Start everyday with a plan of preparedness! Each of your employees also needs to come to work with a plan of how the day will flow, what will they do, do they have vehicles left over from yesterday or the day before, to succeed and survive in the automotive repair industry everyone at your facility needs to have a daily plan. What are your expectations of your employee’s daily plan and do they clearly understand them?
Ensure your employees know you will be coming around to see each of them in the morning asking for their reports and route sheets. Make sure the shop foreman and dispatcher know you will be asking for shop loading numbers, vehicle comeback sheet, left over vehicles from the prior day, shop capacity, technician absenteeism and any other pertinent issues that will define the day.
Have a strategy meeting each morning with your BDC department. You only need a five minute session with your BDC and appointment booker to verify that you are booked for the day, if not figure out quickly how to get the extra appointments in TODAY. Check on the declined service follow up calls, how many declined service customers need to be called from the prior day?
Verify that your parts manager has given your BDC the SOP parts list for any parts that arrived that morning, than have your BDC verify the SOP parts appointments and in the instance that parts were ordered without an appointment MAKE SURE the BDC is booking ASAP. Having SOP parts sit on the shelf ties up money, shelf space and we all know that in the end parts obsolescence returns are not something the owner or the parts manager want to contend with no matter what the reason.
Normally, the service manager should be in the service drive first thing in the morning, observing and critiquing the advisors on proper vehicle walk around inspections as well as meeting and greeting customers. Once the rush is over then the service manager can attend to reports such as the advisor daily report or technician numbers from the day prior.
I was once asked by a senior manager why I wasn’t in my office at 8:00 AM doing my reports from the previous day, my reply was quite simply, “I cannot change what happened yesterday however my being in the service drive coaching, training and impacting what happens on the drive has a positive effect on today’s numbers”! My advice is to impact today because you can change today’s outcome, you cannot change what happened yesterday. It’s that simple!
Meet with your warranty administrator once a day to find out the status of all claims. Make sure your submission dates are within a two day window and verify the warranty schedule is up to date each and every day. Look at your warranty indexes and make sure you fall within the manufacturers guidelines on regular warranty, extended warranty and maintenance if your manufacturer provides free maintenance.
Check with your warranty administrator each day for the Fixed First Visit Ratio of your total shop as well as each individual technician. This is a report that he or she should be able to run daily. FFV or Fixed First Visit Ratio gives you a very strong indication of training or experience levels on your shop floor. This is something to monitor with the shop foreman as well!
Ensure your loaner car or fleet manager has a report for you each day on loaners in service, how many days the vehicles have been out and print out a loaner fleet utilization report. Monitor the report and get onto the advisors who have completed, ready vehicles that are not picked up, picked up by the customer and have the loaners cleaned and fuelled ASAP. Loaner vehicles are your ability to book more appointments each day. The quicker the turn-around time with your loaner vehicles means more profits for the store!
In short each dealership is inherently different and therefore the daily plan will be different for each facility, my intent is to show that in fact you do need a daily action plan or you may stagnate instead of succeeding. When you begin each day with a clear concise set of goals and a proper plan, you and your employees will ultimately become more productive.
“Prior Planning Prevents Poor performance”
David
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
A Journey of Learning and Growth
Managers or leaders do not force people to follow them. Instead quality leaders invite employees on a journey of learning and growth. Quality managers and leaders set the standards that make others wish they were on their team!
Effective leadership as a service manager for the benefit of your service employees means: Taking the employees you’ve been entrusted to lead and make them more valuable tomorrow than they are today through training, coaching and counseling. If your dealership is under-performing at this very moment, you would be wise to stop just sitting in your office trying to figure out a way to turn your numbers around. You need to review your numbers but you also need to get onto the floor and turn your people around.
Only through proper training, coaching and counseling will you and your employees be able to turn the numbers around! If you are unwilling or unable to execute this critical leadership responsibility, I urge you to find another form of employment, that’s how critical your job as a service manager is to your dealership! As a service manager, you are paid to lead employees and map out the direction of the service department.
As a service manager you need to impact your employees in such a way that you teach them, and help them to accelerate their growth. If you are the type of service manager that blindly asks people, “how are you”, “how is your week going”, or what have you, and you’re not actually taking an interest in training or teaching them, you may retain long term employees but you’re not growing your department or stretching your employees to perform at a higher level.
If you are spending too much time dealing with trivialities and you’re not spending the time with your employees, you have very little chance of impacting, stimulating or training them to be better than they currently are. This is a recipe for poor performance and average customer service.
The bottom line here is this; if your employees are not growing, your department isn’t growing. Whether or not your employees grow is the measurable aspect of your leadership. Being a great service manager means you need to get up close and personal with your employees to impact them. This means you set crystal clear expectations for them as a team, or individually.
You need to coach and train them, giving honest feedback, holding all employees accountable for results. Increase employee’s abilities by empowerment, and spend time personally showing them what great performance and exceptional customer service skills look like.
Train your staff to stop looking at customers as an interruption to their day, maybe more customers will want to come back and your dealership reputation will improve, along with your bottom line.
David
Effective leadership as a service manager for the benefit of your service employees means: Taking the employees you’ve been entrusted to lead and make them more valuable tomorrow than they are today through training, coaching and counseling. If your dealership is under-performing at this very moment, you would be wise to stop just sitting in your office trying to figure out a way to turn your numbers around. You need to review your numbers but you also need to get onto the floor and turn your people around.
Only through proper training, coaching and counseling will you and your employees be able to turn the numbers around! If you are unwilling or unable to execute this critical leadership responsibility, I urge you to find another form of employment, that’s how critical your job as a service manager is to your dealership! As a service manager, you are paid to lead employees and map out the direction of the service department.
As a service manager you need to impact your employees in such a way that you teach them, and help them to accelerate their growth. If you are the type of service manager that blindly asks people, “how are you”, “how is your week going”, or what have you, and you’re not actually taking an interest in training or teaching them, you may retain long term employees but you’re not growing your department or stretching your employees to perform at a higher level.
If you are spending too much time dealing with trivialities and you’re not spending the time with your employees, you have very little chance of impacting, stimulating or training them to be better than they currently are. This is a recipe for poor performance and average customer service.
The bottom line here is this; if your employees are not growing, your department isn’t growing. Whether or not your employees grow is the measurable aspect of your leadership. Being a great service manager means you need to get up close and personal with your employees to impact them. This means you set crystal clear expectations for them as a team, or individually.
You need to coach and train them, giving honest feedback, holding all employees accountable for results. Increase employee’s abilities by empowerment, and spend time personally showing them what great performance and exceptional customer service skills look like.
Train your staff to stop looking at customers as an interruption to their day, maybe more customers will want to come back and your dealership reputation will improve, along with your bottom line.
David
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
CPO Tip to Make You Money
Most dealerships today are concerned with selling more cars, more new and infinitely more used. Most dealerships center their CPO or used car team around buying good pieces for a good price, then turn the car as quickly as possible. This is a great rule of thumb to live by, however I would like to show you a way to buy better cars, save you more money and grow you profits.
This is a very simple process that involves all three departments in your dealership and the best news is that all three departments get to make money. You will need to have either a good BDC (Business Development Center) or a well trained sales team to accomplish the plan I will outline. Using your Internet sales marketing team may work well in certain instances for some dealers. I have had great success with using an in house BDC to facilitate all of the dealerships marketing, call backs, appointment lost sales, declined service calls and campaigns.
First you need to track all of your lease end inspections and start sending mailers at around 120 days before lease end. The outline of your mailer is simply;
“We noticed that your lease is ending soon and invite you to come in for our complimentary lease end inspection. Our expert service team will inspect the vehicle before it is returned to ensure you aren’t saddled with costs at time of lease turn in. While you are visiting our award winning facility we would enjoy showcasing for you our latest models. Please feel free to enjoy taking a test drive in any of our new or pre-owned models”.
This can be done two ways, one is to send out an electronic mailer inviting your customer to book the appointment and the other is to call the customer and explain the inspection. Personally, I like the call first and if the customer doesn’t schedule the appointment then you should follow up with the mailer with a direct link to schedule the appointment on line.
Once you know the customer is booked in for the inspection you now have the possibility of performing two things during the customer visit. The first one is obviously the inspection, the second is to have one of your sales team members speak with the customer about leasing or purchasing another vehicle or buying out the vehicle with a lease to retail deal. (Preferably the original selling client advisor should speak with the customer, they already have already built a relationship from the prior sale)
Remember the customers vehicle is now in the service department going through the inspection, this allows you to position any repairs the vehicle may need through warranty as well as having any of the cosmetic damage repaired by the customer before turning the vehicle in.
If you position the pricing of items such a body work, dent repair and rim rash repairs cheaper to the customer then your manufacturer repair pricing, you should be able to have the vehicle in tip top condition should your facility wish to purchase it. Thus your profit margins have increased due to the fact that YOU don't have to spend much money on reconditioning fees
The customer is going to get charged for damages one way or the other, you might as well give them a cheaper cost on outside influence or cosmetic damages and retain the vehicle for your inventory. This makes sense for all three departments! The service department makes money from the repairs, the parts department sells more parts and your sales department buys a better vehicle requiring less investment and therefore you will be able to sell the vehicle at a higher gross. Who wouldn’t want this kind of scenario to help their business grow?
This venture takes planning, commitment and execution skills from your BDC or sales team as well as constant communication between the service and sales departments to notify key members when vehicles are scheduled in for lease end inspections. This small step also allows you the opportunity to use what some manufacturers call the pull ahead lease program.
The pull ahead lease program in essence is when the customer wants into a new vehicle ahead of time within the confines of his or her lease, in most cases it is 90 days or three months, by optimizing the pull ahead program you will now have the opportunity to sell more vehicles and retain quality pieces for your CPO sales lot.
The other nice feature of this program is that if you know the vehicle is being turned in at your dealership in 60 days or so and you have designs to purchase it, you can then have your sales people informing clients looking for this particular model and possibly pre-sell the vehicle before you have even spent a dime. Once the lease end inspection is completed and the vehicle has been courtesy washed, have your CPO sales manager take a few pictures of the vehicle.
Keep a portfolio of future acquired vehicles to show customers that are interested in used vehicles, it costs you nothing and you are sure to make some sales especially when you communicate to a prospective client that the maintenance is up to date and the vehicle was serviced regularly at your facility. Always think five steps ahead and figure out where you can cut expenses and make profits that best suit your facility. The best way to cut your sales expenses is to purchase vehicles that require minimal reconditioning, this is also the best way to make greater profits.
``Helping to Keep You in the Black, One Dealer at a Time``
David
This is a very simple process that involves all three departments in your dealership and the best news is that all three departments get to make money. You will need to have either a good BDC (Business Development Center) or a well trained sales team to accomplish the plan I will outline. Using your Internet sales marketing team may work well in certain instances for some dealers. I have had great success with using an in house BDC to facilitate all of the dealerships marketing, call backs, appointment lost sales, declined service calls and campaigns.
First you need to track all of your lease end inspections and start sending mailers at around 120 days before lease end. The outline of your mailer is simply;
“We noticed that your lease is ending soon and invite you to come in for our complimentary lease end inspection. Our expert service team will inspect the vehicle before it is returned to ensure you aren’t saddled with costs at time of lease turn in. While you are visiting our award winning facility we would enjoy showcasing for you our latest models. Please feel free to enjoy taking a test drive in any of our new or pre-owned models”.
This can be done two ways, one is to send out an electronic mailer inviting your customer to book the appointment and the other is to call the customer and explain the inspection. Personally, I like the call first and if the customer doesn’t schedule the appointment then you should follow up with the mailer with a direct link to schedule the appointment on line.
Once you know the customer is booked in for the inspection you now have the possibility of performing two things during the customer visit. The first one is obviously the inspection, the second is to have one of your sales team members speak with the customer about leasing or purchasing another vehicle or buying out the vehicle with a lease to retail deal. (Preferably the original selling client advisor should speak with the customer, they already have already built a relationship from the prior sale)
Remember the customers vehicle is now in the service department going through the inspection, this allows you to position any repairs the vehicle may need through warranty as well as having any of the cosmetic damage repaired by the customer before turning the vehicle in.
If you position the pricing of items such a body work, dent repair and rim rash repairs cheaper to the customer then your manufacturer repair pricing, you should be able to have the vehicle in tip top condition should your facility wish to purchase it. Thus your profit margins have increased due to the fact that YOU don't have to spend much money on reconditioning fees
The customer is going to get charged for damages one way or the other, you might as well give them a cheaper cost on outside influence or cosmetic damages and retain the vehicle for your inventory. This makes sense for all three departments! The service department makes money from the repairs, the parts department sells more parts and your sales department buys a better vehicle requiring less investment and therefore you will be able to sell the vehicle at a higher gross. Who wouldn’t want this kind of scenario to help their business grow?
This venture takes planning, commitment and execution skills from your BDC or sales team as well as constant communication between the service and sales departments to notify key members when vehicles are scheduled in for lease end inspections. This small step also allows you the opportunity to use what some manufacturers call the pull ahead lease program.
The pull ahead lease program in essence is when the customer wants into a new vehicle ahead of time within the confines of his or her lease, in most cases it is 90 days or three months, by optimizing the pull ahead program you will now have the opportunity to sell more vehicles and retain quality pieces for your CPO sales lot.
The other nice feature of this program is that if you know the vehicle is being turned in at your dealership in 60 days or so and you have designs to purchase it, you can then have your sales people informing clients looking for this particular model and possibly pre-sell the vehicle before you have even spent a dime. Once the lease end inspection is completed and the vehicle has been courtesy washed, have your CPO sales manager take a few pictures of the vehicle.
Keep a portfolio of future acquired vehicles to show customers that are interested in used vehicles, it costs you nothing and you are sure to make some sales especially when you communicate to a prospective client that the maintenance is up to date and the vehicle was serviced regularly at your facility. Always think five steps ahead and figure out where you can cut expenses and make profits that best suit your facility. The best way to cut your sales expenses is to purchase vehicles that require minimal reconditioning, this is also the best way to make greater profits.
``Helping to Keep You in the Black, One Dealer at a Time``
David
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Declined Service Follow Up
The longer it takes to follow up on declined repairs, the greater the potential to lose the sale altogether. It's best to follow up on declined repairs at least by the following business day.
The Quicker you can follow-up reduces the chances of the customer shopping the competition, or purchasing a new or used vehicle somewhere else. There is too much profit potential at stake to accept a repair decline without any follow-up action by your dealership!
Can you afford to let money drive out of your service department? Implementing a system of selling and tracking your declined services can bring back as little as 10% and as much as 40% of the total lost in declined services. You do the math in your facility and you will see that you cannot delay implementing this critical process to get your service departments profits back where they belong.
David
The Quicker you can follow-up reduces the chances of the customer shopping the competition, or purchasing a new or used vehicle somewhere else. There is too much profit potential at stake to accept a repair decline without any follow-up action by your dealership!
Can you afford to let money drive out of your service department? Implementing a system of selling and tracking your declined services can bring back as little as 10% and as much as 40% of the total lost in declined services. You do the math in your facility and you will see that you cannot delay implementing this critical process to get your service departments profits back where they belong.
David
Monday, September 13, 2010
I guess it depends on what side of the lake you’re standing on!
Recently my wife and I were invited for a nice Sunday of boating with my father and mother up near Greenwood Lake NY. That Sunday started out as a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and it was expected to be exceptionally hot, everyone was really looking forward to a day of relaxation, good conversation, tranquil sights and some great deli picnic food.
We arrived at my father’s house early that morning to prepare food, pack, hook up the trailer, test the lights and get a nice start at the lake before it became overcrowded. When we arrived my dad explained to me that he had just had the boat serviced and the repair shop had given him two thumbs up on the condition of the boat.
What was interesting is that he said when they were done with the repairs they even water tested the boat by taking it for a test drive out on the lake. Normally my dad takes his boat to the boat shop located very close to his house which is nowhere near a lake. I was a little confused by his remark however I didn’t ask questions. I was anxious to get underway and have a fantastic day.
When we arrived at the boat launch we had to wait about thirty minutes to be able to get the boat into the water, it seemed a lot of other folks had the same idea as we had, “get up early and beat the traffic”.
While waiting in the lineup I started to remove the boat cover, what I found underneath wasn’t impressive! For just being serviced the boat was filthy, the servicing obviously didn’t include a complimentary cleaning or vacuuming, my mother complained at this point that she really didn’t want to go as the seats were left dirty and she would spoil her outfit.
Dad and I talked her into going and we all proceeded to get the coolers from the SUV’s and load them into the boat. Dad and I checked the bow rope and the mooring lines on the side of the boat, we undid the rear trailer tie down straps and proceeded down the ramp with the boat. I waded into the lake and undid the boat from the trailer.
I pushed the boat out and walked over to the dock while holding the bow rope. Once on the dock I pulled the boat over, turned it around by force and waited for the others to finish parking the truck and get into the boat. While I was waiting I noticed that several more trucks were now lining up to get boats into the lake and I knew we were holding everyone up, I could see the frustration in people’s faces. They wanted nothing more than to get their boats into the water.
Finally everyone was in the boat! Because so many people were waiting, I didn’t drop the engine into the water at this point. I walked the boat towards the end of the dock and gave it one good push off while clambering into the stern section of the boat. Once we were about fifty feet out into the lake I sat down and released the engine pivot on the transom and I lowered the prop into the water at the right angle. By now the natural current in the lake was taking us farther out away from the dock, (the lake is part of the NYC watershed and has an inlet and outlet).
My dad realizing we were ready to get underway put the key into the ignition and turned the key to the start position. Nothing happened! Dad turned to me and said is the engine all the way down. I checked and gave him the thumbs up sign. He tried the key again and nothing happened! My father started looking around the dash console, he tried turning on the stereo, nothing seemed to work. I immediately checked the battery connections and everything was hooked up. It was at this point my dad said, “They replaced the batteries, fuel tank and lines, they said they water tested the boat, what the hell is going on”. I tried to start the engine manually with the pull cord several times and the engine didn’t seem as if it was getting fuel or spark.
I pulled the rope a few more times when I heard my wife say, “We have a serious problem up here”. As usual my dad ignored a statement like that and said to me, “keep pulling”. I pulled a few more times on the rope and then I heard my mother say very frantically, “Uh boys, we are sinking”! Now my dad looks down at the floor and see’s about four inches of water in the entire front of the boat, he looks back at me and said again, “keep pulling”. At this point I decided to look into the front compartment, that’s when I saw the water was halfway between my wife’s ankles and her knees.
My mother cannot swim, she actually hates the water however my father talked her into going and knowing we were going to be there she decided to tag along and brave the day. My parent’s house has a beautiful in ground pool and my mother has never been in the pool through all the years since they had it installed, she hates the water that much. To get her to the lake and into the boat was a tremendous feat on my father’s part.
My wife asked which of us was diving in to swim the boat to shore and my father pointed at me and said nothing. Knowing I had to jump in and drag the boat back to shore I proceeded to empty my pockets remove my watch and shirt. At this point my wife is pleading with me to hurry up because she can see the look on moms face so I grabbed the rope and jumped overboard. I swam the entire length of the bow rope and was still quite a distance from shore, I would tread water and pull as hard as could to get the boat to come my way, with each pull the boat came two or three feet closer.
Finally I was about fifty feet from the dock and I heard a voice say, “You need help”. I said yes and the boat took off out into the lake, the people behind that boat were giving him crap because they wanted to get their boat into the water. After a few more tugs and a few more minutes I was able to stand up and touch bottom. I pulled, tugged, and finally had the boat coming into shore at a good rate of speed, however this still wasn’t fast enough for mom, she continued telling me to hurry up that the boat was really getting full of water and she didn’t want to drown!
When the front keel of the boat touched bottom at the boat launch I helped mom and then my wife out of the boat. As I helped the two of them up to the shore I heard my dad say, “Hey, the bilge pump works”. I turned around and observed the water shooting ten feet out of the side of the boat. Dad had apparently forgotten for a time that his boat came equipped with this option. Dad retrieved his truck and trailer and I winched the boat out of the water.
Once the boat was secured on the trailer my father tried to haul the water laden hulk from the water however the boat being full weighed too much, dad’s truck tires were spinning under the surface. We had to wait until the bilge had pumped a fair amount of water out before it was light enough for the truck to pull up the ramp. Once out of the water the jet stream of water from the pressure of the amount of water in the boat propelled the stream about fifteen feet behind the boat.
While waiting for the boat to empty my father was pacing around getting madder by the minute. He stated that he felt like he was lied to! He said I paid hundreds of dollars and this is what I get! “They told me they tried this on the water, that’s impossible”! When the water finally came to a trickle my dad told all of us, “Follow me, we are going to marina, someone’s getting an earful, I want this fixed today”!
We pulled up in front of the marina and dad made a quickstep beeline to the service office with me in hot pursuit. I know how he can get when he boils over and didn’t want him going in alone. The woman at the marina service department wasn’t exactly a gem to deal with, she was gruff and surly from the outset, and this just made things worse! She looked at my father after ignoring him for almost two minutes (we were the only people in the building) and said, “What’s up, you havin a bad day buddy”?
Dad looked over at her, removed his sunglasses and said “Not really a good day, I picked my boat up here a week ago, I spent a bundle. You guys wrote on my invoice you lake tested the boat. It doesn’t start and almost sank. My son had to swim and pull the boat back to shore about 200 yards or more. My wife doesn’t swim and I got yelled at because of this. What are you going to do to help me out today”?
The woman looked at my father and actually said, “Sir, our marina service department is closed, so nothing”. That comment didn’t help matters at all! Dad just became more irate, irritable and nasty… My father pulled out the invoice and started telling her all the repairs he was charged for and she snatched the invoice from his hand and said harshly, “Yeah – let me see what the computer says”.
After a few minutes of reading parts of sentences out loud and confusing dad more, she looked him in the eye and asked, “How’d you almost sink”? At that moment dad pulled the transom plug from his pocket and placed it on the counter and said, “It kind of helps to keep the boat afloat when you put it in the hole don’t you think”. Well that did it, the woman now proceeds to inform my dad who by the way has never serviced his boats here before, that at their marina they remove the plugs to keep water out of the boat while on dry land…
While they are arguing I walked over to the door to look at the lake, my thoughts were of how nice it would have been to out there on the water, not here listening to this crap. While I’m scanning over the sights I spy a used car lot and service center on the opposite shore that looks new, clean and bright and inviting, my mind starts wandering as I wonder if they do a good business up in cabin country. Then reality set back into my head as I heard the woman yell at my dad, “The reason the boat didn’t start is because we installed a battery kill switch in your boat, didn’t you read your invoice”.
Dad raised his voice and said, “I paid the invoice, I tried to ask questions but the person didn’t want to talk to me so I left, I only use the boat three or four weekends a year and only have had to turn the key, how would I know”. At that point I left and went back to the boat. I climbed up and found the battery kill switch located in a very remote place at the very back of the boat hidden behind the trim. Once the switch was turned on the engine roared to life after about two seconds. Even though the boat was now empty, the plug was put in and the engine ran my mother did not want to risk another mishap so we drove back to their house and there the boat still sits.
I realized during the ride back to their house that the automotive service industry is no different from the marine service industry. The only difference is one vehicle operates on land the other on water. I was comparing the two industries in my mind the entire drive trying to equate this incidence with our industry and I thought of several things.
1. All of this could have been avoided had the marina given my father a proper redelivery of his boat. It would have taken no more than five minutes to show him were the battery kill switch was located.
2. If indeed it really was the policy of this marina to remove the transom plug they needed to indicate that fact and tell my father were they put it.
3. Had the woman behind the counter had of been more empathetic to my father the conversation would not have been so explosive.
4. Instead of telling my father how he screwed up, she should have been apologizing for the business not spending the time to explain the work performed.
5. The woman at the marina do not offer to have the owner of the marina contact my father which still irritates him.
6. The only thing my father wanted when he went into the marina was a solution to the problem and solutions were not forthcoming.
7. The woman at the marina did not show my father the respect he deserved as a paying customer, it seemed as my father was being blamed and she took no responsibility for any part of this scenario, it seemed as though dad was an interruption to her day.
Therefore I can say that for customers of marine or automotive repair facilities the level of servicing of the customer is just as important as the repairs that were done mechanically. Always fix the customer first before engaging in the mechanical repairs. My father vows he will never go back to that marina repair center ever again however he was at the end pleased with the mechanical repairs overall. Yet dad did say to me, you would think that a thousand dollar repair would come with a complimentary vacuum.
Dad is not pleased with the level of individual service as a customer and in the end that makes all the difference in the world. Therefore the technician can do everything right and if there are missing links or gaps in the individual level of servicing you can still lose a customer for life.
When I think about that day I can only wonder if all customers are treated the same at that lake when it comes to the level of servicing. Then I remembered the used car facility and thought to myself, “I guess it depends on what side of the lake you’re standing on”.
David
We arrived at my father’s house early that morning to prepare food, pack, hook up the trailer, test the lights and get a nice start at the lake before it became overcrowded. When we arrived my dad explained to me that he had just had the boat serviced and the repair shop had given him two thumbs up on the condition of the boat.
What was interesting is that he said when they were done with the repairs they even water tested the boat by taking it for a test drive out on the lake. Normally my dad takes his boat to the boat shop located very close to his house which is nowhere near a lake. I was a little confused by his remark however I didn’t ask questions. I was anxious to get underway and have a fantastic day.
When we arrived at the boat launch we had to wait about thirty minutes to be able to get the boat into the water, it seemed a lot of other folks had the same idea as we had, “get up early and beat the traffic”.
While waiting in the lineup I started to remove the boat cover, what I found underneath wasn’t impressive! For just being serviced the boat was filthy, the servicing obviously didn’t include a complimentary cleaning or vacuuming, my mother complained at this point that she really didn’t want to go as the seats were left dirty and she would spoil her outfit.
Dad and I talked her into going and we all proceeded to get the coolers from the SUV’s and load them into the boat. Dad and I checked the bow rope and the mooring lines on the side of the boat, we undid the rear trailer tie down straps and proceeded down the ramp with the boat. I waded into the lake and undid the boat from the trailer.
I pushed the boat out and walked over to the dock while holding the bow rope. Once on the dock I pulled the boat over, turned it around by force and waited for the others to finish parking the truck and get into the boat. While I was waiting I noticed that several more trucks were now lining up to get boats into the lake and I knew we were holding everyone up, I could see the frustration in people’s faces. They wanted nothing more than to get their boats into the water.
Finally everyone was in the boat! Because so many people were waiting, I didn’t drop the engine into the water at this point. I walked the boat towards the end of the dock and gave it one good push off while clambering into the stern section of the boat. Once we were about fifty feet out into the lake I sat down and released the engine pivot on the transom and I lowered the prop into the water at the right angle. By now the natural current in the lake was taking us farther out away from the dock, (the lake is part of the NYC watershed and has an inlet and outlet).
My dad realizing we were ready to get underway put the key into the ignition and turned the key to the start position. Nothing happened! Dad turned to me and said is the engine all the way down. I checked and gave him the thumbs up sign. He tried the key again and nothing happened! My father started looking around the dash console, he tried turning on the stereo, nothing seemed to work. I immediately checked the battery connections and everything was hooked up. It was at this point my dad said, “They replaced the batteries, fuel tank and lines, they said they water tested the boat, what the hell is going on”. I tried to start the engine manually with the pull cord several times and the engine didn’t seem as if it was getting fuel or spark.
I pulled the rope a few more times when I heard my wife say, “We have a serious problem up here”. As usual my dad ignored a statement like that and said to me, “keep pulling”. I pulled a few more times on the rope and then I heard my mother say very frantically, “Uh boys, we are sinking”! Now my dad looks down at the floor and see’s about four inches of water in the entire front of the boat, he looks back at me and said again, “keep pulling”. At this point I decided to look into the front compartment, that’s when I saw the water was halfway between my wife’s ankles and her knees.
My mother cannot swim, she actually hates the water however my father talked her into going and knowing we were going to be there she decided to tag along and brave the day. My parent’s house has a beautiful in ground pool and my mother has never been in the pool through all the years since they had it installed, she hates the water that much. To get her to the lake and into the boat was a tremendous feat on my father’s part.
My wife asked which of us was diving in to swim the boat to shore and my father pointed at me and said nothing. Knowing I had to jump in and drag the boat back to shore I proceeded to empty my pockets remove my watch and shirt. At this point my wife is pleading with me to hurry up because she can see the look on moms face so I grabbed the rope and jumped overboard. I swam the entire length of the bow rope and was still quite a distance from shore, I would tread water and pull as hard as could to get the boat to come my way, with each pull the boat came two or three feet closer.
Finally I was about fifty feet from the dock and I heard a voice say, “You need help”. I said yes and the boat took off out into the lake, the people behind that boat were giving him crap because they wanted to get their boat into the water. After a few more tugs and a few more minutes I was able to stand up and touch bottom. I pulled, tugged, and finally had the boat coming into shore at a good rate of speed, however this still wasn’t fast enough for mom, she continued telling me to hurry up that the boat was really getting full of water and she didn’t want to drown!
When the front keel of the boat touched bottom at the boat launch I helped mom and then my wife out of the boat. As I helped the two of them up to the shore I heard my dad say, “Hey, the bilge pump works”. I turned around and observed the water shooting ten feet out of the side of the boat. Dad had apparently forgotten for a time that his boat came equipped with this option. Dad retrieved his truck and trailer and I winched the boat out of the water.
Once the boat was secured on the trailer my father tried to haul the water laden hulk from the water however the boat being full weighed too much, dad’s truck tires were spinning under the surface. We had to wait until the bilge had pumped a fair amount of water out before it was light enough for the truck to pull up the ramp. Once out of the water the jet stream of water from the pressure of the amount of water in the boat propelled the stream about fifteen feet behind the boat.
While waiting for the boat to empty my father was pacing around getting madder by the minute. He stated that he felt like he was lied to! He said I paid hundreds of dollars and this is what I get! “They told me they tried this on the water, that’s impossible”! When the water finally came to a trickle my dad told all of us, “Follow me, we are going to marina, someone’s getting an earful, I want this fixed today”!
We pulled up in front of the marina and dad made a quickstep beeline to the service office with me in hot pursuit. I know how he can get when he boils over and didn’t want him going in alone. The woman at the marina service department wasn’t exactly a gem to deal with, she was gruff and surly from the outset, and this just made things worse! She looked at my father after ignoring him for almost two minutes (we were the only people in the building) and said, “What’s up, you havin a bad day buddy”?
Dad looked over at her, removed his sunglasses and said “Not really a good day, I picked my boat up here a week ago, I spent a bundle. You guys wrote on my invoice you lake tested the boat. It doesn’t start and almost sank. My son had to swim and pull the boat back to shore about 200 yards or more. My wife doesn’t swim and I got yelled at because of this. What are you going to do to help me out today”?
The woman looked at my father and actually said, “Sir, our marina service department is closed, so nothing”. That comment didn’t help matters at all! Dad just became more irate, irritable and nasty… My father pulled out the invoice and started telling her all the repairs he was charged for and she snatched the invoice from his hand and said harshly, “Yeah – let me see what the computer says”.
After a few minutes of reading parts of sentences out loud and confusing dad more, she looked him in the eye and asked, “How’d you almost sink”? At that moment dad pulled the transom plug from his pocket and placed it on the counter and said, “It kind of helps to keep the boat afloat when you put it in the hole don’t you think”. Well that did it, the woman now proceeds to inform my dad who by the way has never serviced his boats here before, that at their marina they remove the plugs to keep water out of the boat while on dry land…
While they are arguing I walked over to the door to look at the lake, my thoughts were of how nice it would have been to out there on the water, not here listening to this crap. While I’m scanning over the sights I spy a used car lot and service center on the opposite shore that looks new, clean and bright and inviting, my mind starts wandering as I wonder if they do a good business up in cabin country. Then reality set back into my head as I heard the woman yell at my dad, “The reason the boat didn’t start is because we installed a battery kill switch in your boat, didn’t you read your invoice”.
Dad raised his voice and said, “I paid the invoice, I tried to ask questions but the person didn’t want to talk to me so I left, I only use the boat three or four weekends a year and only have had to turn the key, how would I know”. At that point I left and went back to the boat. I climbed up and found the battery kill switch located in a very remote place at the very back of the boat hidden behind the trim. Once the switch was turned on the engine roared to life after about two seconds. Even though the boat was now empty, the plug was put in and the engine ran my mother did not want to risk another mishap so we drove back to their house and there the boat still sits.
I realized during the ride back to their house that the automotive service industry is no different from the marine service industry. The only difference is one vehicle operates on land the other on water. I was comparing the two industries in my mind the entire drive trying to equate this incidence with our industry and I thought of several things.
1. All of this could have been avoided had the marina given my father a proper redelivery of his boat. It would have taken no more than five minutes to show him were the battery kill switch was located.
2. If indeed it really was the policy of this marina to remove the transom plug they needed to indicate that fact and tell my father were they put it.
3. Had the woman behind the counter had of been more empathetic to my father the conversation would not have been so explosive.
4. Instead of telling my father how he screwed up, she should have been apologizing for the business not spending the time to explain the work performed.
5. The woman at the marina do not offer to have the owner of the marina contact my father which still irritates him.
6. The only thing my father wanted when he went into the marina was a solution to the problem and solutions were not forthcoming.
7. The woman at the marina did not show my father the respect he deserved as a paying customer, it seemed as my father was being blamed and she took no responsibility for any part of this scenario, it seemed as though dad was an interruption to her day.
Therefore I can say that for customers of marine or automotive repair facilities the level of servicing of the customer is just as important as the repairs that were done mechanically. Always fix the customer first before engaging in the mechanical repairs. My father vows he will never go back to that marina repair center ever again however he was at the end pleased with the mechanical repairs overall. Yet dad did say to me, you would think that a thousand dollar repair would come with a complimentary vacuum.
Dad is not pleased with the level of individual service as a customer and in the end that makes all the difference in the world. Therefore the technician can do everything right and if there are missing links or gaps in the individual level of servicing you can still lose a customer for life.
When I think about that day I can only wonder if all customers are treated the same at that lake when it comes to the level of servicing. Then I remembered the used car facility and thought to myself, “I guess it depends on what side of the lake you’re standing on”.
David
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Great Leaders Communicate & Set Deadlines
What sets the tone of becoming a great leader rather than a good leader is the fact that great leaders communicate with their employees on a daily basis.
A great leader will give the straight goods, good or bad. Employees will begin to realize that they always know where they stand in the grand scheme of things. Employees will appreciate the fact that management doesn’t leave them stranded for knowledge.
A great leader will ALWAYS let the team know the score at every stage of the game. When you manage your employees using this method they will also know that there are no hidden agendas and that everyone is accountable.
Deadlines are a powerful tool to incorporate into your management style. If you need something done from your team or from an individual, set the parameters with deadlines. Continuously challenging your employees to be better and tracking the results creates accountability within the department.
If you make requests of your team or a specific individual and deadlines are imposed you as a manager now have something you can quantify and qualify. In essence if you don’t have deadlines, you only have a hope that a specific task or routine is implemented, however you don’t really know because you don’t have a way to follow through and create accountability.
Without deadlines there is no prioritization and requests will continue to be put off until you instill an accountability method.
David
A great leader will give the straight goods, good or bad. Employees will begin to realize that they always know where they stand in the grand scheme of things. Employees will appreciate the fact that management doesn’t leave them stranded for knowledge.
A great leader will ALWAYS let the team know the score at every stage of the game. When you manage your employees using this method they will also know that there are no hidden agendas and that everyone is accountable.
Deadlines are a powerful tool to incorporate into your management style. If you need something done from your team or from an individual, set the parameters with deadlines. Continuously challenging your employees to be better and tracking the results creates accountability within the department.
If you make requests of your team or a specific individual and deadlines are imposed you as a manager now have something you can quantify and qualify. In essence if you don’t have deadlines, you only have a hope that a specific task or routine is implemented, however you don’t really know because you don’t have a way to follow through and create accountability.
Without deadlines there is no prioritization and requests will continue to be put off until you instill an accountability method.
David
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