There are key indicators at every point of contact with your Customers. Are you listening to them? I often begin a diagnosis of department performance by asking what is the most frequent customer complaint. In a quality-oriented shop that under-performs in sales, the most common response from management regarding their customers' chart topping complaint is:

"I was just in for a service a few months ago, and now my ____________ is broken/worn out? why didn't you tell me this was an issue when I was here?"

The primary reason this complaint exists is that you are leaving work unsold. Isn't that amazing? Allowing unsold work to escape your dealership can be the number one cause of customer complaints.

Here are more common complaints:

"I was just in for an oil change last month, why didn't your techs tell me my hoses were weak and about to break... don't they look my car over when it's here?"

"I don't have time for repeat visits to fix things that should be found during regular service."

Or my personal favorite:

"If your technicians aren't seeing things like this, how do I know they're doing the maintenance services thoroughly?"

These complaints are dripping with lack of confidence on the part of the customer and this is a dangerous place to be. Your Fixed Operations team shouldn't be looking past the cause to fix the symptom. You really have to take these complaints to heart and diagnose them.

The most common root causes are one of two things:

Your Technical staff is too short handed to make proper inspections.

Your Service department has no process for Vehicle inspections while vehicles are in the shop.

If your technical staff lacks the vision to understand that you should perform free vehicle inspections on each and every car that comes into the service bays, you MUST address this immediately. For ideas on how to implement an inspection process, view our Service Process.