Dealer APS

Well documented appointments can do wonders for efficiency.

You have all the information about what the vehicle could need before the customer sets foot in the shop.

Here's how to leverage it:
Dispatch the appointment a day or two before so you know who will work on it and how to fit it in with any back log.

If you know what parts are needed (recalls, maintenance, SOR) make sure those parts are ordered. A well written customer complaint for an appointment could give you an idea of what parts might be needed even for a diag.

When the RO is opened, dispatch the parts for the services that are authorized at write-up.

Get the loaner ready the day before.

The customer arriving is usually the trigger to get these processes started. Doing them a day early will save you a lot of time.

What can be done sooner to save time later?

A key to maximizing your efficiency is to design processes so that the previous step aids in the completion of the subsequent step.

Here's an example: What can your Advisors do to aid your Technician in getting work out of the shop before the RO gets created?

💡Road Test with the customer before write-up.

📍Ensures the concern can be duplicated. With the customer.

The customer swears the vehicle is making a subtle noise within a very specific set of conditions. Your tech might spend 45 minutes trying to duplicate the concern to no avail.

Sitting with the customer to duplicate the concern saves your tech that time and makes the "not duplicable" conversation much easier.

📍More detailed write-ups

If the concern is duplicable, now you have more information to save the tech time in diagnosing. You might have better descriptors and a better sense of what the concern is.

The challenge now is the document it as a write-up.

DealerAPS provides advisors guides on how to document thorough write-ups. These guides are customizable to your shop language and are organized by vehicle system.

Better write-ups, better productivity.

Customers have a "time budget" - spend too much of it and they'll be closed off to additional services.

A key to efficiency is being proactive and using all the information you have early on in the process. Advisors should anticipate what customers need and sell it early.

This will save you time downstream.

Instead of adding more time to a ticket that was almost done, it's planned into the dispatch. Instead of waiting to go get the approval, the technician can get started.

At write-up, you haven't spent any of the customer's time budget, making them more receptive to additional services. Presenting early and often will get you a boost in Dollars/RO.

More presentations, more opportunities.

It takes 90 days to build a habit into your routine...a full 90 days.

That means when you create a new process, or onboard a new employee, unless the process is executed exactly as prescribed for 90 days, you'll likely have variation in your shop.

It happens. No one's perfect.

That's why it's important when you walk the shop to observe how things are getting done. Even if everything is being done correctly, you might make some key observations:

❓ Is the process hindering more than it's helping?
❓ Can any changes be made to make it easier or faster?
❓ What are common obstacles preventing a processes from being followed?
❓ Can technology aid in improving this process?

When making observations, avoid the inclination of strict enforcement. Viewing your processes with an open mind can give you new ideas on how to improve the flow of your shop.

The most crucial process is getting a vehicle in and out of the shop.

Our Shop Flow bundle bolsters your Advisors, Techs, and Parts guys in that process by:
✅ Automating the coordination between personnel
✅ Providing RO Status visibility to all parties involved at any given point
✅ Incorporating proactivity into the role of each team member

As a Manager, you'll get time stamps of when each ticket progressed to its next phase allowing you to easily identify bottlenecks. Now you'll know what to keep an eye out for the next time you do your shop observations.

DM us if you'd like a straightforward demo to see how this works in action.