

Neither of these options are ideal. In fact, both are horrible.

The only way to fix this problem is to have someone else answer the service phones. I know many advisors won't like this suggestion. But trust me, you are losing more money by trying to retain control of the phones than if you relinquish control to someone else who is properly trained for this important job.

In case you're wondering, the service manager is not the right person to answer the phones. He or she should also be in the service drive at 7:00 a.m. to ensure everything is going smoothly.

That means someone else has to be trained how to answer service phones. I don't care if you outsource to a BDC, train a receptionist or hire a part-time person for this. It's too important and needs to be done.

Here's what I recommend. For the first two and a half hours of the day, service advisors should not have access to the phones. Same with end of day. From 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., or as long as there are customers in the service lane, don't let advisors answer phones or return calls. Their job during this time is to take care of the customers returning to pick their vehicles up, which includes reviewing the bill and ensuring the vehicle is returned promptly.

In order for this to happen, you need to train someone how to schedule service appointments. This is not rocket science.

If your labor ops are set up properly, the amount of time it takes to complete a repair will be in the system. When a customer calls to ask about a brake job, whoever answers the phone will be able to see that it takes two hours to complete the brake job and schedule accordingly.

If you're booking appointments properly, color-coded time blocks on the schedule make it easy to prevent double booking or overbooking.

Giving price quotes for repair work is also not a concern if you are using Service Pricing Guides (SPG) and have your labor op codes set up properly. If you're not sure how to do this, your DMS vendor can help you through setup.

I know many dealers will claim it's not practical to add someone to the payroll just to answer phones for a few hours per day. I disagree. When service advisors are responsible for answering phones, money is being blown out the door from these lost opportunities:

1) Review and discuss additional repair work that a customer in the service lane might need

2) Review and discuss additional repair work that a customer on the phone might need

When you try to take care of two people at the same time, you lose opportunities with both.

It's the service manager's job to take the right people, put them in the right place and create the right processes. In the service department, phones are a huge priority. When this process is handled correctly, you can schedule more appointments, generate more revenue and increase your customer satisfaction index (CSI) score, which qualifies you for more incentives from your manufacturer. It's a win-win for everyone.

In my job I travel and work with many dealerships, and when I say many, I mean a lot. So I get to see firsthand what really happens in dealerships, as opposed to what dealers think is happening.

My specialty is fixed ops, and lately, I’ve noticed an oversight at several dealerships that’s driving me crazy. For whatever reason, some service advisors are not getting customers’ signatures on repair orders (ROs) when the vehicle is dropped off.

This is a big no-no!

ROs are legal contracts between your dealership and your customers. If a customer verbally authorizes a $300 repair bill but doesn’t sign the RO, they could easily come back and say they never approved that amount. If they decide to dispute their bill, your dealership loses in a court of law.

Years ago, when I was a service director, a customer disputed a $3,000 repair bill. We actually had the customer’s signature, but as you know, the RO legally must include the words “customer states” or “customer requests.” On the RO in question, the service advisor had abbreviated the words into “Cust sts.” The judge said there was no reasonable way to know that “Cust sts” means “Customer states” and so, therefore we lost the claim. No kidding.

That’s how meticulous you have to be with paperwork. A missing signature is as glaring as a neon sign. Sorry, you lose!

When I ask service advisors why they fail to get customer signatures, I get more excuses than you’d hear at a group meeting of Procrastinators Anonymous. It was busy, the customer was in a hurry and took off, what’s the big deal, we have their credit card on file, they paid their bill, I get the warranty ones signed, etc.

Everyone repeat after me, “Excuses are lies we tell ourselves so that it doesn’t have to be our fault.”

ROs must be signed when the customer drops their vehicle off. It’s unacceptable to wait until the customer picks their vehicle up to have them sign off on the RO.

Letting this rule slide sometimes sends you down a slippery slope to lost profits.

If you don’t create a habit by doing it every time, there’s a good chance that one day you’ll forget to have it done on a high-dollar warranty RO and it will come back to bite you in the butt. Say the customer needs a new engine before the warranty is up, and the engine costs you $3,000.

Then, two months later the manufacturer does a warranty audit and discovers that the customer never signed the RO. Oops. You think they’re going to let that slide? Not a chance. They’re going to charge the entire claim back. This happens more than you might think.

The only acceptable signatures are as follows:

-Ink signature on a paper RO

-Electronic signature on a mobile tablet

-Early bird drop envelope with a signed pre-authorization form

There are no other acceptable methods for a RO to be signed.

If this oversight is happening in your dealership, you’re in legal jeopardy.

If you believe this would never happen in your dealership, think again. Go on, just for kicks, go through all of your ROs daily for a week to see if all of them are signed.

If you find that some of them aren’t signed, you’ve got a problem. Address it with the service advisors. Let them know you’ll be checking on a daily basis to ensure all ROs are signed. Be sure to follow through on your promise.

When you get to a point where you feel confident the customer signatures will always be there, you can stop checking daily. But I still recommend doing random spot checks. Don’t fool yourself into believing that you’ll never have to check any more. You should always check on occasion.

This is another reason why I recommend a mobile check-in and MPI process. With a mobile tablet, the last step of the check-in process is the customer signature. You can’t start the job without the signature, so it’s virtually guaranteed that your dealership will be protected.

When dealership management system (DMS) vendors introduced auto dispatch years ago, many service managers tried it and quickly gave it up. The first auto dispatch systems were buggy and complicated, so avoidance by service personnel was understandable.

As programming and features improved, auto dispatch became more user friendly. Many service managers tried it again. Perhaps slightly less quickly than before, most gave it up. In my experience, the three main reasons why the majority of service managers still aren't using auto dispatch today include:

• Service managers are afraid that if fully utilized, auto dispatch will replace a human being (meaning they'll have to fire a dispatcher, foreman or technician).  

• Some service technicians try to game the system and cherry-pick jobs, causing problems that require human intervention. The thinking goes, it's just easier to assign jobs manually in the first place.

• Setting up the system takes time. It can take weeks to set up initial parameters and months to transition from a manual system to a fully automated dispatch system.

So why bother at all? Auto dispatch assigns the right tech with the right skill to the right job at the right time. Service departments that successfully transition to auto dispatch see a 15-50 percent increase in labor hours sold. With auto dispatch, everyone in the service department makes more money. Once the transition to auto dispatch has been made, service personnel love auto dispatch.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Here are three reasons why your greatest fears about auto dispatching are unfounded.

1) Auto Dispatch Will Never Replace Humans

Auto dispatch is not designed to replace anyone; it’s designed to increase the productivity of current employees. Conditions in service departments are always changing, so auto dispatch will always require human intervention.

For example, say that your shop foreman currently spends 70 percent of his time manually dispatching jobs, 15 percent of his time training technicians and 15 percent doing high-paying diagnostics work. With auto dispatch, his dispatching time is reduced from 70 to 10 percent, his training time increases to 40 percent, and now he can spend 50 percent of his time doing high-paying diagnostics work.

2) Auto Dispatch Stops Cherry-Picking

Because auto dispatch systems are designed to be flexible, they allow manual overrides in certain circumstances. Most auto dispatch systems allow technicians to place a job on hold and view the next job assigned to them. They can choose to work on that one instead, or if they don't like the next job, they can place that one on hold and view the next job.

This behavior causes obvious problems, including jobs not getting done on time and the “less desirable” jobs always being assigned to the techs who are honest and gamely accepting the next job in line.

In order for auto dispatch to be successful, the service manager must enforce the process. One reason why service managers don't enforce the process is because they might have “favorite” techs that are used to getting plum jobs assigned to them. Another reason the process might not be enforced is because the managers get tired of hearing techs complain about the system.

Whatever the reason, it's critical to stop technicians from cherry-picking the best jobs. Believe it or not, the computer knows when the service manager, foreman, tech or advisor should be working on which jobs 90 percent of the time.

Today most auto dispatch systems have features designed to stop cherry-picking. In Auto/Mate's Auto Dispatch Module, service managers have the ability to control how many active ROs a technician can have open at one time. You can also disable the technicians' ability to place jobs on hold, or require a manager's approval in order to do so. If there are some technicians that can be trusted more than others, permissions can be adjusted accordingly.

3) Time Up Front Will be Realized on the Back End

Depending on the size of the shop, it can take anywhere from two days to two weeks to set up all the parameters for auto dispatch. It will take several months to a year to transition from a manual system to fully automated. Once established, regular maintenance is required.

Ideally, the service manager or dispatcher should allocate 15-20 minutes every day for ongoing maintenance. Finding the time to do this shouldn’t be a problem because auto dispatch frees up more time.

Some managers are reluctant to let a computer take over such an important responsibility. What if a bottleneck occurs? What if the system “screws up,” causing chaos?

As with any technology, remember this saying: garbage in, garbage out. Auto dispatch is not something you can “set and forget.” During the transition, parameters need to be constantly tweaked until you find what works with your processes.

It takes commitment to switch to auto dispatch. But once it's humming smoothly, the time you spent (plus, a whole lot more) will be realized on the back end. Service departments will be more profitable, personnel will be making more income and customer satisfaction will increase due to quicker turnaround with fewer technician errors.