Dealer adds quick bays, buzzers to speed service

Honda dealer Greg May was desperate to serve more service customers.

"We had no room left, we had to grow," said May, owner of Greg May Honda in Waco, Texas. "We were to the point that we had to turn customers away and tell them it might be two, three days or even a week before we could get to them."

So he decided to follow American Honda Motor Co.'s advice and add service bays and make other improvements to his service department.

American Honda has been asking Honda and Acura dealers since last summer to add service bays, hours or both by 2018 to accommodate the automaker's forecast of rising sales. May listened to the factory's plea. When he saw the sizable amount of revenue he was missing, he took the plunge.

May spent about $500,000 on various improvements, including five quick-service bays and additional parking. He also bought restaurant-style buzzers to alert customers when service on their car was done, purchased tablets for his service advisers and paid for other upgrades.

He completed the improvements around Sept. 1. That month, his gross profit in service was $101,000 compared with $83,000 a year earlier.

May's customer-pay repair orders increased by 9 percent to 2,152 during September through November compared with the same period the previous year. And his customer satisfaction scores jumped 4 percentage points from September through November compared with the year-ago period, he said.

If that success continues through the next six months, May plans to make similar improvements at his Chevrolet store in West, Texas. Greg May Chevrolet was named the top dealership at Automotive News' 2014 Best Dealerships To Work For event in October. Greg May Honda was second in the ranking of 101 dealerships.

"It's a wise investment," May said. "Customers want everything now, quick, quick, quick and convenient, and 'Get me in and get me out.' Everything we've done has been to move us toward that objective."

Greg May Honda sells about 1,800 new and used cars a year.

May spent about $350,000 to build a five-bay service business strictly for jobs such as oil changes and tire rotations that are expected to take about 30 minutes. The building is behind his existing service department. It has a parts storage area in it and two wash bays for detailing cars. He hired three service technicians to staff it, May said.

All service customers come to the main service drop-off area. Their cars are then taken to either the express service facility or the regular service area for the appropriate work, May said.

That means service advisers need to greet customers and make quick assessments. So May spent about $1,000 each on tablets for his three service advisers. Tablet in hand, an adviser does a vehicle inspection and reviews the job with the customer. May said the customer signs the tablet so the job can get started faster without waiting for a printout to sign.

"When the customer gets out of the car and their foot hits the concrete, that's when the 30 minutes starts for them," May said.

May also expanded his customer waiting area and purchased new furniture. It can now comfortably accommodate up to 15 people vs. eight before. "It's like a whole new experience," May said.

To make customers feel special and give them some freedom, May spent about $1,000 on 15 pagers, or what he calls "restaurant buzzers."

"The customer comes in, we do the write-up and hand them a restaurant buzzer and say, 'This works all over the lot. You can go look at cars, go watch TV or whatever you want, and that will go off when the car is ready to go,'" May said. "They think it's a really neat deal and not something you see everywhere they go."

May also installed air hoses and battery-check machines in the drop-off service area. Those machines help staffers resolve small issues, such as tire inflation, immediately to keep the cars moving through the system.

"The thing people hate to see the most is to drive up and see that long line of people waiting to get in," May said. "We used to see people who'd drive in, see the line and circle around and go back out. We don't see that now."

Finally, May paved an acre of land he owned surrounding his dealership. He added 45 employee parking spots, 10 service customer spots and 100 spots for vehicle inventory.

The parking lot gives service customers better access to the service department. It also allows May to keep more used cars there.

As a result, he said, he was having his best used-car sales year ever. He expected to sell about 670 used cars in 2014, topping 525 in 2013.

American Honda pressed dealers such as May to expand their service departments because it wants its dealers to be more competitive with independent service shops.

Since completing his upgrades, May said he has become a Honda Express Service Certified dealer for quick service jobs.

With the added five quick-lane service bays, May said now "95 percent of the time" he can service a customer immediately and finish the job in 30 to 45 minutes.

"You finally got to the point of hating to hear your customers being turned away," May said. "When I realized I couldn't get to my customers for two to three days, that's when it hit me that I had to get this done."