3 Ways to Set Your Technicians Up for Success During the Busy Season

It’s the midst of the busy season, and it seems like there’s no lack of work coming through the service department. Your technicians are your service department’s most valuable resource. But how do you set them up for success during this time to generate the kind of revenue you need from your service department?

In this blog, Sara Hey shares 3 things you can start doing in your service department – right now – to help your technicians be successful during the busy season.

 

 

1. Make sure technicians know what’s coming

At the end of every day, the service manager or owner should meet with technicians and let them know about the kind of jobs they’re going to be working on the next day. Typically, it’s a good idea to put the most challenging job at the beginning of the day and the easiest job at the end of the day.

Don’t hesitate to tell your technicians about the most challenging jobs. Technicians are fantastic problem solvers, and they love a good puzzle. Trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle is what makes them such good technicians, so let them start solving the puzzle before they leave at the end of the day.

This should only take a few minutes, but it will require some preparation on the part of the owner or service manager.

2. Triage to have the right parts

Triage is another incredibly important way of setting your technicians up for success. Triage involves looking at all the units the day they come in and sorting them by the technician that’s going to be working on the unit. This ensures that we can clearly communicate with the parts department on the parts that are going to be needed for the repair.

That way, when a technician is ready to work on a unit, all the parts are already there. Imagine what would happen if technicians had all the parts they needed when they needed them? It’d certainly help move things along a lot faster and triaging can help us get there.

The triaging process takes a few minutes, but it’s built into the flat rate for the job so it’s not costing any additional money. Rather, it’ll be helping to make money. You also want to be doing it every day, at least once a day in the off-season, and twice a day during the busy season.

3. Pick a day, if not two days, for high-capacity maintenance jobs

In the midst of the busy season, it’s common for dealers to tell customers the exact number of weeks they’re booked ahead. But you don’t want to be telling your customers that you’re booked ahead for the next six, or even worse, eight weeks. Saying that you’re booked ahead – without quantifying how far ahead – has a whole nicer ring to it.

You also want to set up at least two days a week during peak season which are going to be high-capacity days. These are days set aside specifically just to go through all the existing work orders, pull out any basic maintenance jobs, and do as many as possible over the course of a day. If there’s a huge amount of service on the lot, then it might even help to pick a second day to get through them.

For more expert tips and advice from Sara Hey on how to streamline your dealership’s processes and increase profits, check out her vlog series:

Improve Efficiency at Your Dealership This Busy Season