Dealership's combination of fixed ops technologies helps lead to big jump in sales

SEATTLE — In the last year, the service department at Magic Toyota boosted its monthly volume of repair orders from about 2,000 to nearly 4,500 — without adding staff.

The number of replacement tires it sells each month has risen from 170 to as many as 700, and the number of alignments it performs has doubled, to as many as 140 a month.

Peter Chung, general manager of the dealership in the Seattle suburb of Edmonds, Wash., attributes these jumps to a redesigned shop and integration of separate data technologies sold by vendors.

“We mapped out our process during the redesign,” Chung tells Fixed Ops Journal. “We found we could save up to 18 minutes per [service] customer by changing how we did things. Our two overriding concerns were customer experience and throughput.”

The new shop, which opened in September, increased service capacity. Just as important, Chung says, a decision to merge the data yielded by two products — TreadSpec, sold by Tire Profiles, and fixed ops software developed by Dealer-FX — has enhanced efficiency and customer satisfaction.

TreadSpec checks tire and alignment diagnostics for vehicles as they enter the service drive, as well as automatically detects the VIN. A version of the Dealer-FX software specific to Toyota uses the VIN to produce a detailed history of a car or truck in for service.

The combination of data, Chung says, enables a service adviser to greet a customer by name, even if he or she has no previous relationship to Magic Toyota.

The adviser can offer a menu of specially tailored service work even before the customer gets out of the vehicle. That reduces check-in time by three to four minutes, Chung estimates.

The arrangement has been so successful that Dealer-FX, of suburban Toronto, and Tire Profiles, of suburban Dallas, now offer the integration to all of the roughly 130 dealership customers they have in common.

Late last year, Magic Toyota adopted Dealer-FX’s suite of integrated service lane tools, which typically cost between $1,500 and $3,000 a month. Using the VIN, the software gathers details from the dealership management system and automaker database.

Information about a vehicle’s service history, open recall campaigns and suggestions for regular maintenance, along with a multipoint inspection, can guide an adviser’s conversation with the customer.

At the same time, TreadSpec tire scanners at the entrance of the service drive analyze a vehicle’s tires and alignment. Four accompanying cameras capture the vehicle’s license plate, which produces additional data. Tire Profiles’ software contributes to the service report presented to the customer.

“As opposed to telling a customer what we think they need, we can show them what the vehicle is telling us it needs, through data, for an informed decision," Chung says.

While the vehicle is being repaired, large signs in the service department display its status.

The software enables the dealership to text or email repair photos and other information to customers, who can approve and pay for repairs digitally. That makes dealing with service customers easier and more transparent, Chung says.

Before the dealership installed its TreadSpec readers in September, he adds, the service department may not have inspected every vehicle for alignment issues because of the extra time required. Because the TreadSpec scanners and cameras are always on, Chung says, all vehicles now are analyzed.

About 750 dealerships use TreadSpec, Tire Profiles says. Its hardware costs about $22,000 per service lane installation, and after two years, the company charges $895 a year for system updates.

Since both the Dealer-FX software and TreadSpec generate data from the VIN, Chung says, "I wondered if that VIN and the tire analysis could be put into Dealer-FX. It's not really different from any other kind of data."

Such a combination, Chung thought, would eliminate a chokepoint in the service drive — having to check in a vehicle with a scanning tool or enter customer information manually. So he called the CEOs of both vendors, Dave Boyle of Tire Profiles and Gary Kalk of Dealer-FX. They agreed that an integration of their products was possible.

"Once we have the plate, we can reference the VIN and get tire and wheel sizes," Boyle says. "Then we can take that data and push it into other systems."

Passing the VIN through both the Tire Profiles and Dealer-FX software typically takes about 15 seconds and eliminates the need for hand-held scanning tools, says James Lawton, Dealer-FX's chief product officer. "Peter's installation proved a perfect test bed for this idea," he says.

Service customers sometimes are surprised to be greeted by name when they check in, Lawton adds. "They say, 'How did you know who I was?' "

Dealer-FX's Kalk says the company is applying what it has learned from the integration process to help it develop a new product, Dealership DNA, that is designed to help service departments monitor their workflows better.

Dealer-FX plans to launch the tool at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention next month in San Francisco.

"Because the entire process is digitized, we know where every bottleneck is," Kalk says of the new software.

The product will enable service departments to benchmark themselves against their peers and even evaluate the performance of individual employees, he adds.

More broadly, Kalk extols the value of product integrations such as the one Magic Toyota has adopted.

"The more integration you have," says Kalk, "the less advisers are chasing things, the more they can concentrate directly on interacting with the customer, and the more the service product can be delivered in a more uniform way."