Servicing your vehicle has been an age-old activity for anyone who owns or drives a vehicle. With today’s world and technology advancing, we’re gathering new tools to enhance our daily lives on a regular basis. This includes technology in our vehicles, so why wouldn’t it carry over into service.
Virtual service has started to take hold in most service departments across the country. It’s a great tool especially when an advisor is working with someone who is “on the go” or too busy to be bothered with a phone call. Dealers have the ability now to send a text with recommendations and the customer may either reply via that text or select the services they would like completed before putting their phone down and moving on with their day in an email. Why not right?!
This is a great tool but a hindrance all at the same time. For those well-versed, smooth-talking advisors, it cuts out their ability to talk their way into a service that may not be “necessary” but is recommended for maintenance and in all reality should be performed. Like cleaning a floor where you cannot see the dirt. The floor should be cleaned, but to some people’s standards, it is good to go and can wait until next time. This is the downfall we run into with virtual service. But on the other hand, if the advisor isn’t a smooth talker, it may serve for them to utilize this tool to do the talking for them.
So, is virtual service the way to go 100% moving forward? No. However, like negotiating the price of a vehicle, some people love it, and some would rather do without. It’s up to the advisor to read their customer and make the right call to make this tool work for them and ultimately the dealership as well.
As the COO | Partner of Phone Ninjas, Chris delivers leadership, coaching, and mentorship to 55 team members providing software sales and phone skills coaching. He fosters powerful partnerships and collaborations with leaders across various business sectors, establishing expectations, communicating vision, and escalating performance to maximize productivity and effectiveness.
Chris is an innovation-driven business executive with over 25 years of experience delivering leadership to teams of up to 75 overseeing development, launch, and sale of website lead acquisition, reconditioning process software systems, and technology that support automotive dealerships across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
