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Pay Plans for Service Advisors

You�ve asked for it!

You�ve yearned for it and it's finally here � the PAY PLAN for Service Advisors so effective that they will do everything you need them to do, sell everything you want them to sell, have the highest customer satisfaction scores in the World all wrapped up in one single pay plan.

Imagine, you�ll never have to actually manage their performance or their customer handling skills and you�ll be extremely profitable!!

Come on, do you really think such a pay plan could possibly exist?

Like so many elements of our Service operations, we have a terrible habit of attempting to solve all of our management issues with a pay plan.

Example - If Hours/RO are X with a minimum RO Count of Y; and if there is an Effective Rate of Z and CSI Score above Region over the 3 month rolling average provided you have a minimum of 30 % survey returns; and if you maintain an overall productivity exceeding 107% over a term not less than one month; and if your warranty cost per vin is below national average over the 12 month rolling average than your percentage of labor gross is Q, and your percentage of parts gross is R, you could have one single profitable pay plan. In addition, for a monthly CP hours total of A, there is an increased incentive of B, and don�t forget you will also receive spiffs for Flushes from the various outside vendors.

Could you incorporate anything else into this elaborate formula? Perhaps we could somehow incorporate attendance and appearance into this formula.

Keep it simple � if the advisors don�t understand it, it cannot be effective at all.

Make sure your pay plan doesn�t force Service Advisors to make decisions on what to sell to a customer. For instance, if a customer requires two things and one has an incentive, while the other does not, human nature will ensure the incentivized service is sold over the other. What you really need is for your advisors to make an effort to sell both.

Lastly, keep CSI separate from the sales objectives; don�t tie one to the other. Not that CSI is un-important, but you don�t want a service advisor to make the decision to not offer customers the services they need because they believe it could potentially be a CSI concern later.

Remember, Hrs/RO, Effective Rate, Gross Profit, Productivity, warranty costs and CSI survey retention, like everything else, must be MANAGED. If a Pay plan could actually do it all for you, why would we need Managers?