How a trip to the dentist inspired a service drive communications platform

It took a trip to the dentist and some blunt talk from a customer for Tandon Noplos to realize he had credibility and transparency problems on his service drive.

Noplos, general manager of an 11-store Southern California auto group in 2016, was at the dentist's office for a cleaning. But he couldn't stop thinking about an encounter at his Honda dealership service lounge a couple weeks earlier when he asked a customer why he had turned down some recommended maintenance from the service adviser.

"He looked me dead in the face and said, 'What the hell is a torn CV boot? And you car guys aren't the most reputable people out there,' " Noplos recalled. " 'So if I don't trust you and I have no idea what you're talking about, you damn sure aren't getting my 1,200 bucks.' "

As he sat in the dentist's chair, Noplos thought about how different the process of getting a tooth fixed is from getting a vehicle fixed. When a cavity needs filling, it's the dentist — not the hygienist — who shows the patient the X-rays and talks about why the cavity should be fixed and how it will be done.

Why then, Noplos wondered, does a service adviser explain the repairs to a customer and not the technician?

"We're the only business in the world where the doctor doesn't get to speak with the patient," he said.

Noplos also noticed, back in that Honda service lounge, that all his customers were on their mobile phones buying items from Amazon and other stores — "yet they can't approve a tire rotation and pay for it on their cellphone with me?"

These experiences motivated Noplos, who had spent his entire 14-year auto industry career in retail and finance and insurance, to develop a service department communications platform. He worked with a team of programmers for about a year before launching iService in mid-2017. The platform features two-way texting, video inspection and the ability for customers to approve, decline, finance and pay for recommended repairs, provide reviews and get vehicles appraised.

Techs take video of vehicle inspections on a mobile phone, point out areas of concern and send repair recommendations directly to the customer. A customer's entire service visit "can happen, from cradle to grave, on a mobile phone," Noplos, 41, said.

The tool is now in about 400 dealerships nationwide, ranging in cost from $1,000 to $2,000 a month depending on what functionalities a dealership uses. The company guarantees a service department will see at least a 20 percent increase in gross profit, or the dealership's cost will be refunded.

Noplos said he knew he had a potential winner on his hands when the first dealership service department agreed to buy it after one minute.

"He started off the conversation with, 'I'm already sold. I just want you to show my service manager how it works,' " Noplos said.

Further proof of the product's impact came a couple weeks later when that same service manager told Noplos how an older woman asked for a tech by name and then tipped him $5 as thanks for the video. She thought he had done it just for her.

Noplos has heard other stories about customers asking for certain techs by name to work on their vehicles based on past video inspections they did.

Jason Yates, fixed ops director for Hudson Auto Group, said the group piloted iService in its first dealership in mid-2020. Since then, 17 more of the group's service departments have adopted the platform and eight others are trying it out.

Yates said soon it will be "nonnegotiable;" all 33 stores in the group will use iService.

"It's a game changer," he said. "It's super transparent. It brings the tech to the customer. And it's super customer friendly."

Yates said he had some pushback from techs who didn't like the new way of doing things. But a few days of training calmed their nerves, along with a reminder that the camera is facing the vehicle — not the techs.

"The guys who you wouldn't think would do a good job are doing a great job," Yates said.

He said in the days before video inspections, when he would try to let customers speak directly to the tech, they agreed to 70 to 80 percent of the recommended work. "This is what [iService] does," he said.

The iService company, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., just released Version 3.0 in May. Noplos says the new iteration is faster, more user-friendly and has improved features for the parts department, as well as a chat function and the ability to sell your vehicle.

The pandemic fanned interest in the platform's "touchless" features. The company is piloting iService for some automakers that might want to make it a preferred option for their service departments. The company also has had interest from industries outside of automotive, such as marinas and forklift and tractor repair facilities.

Noplos believes iService is poised for explosive growth.

"We communicate the way the customer wants, in an interactive way," he said. "And that's really the secret sauce. We generate so much revenue for the dealer, and they like that."