Increase the Productivity of Your Service Department

We’re always looking for ways to learn. To improve. To grow. To be the best. To win. You are too.

Let’s look for some ways to increase revenue and lines per RO by increasing the productivity in your service department. “Increased productivity” can be defined in many ways, but for our purposes, we’ll define “increased productivity” by looking at online leads generated, increased lines per RO, and online conversion rates.?

Customer Loyalty?

When you consider that acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one, customer retention becomes ever more important. What are some ways that we can engage our customers and increase their loyalty to our service department??

Build value by offering service specials that are full-priced, well-designed, and engaging for the viewer. Use video marketing to engage customers in every special and on every special’s landing page. Videos should educate customers on what a service is, why it is important, and how it differs from similar services.

By doing this, you are providing value and also appearing to be a knowledgeable, modern company to consumers. Video marketing solutions can work to your benefit in many ways. We’ll get to more of those shortly.

55% would choose one dealership for service over another if it provided online estimates of costs during the scheduling process

Communication

It’s so important to communicate with your customers before the service visit, during the service visit, and after the service. What are some ways we can do that? What are some tools available for us to use?

88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience.

The first place your potential service customers are going to experience your service center and your brand is on your website. It’s imperative that you keep your service website up-to-date. Visitors should not be met with expired specials, or pages that disallow engagement or interaction (i.e. scissors icon on a screen, anyone?).?

Keep your service website simple! Set your landing pages up to naturally guide your customers to convert. Lead them to where you want them to go! When it comes time to convert, make it easy to do so with multiple options, such as email, text, call, form fill, get directions, etc. In a nutshell, your website visitors should move seamlessly from visitors to leads.?

Different segments of the population interact with the internet in different ways. For instance, younger generations are more likely to text, while older generations are more likely to call. If you are trying to target a specific audience, or reach out to a new target audience, consider the conversion preference.

Anticipate and answer any questions that you suspect your online shoppers are looking for answers to. Place pricing on your service specials (pricing doesn’t have to be discounted). Create a sense of urgency. There are a number of ways to do that, but one very effective way to do it is to place an expiration date, relatively soon, on each and every special. Also, make sure your website is compatible on all devices. These are all relatively easy ways to communicate with your customers.?

Video again can be used to communicate the value of any specific service. Arguably, video often communicates the value of every service even better than some of your service advisors. Just look at this video special. It includes taglines, itemized information, voice over, written script, special details, and can be customized completely with dealership-specific branding.

55% would choose one dealership for service over another if it provided online estimates of costs during the scheduling process

Improve Your Customer’s Journey

When was the last time you took your customer’s journey, from beginning to end? Starting with a clean browser you are logged out of, search around your area for a specific service need. Use some common search terms that include make, model, service type, geographic area. How easily - if at all - did you find your service website? Were you able to find what you were looking for organically or through paid ads? How would you compare this experience to your nearby competitors??

Hopefully you’ve now found your service website. Did you land directly on the service you were looking for or do you have to search? How easy is it to find information on price, service summary, or get information on additional services? Were you able to find what you were looking for at all? Were you easily able to schedule online? What ways are available to schedule service? If I’m on a phone, can I text? What options do you give your service customers to convert?

Here's an example of a service website fully designed to improve the customer journey.

Each service special should have its own landing page, making it clear how visitors are to interact and convert on your website.

70% of website visitors want to view price ranges for various services on the dealer site.

Let’s Talk Social Media!

It’s no secret anymore how effective social media marketing is… right? Consider these data: 58% of consumers visit a brand’s social media page long before they visit their website and 60% of consumers who purchased from a brand did so because they found that brand on social media. Are you doing your part to communicate your service department services through social media? If the answer is NO, here are some ideas for you to get started:

1. Encourage your service customers to share their experience online, perhaps with the promise of a gift card (that you can use to also help support local businesses) or free oil change. Take advantage of all the cameras around these days and strike a pose! Post, comment, tag, share!?
2. Post regular and consistent content across your social media networks. We know. We know. That’s time-consuming. I don’t have someone to do that for me. I don’t want to spend the money. There are simple automation tools that instantly and automatically distribute content to your social media networks. And, no we’re not talking about Hootsuite or other social media dashboards. Automation tools make this task significantly easier.

Video Marketing - Let’s Elaborate

Did you know that video marketing is the #1 consumed content on the web today? Did you know that YouTube has replaced Facebook and the #1 platform that affects consumer behavior??

Service marketing videos… We know what you’re thinking. Expensive, time consuming, a production (literally). The good news is that those assumptions are no longer true. During the pandemic, some pretty amazing technology was born to support service departments. This includes unlimited, dealership-branded videos that are instantly produced and automatically distributed to your social media networks. Video marketing can still be used in the traditional ways, such as email marketing, website and landing page marketing, and in paid advertising.?But today, video marketing can be used in new ways that speak directly to your customers, educates them and opens the door to communication long before they arrive for a visit, making it easier for your service advisors to upsell and increase those lines per RO. Watch how the Fixed Ops Director, Michael Drexel, with Ancira VW uses video in his marketing to understand better how this works.?

84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

94% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.

Are Your Efforts Paying Off?

Once you explore these ways to increase your productivity, how do you know if they’re paying off? This is where your reporting comes in. Now, we’re not talking about Google Analytics - where you need to analyze views, filters, levels and levels of data that can easily make you feel lost and stunned with information. No. All that should really matter to you, as the manager of your service department, is 1) conversions, 2) leads, and 3) lines per RO.?

Let's see how Michael Drexel is using video marketing and the results he's seeing...

This also used to be a time-consuming and frustrating process. However, if one positive thing came out of a pandemic it’s this: simple reporting, delivered directly to your inbox as often as you’d like. All you need to know is if your efforts are working or not. You don’t need to know how many pageviews you got in September 2021 as opposed to in January 2022. What is important to you is what your conversion numbers are (leads, conversions, lines per RO) and if they are improving month after month. Simple.

63% of companies lack a structured approach to optimization.

Now What?

What can you do right now to get started? Just take these step-by-step instructions:

1. Review your customer journey - Simple, you can see what that looks like above.?
2. Give an honest review - Review your service website, social media accounts, and YouTube accounts (if you all, some, or none of these). If you’re honest with yourself, what grade would you give yourself?
3. Review the competition - Review your top three competitors' websites and their online presence. How do you think you compare? Or, perhaps you’re already better, but want to be miles ahead of your competition. Here is a document to help you do that.
4. Grab a baseline of your data - Take a look at your current data: website traffic, conversions, video views, search results, etc. Do you think you can do better or do you even have any of this data at all?
5. Take note - What do you know you can do better? Are there larger dealers you’d like to emulate? Are you competitive and want to be the best? Take some notes on where you’d like to be.
6. Implement changes! - Whether you’re going at it yourself or you need help. The first step is to start. Call us and take a look at what the biggest and baddest service departments are doing… time to make changes.?
7. Review and compare - Review and compare your data month after month. Track your leads, your lines per RO, your conversions… Know where they’ve come from. Make sure that what you’re doing is working!

Get help! Call us and take a look at what technology was developed over the course of the last two years. See what is practical for you to do by yourself or with help. It’s important to be on top of your online game now as business and life has changed and it’s up to you to keep up!

None of this has to be expensive, difficult, time-consuming... Seriously, take a peek at what technology was built during our months and month indoors, isolating. You'll be surprised how we've changed, evolved, and grown the fixed ops service industry.

Explore the technology that evolved over the last two years. Time to outrun the competition.

FixedOPS Marketing is now a certified Volkswagen provider. Visit our website to learn more.

FixedOPS Marketing also hosts the What the Fixed Ops?! Podcast, where we talk life, the customer journey, and the human journey with automotive industry experts! Check out our current episodes! If you'd like to be notified of #shorts, please like and follow our company page here on LinkedIn.