Service departments may be busy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are operating more efficiently. According to Don Andres, Owner of Auto SCT Consulting & Training, an aging vehicle population is pushing more complex diagnostic and repair work into dealership service lanes, creating new productivity and customer retention challenges.
Andres joins us on today’s CBT Live segment to discuss his recent CBT News article, Where did all the gravy work go? and explains why dealers need to rethink how they manage complex service operations.
At the start of today’s conversation, Andres said the shift begins with the age of the vehicles coming through dealership service lanes. He notes that vehicles on the road now are significantly older than they were several years ago, suggesting that loyal customers are keeping their cars longer and returning to dealerships with more failures and larger repair needs. That has changed the mix of work in many shops, with diagnostic and complex repair tasks taking up more of technicians’ time.
On the warranty side, however, he said those jobs can be difficult to complete within the allotted labor time. Customer-pay diagnostics can create a similar problem when a technician spends several hours diagnosing a concern that was initially authorized for much less time. When those jobs pile up, technician productivity can fall quickly, creating a backlog that becomes difficult to recover from.
Andres also said that operational pressure can affect some of the most important tools dealerships use to grow fixed ops. He believes that multi-point inspections (MPIs) can be compromised when technicians are buried in diagnostic and repair work, because even if they technically complete an MPI, the inspection’s quality can still suffer when the shop is overloaded. That means dealerships can miss opportunities to identify brake issues, tire issues and other needed services. Therefore, Andres emphasized the importance of video MPIs and communicating everything found to the customer.
For Andres, the answer begins before the vehicle ever reaches the technician. He advocated for better planning of the following day’s workload, including identifying major jobs in advance and protecting technicians’ time so they can complete diagnostic work without constant interruptions. Dealers should also proactively communicate with customers when the shop is backed up, rather than leaving them waiting for updates. That preparation can give technicians enough time to diagnose and repair vehicles properly while still completing quality MPIs.
Andres also pointed to mobile service as another opportunity for dealers to expand fixed ops and strengthen customer relationships. Beyond convenience, he said mobile service can create visibility in the community and even generate vehicle sales when customers see dealership service vehicles at their homes. Ultimately, Andres’ message is that dealers should treat fixed ops as a connected operation, combining technician productivity, customer communication, MPI execution, declined-service follow-up and new service channels to drive growth.
