Your dealership's service department is moving -- to your customer's home

Today's service customers are used to convenience. Everything from detergent to diapers can be delivered to their doorsteps, sometimes within hours. This trend is expanding to every segment of the retail industry — including automotive — and will only continue.

On Amazon.com, it's easy to order vehicle maintenance with a couple of clicks. The mechanic will come to your home to complete the service: tire installation, oil changes, brake pads. This program is in its infancy, but Amazon has shown it knows how to disrupt markets. And now it's making its way into retail auto service.

Service revenue is critical to dealerships to cover operating costs. As service sales are predicted to decline because of ride-sharing and subscription models, fixed ops revenue will likely be affected. It is time to prepare your dealership to combat the disrupters and shore up future revenue opportunities.

In the past, you could count on consumers buying vehicles every three years or so. As new technology expands and cars and trucks last longer, that purchase interval is constantly increasing. Fewer new-car sales mean that dealerships must depend more on service revenue.

How do dealerships do that? By offering customers the same convenience as Amazon and others who are winning this competition.

Even automakers are getting into the game, with remote diagnostics such as Audi Assist. A service technician goes to the customer in a loaner car, diagnoses his or her vehicle, and if it's warranted, leaves the loaner and returns to the dealership with the customer's vehicle for appropriate service.

The shift of the service center to the home is a logical next step that your customer desires. Your dealership can stifle the intrusion of planned industry disrupters such as Amazon by proactively offering service that is convenient to the customer.

Or you can wait until Amazon's online auto service program takes off. And you'll be left behind, like all the retail brick-and-mortar bookstores Amazon has left in its wake.

I understand that most dealerships don't have the resources to send service technicians to a customer's house and perform repairs in the driveway. But there are other things dealers can do to make their service options more covenient.

More dealerships are offering to pick up and deliver service customers' vehicles. Such valet programs greatly increase customer satisfaction and service department profitability.

If your dealership can't afford to provide at-home or valet service, at the very least you need to do everything you can to make your customers' service experience as efficient and easy as possible.

That can include such simple things as improving your service department's system of customer status updates and promise times. Offering communications choices — text messages, phone calls or email, based on each customer's preference — would be a great start.

You can make the customer experience more transparent and friendly by including video in the quick vehicle inspection at service check-in. Such a visual record can document previous damage and eliminate awkward disputes. Videos that explain repair and maintenance recommendations enhance the service experience by making it easier for the customer to understand.

Most major retailers now allow customers to pay through a plethora of methods, depending on consumer choice — debit or credit card, Apple or Google Pay, financing. Even McDonald's and Subway now enable you to place an order by mobile phone, pay for the order online, and pick it up without having to stand in line.

Such options work for Starbucks, Walmart and grocery stores. They can work for your dealership, too.

The future of retail is all about convenience. Online retailers and disrupters can smell the blood in the water. They are circling your customers, waiting to grab them away.

Take steps now to safeguard your dealership's future service revenue by adopting the technology and convenience options that consumers desire. If you don't, you might end up wishing that you had, as you watch your service customers defect to these disruptive new models.