At the beginning of this series, I asked you to imagine how you would feel if your dealership’s fixed operations were generating significantly more revenue 6-months from now. While this would make most dealerships very happy, you might be saying to yourself “We’re already operating at full capacity. There’s no way we could handle more business without building more service bays.”
If that’s how you feel, you are not alone. I’ve actually heard those exact words from several service managers that I’ve talked to. As a potential customer, I had actually thought about taking my truck to one of the local dealerships, only to be told that they were booked a couple of months out.
As Owen Moon, the CEO of Fixed Ops Digital, brought out in his video The Revolution, “For most, it’s not actually a capacity problem as much as it’s an appointment problem.” This is the mindset piece. The goal becomes eliminating 1-line ROs and trying for 4-5 services per appointment. This is because providing multiple services to a customer at the same time is more efficient, for both you and your customers, and it’s also more profitable for your service department.
How Do You Eliminate 1-Line ROs?
Your service advisors are probably already working with your customers to inform them of various services that are available for their vehicles to create multi-line ROs. However, you can proactively start educating your customers well before they walk in the door by providing the right information on your website.
The first step is to let them know what services, and service specials, are available. You have probably heard the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind,” and for good reason. How often do you get so busy that you forget to follow up on something in your personal life that needs to be done, like getting new tires? That’s why having the right information listed on your main service page is critical.
The More You Know - Or Is It, The More They Know
Let’s start by looking at what you currently have on the Service pages of your dealer’s website.
Do a search for your dealership and open the Service link
When the webpage opens, what value does it offer to your customers?
What information does it provide them with that they didn’t know before?
Here is a comparison of two actual web pages that were accessed from links on Google’s search results page. You can see that these dealerships have taken very different approaches to their service landing page.
Page A provides a list of services and a button to schedule an appointment, while Page B first requires you to fill out a form for the type of vehicle you have. The thinking for Page B was no doubt to help the customer see exactly what services are available for their specific vehicle. That may work if I only have one vehicle, but what if you have multiple vehicles?
It’s interesting, when I first pulled up Page B, there was something that turned me off almost immediately to the page. One of the reasons is because it doesn’t provide any value to me unless I first fill out the form. I also find it sterile and boring. This may sound irrational, but my subconscious mind is turned off by it.
On the other hand, Page A provides me with valuable information and colorful pictures and buttons. It’s not sterile, and I don’t have to provide any personal information to get immediate value from it. Essential items like tires, batteries, and brakes are prominently displayed.
How does this affect the next time I visit Page A? It could go something like, “My car needs an oil change, and oh yeah, I need new tires. If they do the tires, maybe I should have them do the brakes while they're at it. I’m going to click on the Brakes link to see if that might be something I need. Maybe I can get all of that done at once.” Just like that, I’ve begun creating my own multi-line RO, and I haven’t even talked to a service advisor. Does your website promote those kinds of results?
How Do You Build Better Service Pages?
If you don’t have a web design team that can build out custom pages for your service department, don’t worry. This is one of the ways that Fixed Ops Digital can help your dealership. They follow the same concept used for your SRP and VDP and apply them to your Service pages. Not only does this approach help to increase line items on your ROs, as we will see in the next article, it can also make you more competitive against independent shops.
Be sure to catch our next article as I address the following two questions that inquiring minds want to know. “Where should I take my car for maintenance?” and “Which shop can I trust with my vehicle?”
If you’re interested in learning more about Fixed Ops Digital, click on the link to visit their website. And be sure to tell them that you heard about them from the “wicked-awesome Fast Company article.” (Be sure to include “wicked-awesome” in your description ;-)