Most dealerships still fumble sales-to-service handoff

An easy way a dealership can start to build loyalty and retention among service customers is for salespeople to introduce car and truck buyers to the service department when the vehicle is delivered. But a new survey of consumers suggests that such handoffs occur less than half the time.

In December, DealerRater polled for Fixed Ops Journal more than 16,000 consumers who had visited a new-vehicle dealership recently.

Of those, 42 percent said the dealership introduced them to the service department the last time they bought a car or truck. One-fourth of the consumers surveyed said there had been no such introduction, and one-third said they couldn't remember whether they had met service employees at the time of purchase — an indication that such encounters, if they occurred, made little impression.Luxury-brand dealerships were somewhat more effective at conducting sales-to-service handoffs, making introductions 46 percent of the time, compared with 41 percent for dealerships selling mass-market brands, according to the survey.

M5 Management Services, a dealership fixed operations consulting firm, says the handoff "should be an important focus point in your sales process." Customers, the firm says, "want to be familiar with the people and facility where they get their service."

For other examples of how the service department can work more closely with other parts of a dealership to build customer loyalty, promote fixed ops sales and improve efficiency, see the story on Page 16 of this issue of Fixed Ops Journal .