Blog
Don’t Let Customers Expire with Their Warranty
Just because the factory-paid maintenance or warranty has expired doesn’t mean your customer relationship should too. Understanding how to leverage this moment into ongoing revenue opportunities ensures your bottom-line never hits a roadblock.
EVs Go Mainstream – Is Your Service Department Ready?
Electric vehicles (EVs) are quickly becoming the new norm, and service departments need to adapt to this reality. In the first quarter of 2021, battery-only EV sales soared 45% year over year, compared with 11% growth in the overall auto market, according to Cox...
5 Ways Dealerships Can Better Compete for Service Customers
The service department is a crucial profit center for new-car dealerships. But earning and retaining the customers that make that profit possible isn’t easy. Aftermarket service providers are constantly working to win your customers over, and they’re often pretty good...
Now’s the Time for New-Car Dealers to Focus on Used Vehicles
While new-vehicle sales have rebounded nicely following the pandemic-related depths of 2020, current production delays and overall inventory issues threaten growth within the new-car market. “There are nearly 1.1 million fewer vehicles in inventory at dealerships this...
Why Dealerships’ Service Experience Starts With the Sale
You won’t get a second chance to make a good first impression The relationship between a customer and a dealership’s service department doesn’t begin when the vehicle needs its first oil change. It actually starts as soon as the new vehicle owner agrees to sign on the...
Why Dealership GMs Should Pay More Attention to Service
From hiring and training department heads to monitoring the daily operating control (DOC) to annual forecasting, resolving elevated customer complaints, and so much more —dealership general managers (GMs) have a bevy of responsibilities. And while the most successful...
5 Fresh Marketing Ideas to Rev Up Your Fixed Ops
Are you struggling to fill your service bays with new customers or retain existing customers? Or maybe you’re looking for big growth this year? Then it’s probably time to take a look at your fixed ops marketing strategy. The past 12 months haven’t been easy on many...
Tips and Strategies to Get More Positive Customer Reviews
Like it or not, customer reviews are a big deal for dealership service departments. We know, it doesn’t always feel fair that a seemingly innocuous set of “star ratings” can have such an impact. But it does. Many potential new customers are going online to vet you...
A Dealership General Manager’s Guide to Improvement
Abe Lincoln once famously said, “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” The lesson there, of course, is that preparation and remaining ever-sharp is important to success — especially long-term success. As the captain...
How to Get Customers Back for Their First Service Appointment
The benefits of dealer-provided maintenance are undeniable. We know this, so why then can it often feel like a herculean task to get customers to return to our dealership after their vehicle purchase? After buying a car, 72% of customers are opting for third-party...
10 Ways to Build Customer Loyalty from Fixed Ops
It’s long been said that acquiring a new customer costs 5 times as much as retaining a current customer. So then why do so many companies spend the majority of their time, energy, and budgets looking for new business, when they could be more focused on preserving the...
Has Your Dealer Service Department Embraced the Digital Age?
Despite dealership service departments’ best efforts to provide a great customer experience, many still find bringing their vehicle in for maintenance and repair to be a bit of a hassle. While we’ve come a long way as an industry — adapting and adjusting our fixed ops...