The coronavirus pandemic, with its associated state-mandated lockdowns and limitations, forced many customers across the country to work from home, reducing wear and tear on their vehicles. Some delayed bringing vehicles in for service to avoid face-to-face contact. As a result, franchised dealership service departments had to adapt and innovate.
They introduced or accelerated programs already in place, such as pickup and delivery, mobile service vans, “touchless” customer interactions and sanitization of vehicles. But once the pandemic ends, which of these programs will continue, and why?
Those “lasting changes” were discussed Oct. 29 during the fourth session of the 2020 Fixed Ops Journal Forum. The third annual event was held online this year over five Thursdays.
Here are edited highlights on select topics.
Bergamotto: The “wow” to the customer is second to none. … I know it’s the future. There’s no way to get around it. We let Safelite and these mobile glass companies take all of our glass business. Now Goodyear and Firestone, they’re building these mobile vans as we speak. And if we sit back and don’t embrace this, we’re going to let them take our repair work and our tire work, also.
Roberts: Some people will look at mobile service vans and think, “Oh man, I don’t want to make that kind of investment.” It is an investment, but more so than that, it’s a commitment. It’s a commitment to pick up business that you probably would not be getting otherwise. And so, we backed into it from what was the breakeven point for us, and then how do we outrun that breakeven? You want a bay to produce this much gross. That service van is never going to produce that kind of gross because there’s drive times in between each stop. But if you’re picking up business that you wouldn’t have had as incremental business, then it enhances what you already have at the shop.
Bergamotto: They never say no. When we first started marketing it two years ago, customers didn’t understand — you had to explain it to them. Then the next question was, “How much more is it?” And we are not charging any more for the service out on the road than we do in the shop.
Roberts: They’ve embraced it phenomenally well. I didn’t perceive somebody would want us to do work in their driveway. But Amazon delivers the storefront to the front door. And that’s what we’re doing with mobile service — we’re delivering service to the front door. I haven’t had a single customer say no; if we’ve offered it, they’ve accepted it.
Bergamotto: You start looking at when things were great. You start running a little unnecessary overtime. And not that we look to hurt any employees, but there was a lot of things you had the chance to look at because you started back with a small crew, almost like starting a small dealership up all over again. We used to be open for service until 8 o’clock at night; we were open ’til 5 o’clock on Saturday. We’re shorter hours now, grossing a little less money, but we’re netting more money. The efficiencies that you see, or inefficiencies, are what we really looked at, and we’re doing less and netting more.
Henne: We’re quite the opposite. We got shut down … I think it was March 19. And we had just hired six new technicians, a new service adviser to start a second shift that following Monday. Obviously, we got shut down, so we had to lay those people off before they even started. We just went back to our second shift in July. We’re open from 7 a.m. ’til midnight right now. I can say really the only area that we saved in, because I do our marketing as well as advertising, there was a lot of money that we had been spending on Google and paid search. I streamlined some expenses, but as far as personnel goes, we’re actually probably nine to 10 employees heavier now than we were pre-COVID.
Roberts: The biggest thing for us is we learned how to communicate internally. Gross went up because now the adviser can speak to the customer more confidently because he’s had good communication with the technician on what he’s found.
Bergamotto: Your customer sees a happy team. And those aren’t just words because I have so many customers say to me, “Everybody’s always smiling.” Well, we are; we create that smile. The employees do feel very important and empowered that they get to help these health care workers and police departments. That was the biggest thing because of where we started; we had such an issue at the beginning. They knew that my No. 1 goal was to keep them safe, and it always keeps your team with you when you worry about them. As managers, we can never forget you’re only as good as your team.
Henne: I think the community involvement — that’s one of the things that really, really catapulted us through being shut down. Doing free sanitizing for everyone. We spent a lot of money on Facebook getting that out there to show that we care. We have very little turnover in the store. I think a lot of that just comes from the fact that … it’s a team here. We all care for each other. It’s like a marriage; you’re going to have problems, but you’re going to overcome the problems. And the other side is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Roberts: One thing that the pandemic did for our people was them being called “essential.” That really gave them a sense of pride in what they do. We put a program together because their job becomes so routine. They’ll go through the motions and do something and think, “OK, well if it comes back, I’ll address it then.” I put a program together called Quality Pays, and they get recognition every single week and a chance to earn some money every single week for vehicles that don’t come back. That’s one thing we did to help prove to them that their value is important to us. But being considered essential really gave them their own sense of pride. And we’ve got to keep that in front of them.