When pandemic is over, don't let go of new service habits

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped the way dealership service departments interact with customers, says NADA Academy instructor Larry Hourcle. But he warns that the departments have to guard against returning to old habits once operations return to normal.

Hourcle said the typical interactions between a service adviser and a client have "all gone away."

"Most of our clients are sitting at home right now," he said. "They're looking at their phones; they want to do more of the process online. There's a lot of great changes that we've been adapting to as dealers, and hopefully we'll be continuing that process.

"This is a great opportunity for everybody, especially for our customer experience."

Hourcle shared his thoughts on lasting impacts to service departments after the pandemic during the Oct. 29 session of the Fixed Ops Journal Forum. (Watch a replay of this session and others at autonews.com/fixed-ops-journal-forum.)

Communication in fixed ops departments is an ongoing problem, Hourcle told attendees. But the digital tools and mobile phone apps that have been rapidly adopted during the pandemic can make communicating with customers easier and quicker. Still, Hourcle said, sending text messages to update a customer on their vehicle's repair requires good habits.

"That is a huge resource for us, and we need to be making sure that we're updating information regularly," he said. "Those responses need to be within minutes, not within hours."

One change that Hourcle hopes remains is the renewed respect service departments received from the public. During the early days of the pandemic, some states either shut down or restricted vehicle sales. Dealership service departments, however, generally were deemed an "essential service" and allowed to stay open. As a result, dealership marketing and social media activities shifted to feature fixed ops departments.

"They were saying that they are essential employees, and that was a huge respect thing that our employees are actually looking for," Hourcle said.

For all the progress made in the imaginative ways fixed ops departments are communicating with customers and new concierge offerings such as vehicle pickup and delivery, Hourcle knows there will be the temptation to backslide into old, bad habits.

"As we get busy, we don't feel like we have the time [to] dedicate to it because we didn't build the processes while we were slower to keep that program or those types of programs going," he said. "This is the opportunity. We need to keep offering these things."

Hourcle said a lot of these initiatives are still new and therefore haven't become part of the routine. Because of this, service departments should keep working hard on them and never waver.

"Keep encouraging people to do the things that made them very successful during the pandemic," Hourcle said. "Slowing down the amount of [repair orders] an adviser is actually working on so they can take better care of the customers that they have in front of them. We're seeing additional dollars from that.

"Little things that we can be doing for the end user, the customer, but it's giving great rewards to the dealership."