Dealer service departments struggle with service advisor communication, technician turnover
Dealer service departments struggle with many of the same personnel challenges as the aftermarket, chief among them difficulty in finding and retaining good technicians. In the case of dealers, though, several other trends are affecting employee satisfaction and retention, according to research and consulting firm Carlisle & Co.
First, the growth of express lane offerings has shifted the hiring focus of many dealerships while providing a boost to their service profits.
"For many dealerships, express services have delivered on the promise of retaining customers through providing value, convenience, low cost, and faster service to them," says Karin Kliger, partner at Carlisle. "Express service customers are the most satisfied, and have higher net promoter scores because they recommend the dealer to someone else. They are also more likely to return to the dealership."
There has been an accompanying uptick in retention of other types of non-express customers, but it's not clear from Carlisle's data how much of that has been driven by express service customers coming back for more complex repairs.
Express service offerings, however, have eroded technician satisfaction. "One thing we've learned through our surveys of service advisors and technicians at dealerships is that there is a one-to-one correlation between the length of time the technician has spent in the express service lane and dissatisfaction in general at their job," Kliger says. "When those technicians are ready to leave, they aren't just ready to leave that dealer. Many are ready to quit being a technician. It's a formidable challenge."
That's likely because at many dealers there is no clear line of progression from the express lane to better paying jobs in the main shop. Eighty percent of technicians in Carlisle's most recent survey indicated their dealers had no clear career progression plan for quick service technicians. In some instances, dealers are adding a second-tier express program for tires, brakes and services. Others are actively trying to help increase their skill sets by providing a path forward, but this has been the exception rather than the rule.
In some cases, dealers are even considering using the express lane as a way to retain older technicians who may not be able to physically do more demanding work.
"If you have fairly junior resources working on lube/oil/filter jobs, that's an opportunity to get a more qualified review of the condition of the vehicle," says Carlisle partner Michael Sachs. "But the people typically in that role are not the most trained in identifying areas where the vehicle could need more work. In that case, senior technicians could play a role."
Communication breakdown
There are continued challenges with hiring and retaining technicians and service advisors. "We have a good idea of why people leave, and it tends to be tied to challenging compensation schemes," Kliger says. "A lot of service advisor pay is commission based. There are also poor working relationships and communication channels between the advisors and the technicians, as well as a lack of leaderships at the dealership level."
For luxury dealers, turnover rates are around 20 percent for technicians and 30 percent for advisors. In non-luxury, turnover is at 25 percent for technicians, 30 percent for service managers, and 42 percent for advisors.
Dealers have responded by partnering with vocational and trade schools, as well as establishing recruitment programs for returning military veterans. Others are taking a more holistic talent management approach that supports training within the dealer workforce, often with OEM support.
"OEMs are seeing good results with supporting the dealers on the back end," Kliger says. "Hiring is a dealer decision, but OEMs can provide support like putting together a profile of where you can find people that have the right skill set and personality. They may help in the background with testing and other things. Many OEMs also offer websites that can make it easier to match the applicant pool with the dealer's needs."
Dealers also struggle to find qualified technicians at the level they are seeking. In some cases, they need a different mix of technicians than they did in the past. "The complexity of the vehicles has changed, and express service has affected that as well," Kliger says. "The challenge is more in the mix of technicians, rather than being able to find enough technicians."
Another big contributor to technician job dissatisfaction is communication with service advisors. "The service advisor is driving work to the technician, and their productivity is the product of the service advisor's process," Sachs says. "Service advisors are not motivated by the same thing as the technician. They aren't necessarily in conflict, but that relationship has a big influence on the technician's general disposition at a given dealership."
In their 2013/2014 survey data, Carlisle found that 43 percent of repair orders require additional clarification from the service advisors, costing 30 minutes per day of follow up time, or potentially $90,000 of lost service revenue each year for the dealership. Unrealistic wait times are also a problem, with technicians estimating that service advisors provide a third of customers with unrealistic wait times; advisors, meanwhile, felt they were accurate 83 percent of the time. Other survey responses indicate that advisors and technicians tend to point fingers at each other when there are communication breakdowns about the repair diagnosis and estimate.
A more integrated service lane may help solve this communication problem. Many dealers are instituting tablet computer systems that link the advisors and technicians, which streamline communication and potentially improve diagnostic accuracy. "The real potential there is to alleviate some of the frustration in communication," Kliger says. "They are also using big data and analytics. They are going down a path of dynamic scripting in the service lane to drive those decisions, and that has great promise as well."
Subscribe to Aftermarket Business World and receive articles like this every month….absolutely free. Click here.