Click link to Dealer Magazine Article
http://digitaledition.qwinc.com/publication/?m=19501&i=419549&p=40
DealersEdge Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dealersedge-greg-criss-declined-service-recommendations/id1114519745?i=1000393886637
Multipoint Inspections....
the New Re-Launch
"Doing Right For the Customer and Your Store"
by Greg Criss
If anyone asks us if we perform multipoint inspections, most of us would answer, “Of course, we do them with al- most every service.” The reality is that when I inspect this process in dealer- ships, we’re leaving serious dollars on the table; money that’s coming through your doors and leaving without being harvested. The problem with this is that we think that it’s a solid, installed process at our dealership, but when we look closer, we see that it just isn’t.
A customer comes in religiously for their oil changes. We perform the oil changes. Let’s say that we inspect only the brakes when we perform an oil change. Our oil change center is in a hurry today, so our advisor doesn’t suggest the tire rotation. The last tire rotation was a year ago. So our cus- tomer leaves with his vehicle’s brakes in the “RED” and we didn’t tell them. They are now driving on a Sunday, hear the squeals begin and stop at some lo- cal retail auto repair outlet. “I just had my vehicle in for service at the dealer and they never told me.” And the defec- tion begins.
I can remember when the manufactur- ers came out with the idea to inspect vehicles from the first visit at approxi- mately 3,000 miles. I thought to my- self, “How stupid. There’s no opportunity for an up-sell at 3,000 miles.” I was telling my clients that it wasn’t a real good idea to perform these until we thought that there was an opportunity to sell something; maybe some filters at 15,000 miles or so. Here’s what I was missing. When we go over this list a few times, and everything is green, the customer is used to this treatment and care. When their vehicle does eventu- ally need something, it’s then an easy sell, because they haven’t needed any- thing in the past. The importance of reporting the “Green” areas is key and not just what the vehicle needs.
“Technician training and buy-in is the key.”
Most great technicians understand the importance of performing a quality check on the vehicle. They don’t want to have to rack 10 vehicles to make 10 hours today. That’s a lot of hard work. They think, “Why not harvest the work that I have on my lift now?” Smart. And most of the work that they will find is higher productive work (gravy work). The ones who don’t see the value in this are typically your less productive technicians.
I’ve seen technicians go from 35 hours a week to an excess of 54 hours per week because this light finally turned on in their head and they accepted the concept. Here’s the math: the average vehicle will receive a .5 hour checkout for an issue and the advisor will prob- ably perform an up-sell of the repair for an additional 1.0. That’s 1.5 hours per ticket. If a technician wants to make 10 flat rate hours on “Prime Item” repairs only, then they will have to rack 6+ vehicles to do that.
Let’s say each vehicle has non-productive time of 8 minutes per vehicle. At 6 vehicles, that productive time lost is 48 minutes for the day. If the technician is paid $20 per flat rate hour, this is a loss of $22 per day -- a minimum of $5,544 per year.
Here’s the other side. If this tech refuses to perform the multipoint inspec- tion and there was an additional .5 on each of the repair orders, this is 3.0 hours lost per day. If this repair order was given to another tech perhaps this technician would have made the additional 3.0 hours. Meaning that by over- looking this, he cost some technician and the shop 3.0 hours. If you have 5 technicians not looking over the repair orders, then that’s 15 hours per day, times 5 days a week, times 4.33 weeks per month. It ends up that there were 324.75 hours lost that month. At $20 per hour, that’s $6,495 in potential technician wages for the month that were lost. I can’t even calculate the loss in Service and Parts.
- If a vertical line is placed down the green side of the inspection, then the technician doesn’t understand the im- portance of the multipoint inspection as a selling tool.
- High mileage vehicles with zero recommendations. It didn’t even need an air filter? - “Opt out” of brake inspections. Some forms allow the technician to “opt out” of the brake inspections. Develop firm guidelines for when a brake inspection is to be performed.
- “Brake or Tire” Specs are the same all around. The chances of this happening are slim.
A great idea is to call some of the guests who received the multipoint inspec- tions with vehicle needs and who did not buy. You might actually find that the Advisor never mentioned the need to them. What a great place to begin training on your expectations with the Advisors.
If your technicians are not so experienced, then ask your best technician who performs these religiously to hold a lunch-time on-hands seminar with your other technicians. Have a contest for accurately and completely filled-out multipoint inspections. Your prize can be huge, because as you re-launch this system, your Net Profit will significant- ly increase!
Most Techs know the difference be- tween inspection grades, but some don’t know how to inspect brakes and many don’t know how to evaluate sus- pension parts. Solution: develop train- ing for these technicians by your better technicians and develop a performance policy. (“All brakes are inspected on ev- ery vehicle every year. All advisors must check the history and add the brake C inspection line to the repair order.”) You may say, “My Technicians already know how to do this.” But there’s more. Y Now Technician buy-in is needed. The CM thing that separates KNOWING from MY DOING is management intervention.
So, Technician training and buy-in is CMY the key to the success here. It’s easy to K see who is doing it; just inspect your multi-points on a daily basis. Then start your campaign to educate and measure performance on this. Watch out for these pitfalls:
the New Re-Launch
"Doing Right For the Customer and Your Store"
by Greg Criss
If anyone asks us if we perform multipoint inspections, most of us would answer, “Of course, we do them with al- most every service.” The reality is that when I inspect this process in dealer- ships, we’re leaving serious dollars on the table; money that’s coming through your doors and leaving without being harvested. The problem with this is that we think that it’s a solid, installed process at our dealership, but when we look closer, we see that it just isn’t.
A customer comes in religiously for their oil changes. We perform the oil changes. Let’s say that we inspect only the brakes when we perform an oil change. Our oil change center is in a hurry today, so our advisor doesn’t suggest the tire rotation. The last tire rotation was a year ago. So our cus- tomer leaves with his vehicle’s brakes in the “RED” and we didn’t tell them. They are now driving on a Sunday, hear the squeals begin and stop at some lo- cal retail auto repair outlet. “I just had my vehicle in for service at the dealer and they never told me.” And the defec- tion begins.
I can remember when the manufactur- ers came out with the idea to inspect vehicles from the first visit at approxi- mately 3,000 miles. I thought to my- self, “How stupid. There’s no opportunity for an up-sell at 3,000 miles.” I was telling my clients that it wasn’t a real good idea to perform these until we thought that there was an opportunity to sell something; maybe some filters at 15,000 miles or so. Here’s what I was missing. When we go over this list a few times, and everything is green, the customer is used to this treatment and care. When their vehicle does eventu- ally need something, it’s then an easy sell, because they haven’t needed any- thing in the past. The importance of reporting the “Green” areas is key and not just what the vehicle needs.
“Technician training and buy-in is the key.”
Most great technicians understand the importance of performing a quality check on the vehicle. They don’t want to have to rack 10 vehicles to make 10 hours today. That’s a lot of hard work. They think, “Why not harvest the work that I have on my lift now?” Smart. And most of the work that they will find is higher productive work (gravy work). The ones who don’t see the value in this are typically your less productive technicians.
I’ve seen technicians go from 35 hours a week to an excess of 54 hours per week because this light finally turned on in their head and they accepted the concept. Here’s the math: the average vehicle will receive a .5 hour checkout for an issue and the advisor will prob- ably perform an up-sell of the repair for an additional 1.0. That’s 1.5 hours per ticket. If a technician wants to make 10 flat rate hours on “Prime Item” repairs only, then they will have to rack 6+ vehicles to do that.
Let’s say each vehicle has non-productive time of 8 minutes per vehicle. At 6 vehicles, that productive time lost is 48 minutes for the day. If the technician is paid $20 per flat rate hour, this is a loss of $22 per day -- a minimum of $5,544 per year.
Here’s the other side. If this tech refuses to perform the multipoint inspec- tion and there was an additional .5 on each of the repair orders, this is 3.0 hours lost per day. If this repair order was given to another tech perhaps this technician would have made the additional 3.0 hours. Meaning that by over- looking this, he cost some technician and the shop 3.0 hours. If you have 5 technicians not looking over the repair orders, then that’s 15 hours per day, times 5 days a week, times 4.33 weeks per month. It ends up that there were 324.75 hours lost that month. At $20 per hour, that’s $6,495 in potential technician wages for the month that were lost. I can’t even calculate the loss in Service and Parts.
- If a vertical line is placed down the green side of the inspection, then the technician doesn’t understand the im- portance of the multipoint inspection as a selling tool.
- High mileage vehicles with zero recommendations. It didn’t even need an air filter? - “Opt out” of brake inspections. Some forms allow the technician to “opt out” of the brake inspections. Develop firm guidelines for when a brake inspection is to be performed.
- “Brake or Tire” Specs are the same all around. The chances of this happening are slim.
A great idea is to call some of the guests who received the multipoint inspec- tions with vehicle needs and who did not buy. You might actually find that the Advisor never mentioned the need to them. What a great place to begin training on your expectations with the Advisors.
If your technicians are not so experienced, then ask your best technician who performs these religiously to hold a lunch-time on-hands seminar with your other technicians. Have a contest for accurately and completely filled-out multipoint inspections. Your prize can be huge, because as you re-launch this system, your Net Profit will significant- ly increase!
Most Techs know the difference be- tween inspection grades, but some don’t know how to inspect brakes and many don’t know how to evaluate sus- pension parts. Solution: develop train- ing for these technicians by your better technicians and develop a performance policy. (“All brakes are inspected on ev- ery vehicle every year. All advisors must check the history and add the brake C inspection line to the repair order.”) You may say, “My Technicians already know how to do this.” But there’s more. Y Now Technician buy-in is needed. The CM thing that separates KNOWING from MY DOING is management intervention.
So, Technician training and buy-in is CMY the key to the success here. It’s easy to K see who is doing it; just inspect your multi-points on a daily basis. Then start your campaign to educate and measure performance on this. Watch out for these pitfalls: