For the past 15 years or so, technology has existed which enables customers to schedule service appointments online. In the beginning, the systems were very basic – the customer filled out a form online and an e-mail was sent to someone at the dealership who may – or may not – confirm that appointment.

Fast forward to today and online service appointment scheduling has evolved into systems that immediately verify the service appointment, check parts availability, analyze shop capacity based on other appointments, available bays and technician skill level, among other things.

But guess what? Despite all these advanced abilities, and the convenience to both the customer and the dealer, most dealers’ online appointment scheduling rates hover around 7-10 percent, with the head-of the-pack dealers sitting at around 20 percent – after 15 years a mere 2 out of 10 customers schedule an appointment online!

Today’s customers demand convenience, and, with all this wonderful technology, why are dealers still only getting 2 out of 10 customers to make appointments online—AT MOST?

I’ll tell you why: We went to a dealer’s website, (will remain unnamed, but most of them are the same) and we counted the clicks and inputs for the major scheduler. It took us 9 clicks and 19 inputs to get to an appointment. Is that crazy? I think so!

Yes, everyone wants to “shop load” correctly and plan the capacity. I am not asking you to go away from that, but just asking you to enable a different approach. How about a simple way for the customer to click a button on your website and have the system call them back - a-la Amazon?

It is a lot easier to verify the details and look up a recall if the person is calling you.  Now if the customer does not have time to call you, let them text you.  

Even that is simpler than the 9-19 step methodology. The fact is that customers don’t make appointments online because we’ve made it too hard to do so.  It reminds me of my doctor today.  When I go in, all she does is type into a computer and keeps collecting data on me, rather than talk to me about my health issues. We should learn from it, we have got to make it easier for customers to interact with us! 

Show your customers just how much they can benefit by making an appointment. But first, make it easy for them to do so via your website, text and chat.

In so doing you can increase your service revenue, traffic, appointments set and customer experience, while utilizing your shop’s resources more efficiently.

In this short video blog, myKaarma CEO/Chairman Ujj Nath explains why dealerships should analyze what their service advisors responsibilities are and asks whether they are overloaded?

One day, while bringing my vehicle into a large, very well-known dealership for service, a rather comical scene played out before my eyes. While the shuttle driver was leaving the dealership, his mini-van full with customers, all of a sudden a strong gust of wind came through. The shuttle van’s windows were open at the time and papers started flying out of the vehicle. He stopped the vehicle and desperately gave chase to the papers that were flying around. Ironically, these were his printed directions for each passenger. He eventually gave up and went back to the dealership to re-print the directions.

While entertaining, it made me consider the consequences that just one gust of wind had on this dealership’s service department:

1. The driver now had to go back to the dealership and reassemble the route

2.  The customers in the shuttle had to sit and wait. The shuttle, which was provided as a convenience, was now an inconvenience to them.

All because of a piece of paper and a gust of wind.

Why in this era of paperless technology would you choose to use paper-based systems? One of the reasons Uber quickly became so popular is due to its technology and simplicity. Pull out your smartphone, open the app, request a driver and with a couple clicks the app tells you exactly where the driver is and how long you have to wait until pick up. Once the ride is over, you simply get out, and your credit card is automatically charged the fare.

We all like convenience and technology because it makes doing business easier. Customers frequently make decisions about who they choose to do business with based on the ease of any interaction with that business. You can either choose to adopt new technology or risk being left for a competitive dealership that has.

myKaarma CEO Ujj Nath discusses the importance of effective communications with recall customers in this short video blog.

Customers generally get their vehicle serviced close to home or work. Dealers are lucky that customers feel they should bring their new cars back to the same store when there are warranty issues. They have that warranty period to develop the customer’s loyalty. That is, UNLESS their customer has a bad experience. After the warranty period is over, if they don’t wish to service at a franchised dealer (often due to the perception that dealers are more expensive) the customer will go to the most convenient independent service repair shop.

What happens when they go to the independent service repair shop - Joe’s Automotive Repair?

Joe answers the phone. There are no voice prompts and no need to get transferred. The customer explains what they need and Joe gives them an estimate. When the customer arrives at Joe’s shop, Joe greets them himself. He then inspects the vehicle and calls them to inform them of any repairs he discovers. After explaining technically what’s going on, he gives them a final amount, gets approval and repairs the vehicle. When the work is completed, Joe notifies the customer that their vehicle is ready. When the customer returns, Joe takes the customer’s payment and explains to the customer the work that was completed. A few days later, Joe calls the customer to find out if everything is to the customer’s complete satisfaction.

There are so many moving parts at a franchised dealership, as well as a number of different employees involved in a typical service process. That it is why it is very hard for franchised dealers to compete with the experience offered by independent service centers. Therefore, ensuring a smooth and excellent customer experience, providing a single point of contact who responds to the customer as well as personalizing the service experience, is quite a challenge.

When attempting to provide a higher level of customer experience many dealers typically resort to hiring more people to help – more porters, greeters, assistants, BDC personnel, etc. The customer now has to deal with a service advisor, greeter, valet, porter and BDC personnel -- The list goes on and it borders on overkill.

Take a look at the experience from your customer’s viewpoint. To compete with Joe’s Garage across the street, focus on improving interaction with your customers by providing a streamlined, efficient, and unified way for customers to interact with you. If the customer has to remember five phone numbers, or speak with multiple people at the dealership in order to get their vehicle serviced, eventually they will get tired of it.

Simplify your service process and make it easy for customer to do business with you -- or you will lose your customer to Joe.

Many dealers and managers outside of the service department don’t realize how incredibly busy a service advisor (SA) is throughout their day. Keep in mind that these are front-line employees dealing directly with your customers. They have an extremely important role in the dealership. In fact, it could be argued that a SA has more influence on a dealership’s livelihood when it comes to customer retention and loyalty than any other position in the dealership. A single SA sees many more customers in a day than any salesperson.

Don’t believe me about how busy these guys and gals are? Try calling a SA between 4 and 6 pm (their peak time for delivery of cars) for assistance. You will likely go straight to voicemail. If you do reach them they’ll tell you they’ll call you right back – and you will have to wait a while for that return call. This is happening more often than most dealers realize. As a mystery shopping exercise, I would recommend that the GMs or principals of the dealership call their own main 800# between 4 and 6 pm, act like a customer trying to get hold of their SA, and see how hard it is. Start a stopwatch and do the exercise 10 times. If you do get connected to your SA directly, count it is a success.  

When we analyzed recordings of the main number, here are some statistics that surprised us.  It took an average of 3 minutes to get to a human or voicemail and the customer got the correct SA only 1 out of 10 times. Now put on the “shoes of the customer” who sees you once every 8-10 months, is this what you want happening?

I believe this has a lot to do with the general trend of automation. As OEMs push more and more responsibilities off onto the dealer, the service advisor has become overloaded and it’s time to reduce the noise.

I actually counted the # of tasks that a SA is responsible for at the dealership and I stopped counting at 15 ….:

1. Greeting customers upon arrival.

2. Performing a visual inspection of the vehicle for dings/dents upon intake.

3. Consulting with the customer about vehicle ailments and creating a repair order.

4. Dispatching the work to technicians.

5. Contacting the customer with the diagnosis and/or any additional service recommendations and maintaining contact regarding vehicle status.

6. Checking with the parts department for parts availability on the repair order.

7. Checking for any open recalls and/or TSBs for each vehicle.

8. Checking to see if vehicle is in warranty.

9. Looking at the vehicle’s history for any prior repairs that may affect the current problem.

10. Greeting tow truck drivers and liaising with shuttle drivers.

11. Handling calls and answering questions from customers and others with general questions about vehicle service.

12. Submitting factory and extended warranty claims.

13. Arranging for pickup and delivery of customers and/or vehicles.

14. Coordinating with the loaner desk to make sure loaners are available.

15. Staying up to date/certified on any OEM software and OEM certifications.

And this list doesn’t include all the additional internal forms they need to fill out and the training they need to complete to remain compliant with regulatory rules. It’s exhausting and its day in and day out.

The customer tends to get lost in all this noise. It’s similar to the medical profession today as things get more and more automated and digitized. There used to be an art to diagnosing and dealing with the patient. My uncle is a doctor and back in the day you would get a full physical exam which included tapping different parts of your body, listening on the stethoscope for clues to illnesses. Today your doctor will wheel in a computer and spend the bulk of his time entering data into a computer. The modern doctors have become dignified digital clerks!!  Do you want this to happen to your SAs?

This art of personalization has been lost in vehicle service too. If you would like your service department to be effective and provide a great customer experience, find a way to reduce the noise in your service advisors’ daily lives. Take some time to truly study the service department and I am sure you can find some ways to help increase efficiency so there is less noise and forms for the service advisors to fill-out. This will then help increase customer interactions and provide a better customer experience which leads to increased CSI and profitability. And then everyone wins.

When looking at the future of the auto industry, specifically retail, it’s easy to get caught up in the “shiny objects” and focus on all the cool technology such as autonomous cars, ride-sharing, virtual reality sales, and all of the “disruptors” that are entering the space.

This can serve as a bit of a distraction and, as a result, many tend to stop thinking about the single most important thing in all of this: The Customer. Yes, some would argue that so-called disruptors are focusing on the customer – and these new technologies are certainly attempting to identify customer pain points.

But let’s stop for a minute and think about the commonality that exists in every disruptor -- they work hard to provide convenience, better customer interaction and engagement.

The future of the retail auto industry lies in the transformation of the customer experience in both sales and service. When interacting with your dealership, customers simply want the process to be easy, take less time and be more convenient for them, not for you.

Dealerships who learn this and adapt quickly will find that customers interact with them more often – and you certainly can’t sell or service a vehicle without interaction. It is vital to enable transactions through a channel of your customer’s choice. And those channels change dynamically depending on the reason for the interaction. For example, when scheduling service many customers just want to call in and make their appointment and get an email confirmation. When getting their vehicle serviced they would like text updates about vehicle status and want to receive their recommendation via email, so they can quickly review and approve. If it is a big repair, they probably want to call and talk to someone to get clarification.

There will always be tire-kickers, those who like to negotiate for hours at a dealership and even those who want a 100% online car-buying process. Each of those customers simply wants to interact in different ways and have it be their choice … not one you force on them.

When a customer wants to interact with you through a specific channel but you don’t offer it, what happens then? They will deal with you this one time, but will probably pick some other store that is “friendlier” the next time.

Due to the speed of technology development, our industry is in a transformative state. However, there will always be a need for interaction at some level. So don’t get lost in all the “shiny objects” as really it all boils down to is one thing: Customer interactions that promote convenience.

I was on a trip to New York and met up with a friend of mine (full disclosure: also a happy customer) Richard Hesse, the Dealer Principal at Mercedes-Benz of Nanuet. He has a simple mantra: “It's not business; it’s personal” -- and he means it.  I borrowed a car from him while I was in the NY area and had a minor issue come up with the toll pass at the booth.  I called the store and his receptionist picked up.  She was very courteous, heard me out, and said she would call me back.  Amazingly, she called me back and, to my surprise, solved the problem right away.  She had to find the loaner supervisor, get the answer for me, and return to her desk so she could call me back.  This lady manifested Rich’s mantra -- “It's not business; it’s personal.”

Dealerships are constantly looking for ways to differentiate themselves, attract new customers, and retain the ones they have. Some dealerships even spend millions of dollars installing luxury amenities such as movie theaters, coffee bars, and beauty salons in an effort to create a great customer experience and, thereby, engender customer loyalty. But are such things necessary?

The problem is that no amenity or luxury will make the customer experience great if the fundamentals of good service don’t come first. Customer expectations are simple: (1) The dealership should have a welcoming environment and be clean; (2) The staff should be attentive and responsive to the customer; and (3) the car needs to be fixed right the first time.

The service must be prompt and address the customer’s precise needs and wants. In essence, your dealership should satisfy the need that brought the customer to the dealership while providing a welcoming environment that makes the customer want to return. These are the fundamentals of good service that will make your customer willing to travel to your dealership.

Every other luxury or amenity you may choose to provide is the icing on the cake.

Make each experience great and the customer will come back. They may even recommend you to a friend or two.

The famous Albert Mehrabian developed a communication model in which he demonstrated that only 7% of what we communicate consists of the literal content of the message. The use of one’s voice, such as tone, intonation, and volume, makes up 38% of the message and as much as 55% of communication consists of non-verbal factors such as body language.

I’m sure you can think of a phrase that could mean totally different things should the emphasis be placed differently. That’s why great salespeople excel when the customer is in front of them. They know to mimic customer behavior and use these non-verbal communicators to their advantage and to emphasize and sell. And it works.

Today we live in a new society filled with digital communications – emails, chat, and text, to name a few. The problem is that the more non-verbal communication you utilize, the less effective the communication becomes. Yet we continue to try to communicate with our customers via solutions that, while they may be convenient, are less effective and can lead to misunderstandings.

A big trend currently favored in the automotive industry is texting. While it is very effective for short messages that need quick answers, salespeople who rely on texting to sell cars will find it difficult, or almost impossible, to accomplish what could be done with the customer in front of them or on the phone. And this includes service advisors delivering service recommendations. Yes, I am a huge supporter of texting to improve communications with customers under some circumstances – it is a great way to get hold of the customer and send them a link to the recommendations so you are not playing constant phone tag. But if it is a repair that needs explaining, I can guarantee that the customer is going to have questions and will want to discuss it on the phone.

So let us examine a quick interaction for a service repair, one attempted solely with text and another with a combination of text and voice calls.

Advisor - Text: “Our technician has found some issues with your car, I am sending you an estimate below:
1. Battery failed battery test - Replace Battery - $299.50
2. Remove air cleaner and coil packs replace spark plugs - $214.25
That would be $513.75 in addition to your A service which would be a total of $889.92”

 Customer - Text: “Whoa, hold on there?  Why so much?  What is a coil pack? My car was working when I got there, why a new battery?

VERSUS

Advisor - Text: “Our technician has found some issues with your car, when might I call you?

Customer Calls: The Service Advisor talks to the customer and explains that they put the car through multiple tests and the battery test had failed and if the battery was not replaced, then the car might stall on the freeway or may not start in the parking lot, also explains why the spark plugs need replacement etc. Lets the customer know that he will summarize this and send it back to the customer along with the discount that they agreed on.

 Advisor Text: I am sending you the prices as we agreed:
1. Battery failed battery test - Replace Battery - $299.50
2. Remove air cleaner and coil packs replace spark plugs - $214.25
That would be $513.75 in addition to your A service which would be a total of $889.92.  Your discount is $89.92 and we will be doing this for $800 even”

Customer Text: Sure go ahead

While the interaction above is representative of an example that I found in our communications database, the numbers have been altered to protect any proprietary information.  The combination of multiple channels of communications is extremely effective, especially when you have to justify an expense that the customer was not expecting.  

I am a huge advocate of texting and other modern methods of communication to help better service the customer and keep them in the loop on such things as the progress of their vehicle during service, changing appointment times, etc. However, it is not the be all and end all of communication.

Tech giant Apple recognized this problem when it rolled out audio text capabilities. Emojis have become modern versions of hieroglyphics in an attempt to add expressiveness, emphasis, and interpretation to text messages. But they aren’t perfect and an emoji certainly wouldn’t stand up in court as issuing consent, understanding or agreement.

When considering how best to communicate, it is important to factor in which channel is most appropriate and will be the most effective. Every channel of communication has certain advantages but some are simply more effective and reliable than others depending upon the reason for communicating. The magic phrase in my mind is:

When might I call you?

Take a look at how you are communicating with your customers and be sure to choose the right channel for the right circumstance. This increases the probability that your customers will interact with you with full comprehension and without misinterpretation. And that means happy and loyal customers, improved CSI and increased Gross Profits.

Between endless meetings, work-related tasks and familial responsibilities it probably seems as if you’re continuously pulled in different directions. Our society has devolved into a place where we often fail to stop and notice important things, simply because we’re so busy satisfying the needs and wants from those we love, or to those whom we have to answer.

A perfect illustration of how distracted our society has become is a wonderful story about internationally acclaimed virtuoso Joshua Bell, one the nation’s greatest violinists, commanding  fees upwards of $1,000 per minute performing to sold out crowds. He also loves to play anonymously in the D.C. Metro during rush hour. What is amazing is that during 43 minutes of playing, only one person recognized him and he made just $32.17 in tips.

Today, people are so busy wrapped up in their own lives that many don’t want any intrusion – even if that intrusion is one of beauty and song – and they simply don’t listen. This is exactly why consumers get so annoyed when telemarketers or your salespeople call in the middle of dinner.

We cannot make more time. We can only do the best with what we have. Because of that, people get annoyed when salespeople intrude on that time. So how do the Amazons, Apples, and Googles of the world continue to thrive and win the hearts and minds of their customers? It’s all about providing interactions the way the customer needs and desires.

Would it surprise you if I told you that Amazon Prime members now outnumber non-Amazon Prime members? Yes, a majority of customers are willing to pay a company $99 per year to do business with them. Why? It’s all about convenience.

Consumer behavior now dictates which companies thrive, which merely survive and which disappear. Consumers have – and will always have – the leverage to make these decisions.

And that leverage lies directly in their perception of your company; if you provide an excellent customer experience and make it convenient to do business with you and save them time…

… Or do you intrude upon it? It’s your choice. How do you interact with your customers and wish to be perceived?