Service Statement 2.0

I receive comments to my posts – thank you all – and I would like to address one of them more completely than a comment response.

Technicians, in the field, should be able to leave an invoice with the client upon completion of the work!

This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. We have some of the smartest people in our employ working in the field. To operate on the basis that they are not to be empowered to create an invoice for the client is almost insulting to them. Isn’t it?

Perhaps you don’t have the Business system or communications access to allow this to happen but it should never be because the technicians don’t have the skills. Underestimating or underappreciating the talents and abilities of field technicians is a common canard.

The time is now.

Service Statement 1.9

Recently I was in a room with a large group of dealer executives. We got around to a short discussion on the merits of talking to the technicians on the shop floor while they were working. There was a short misunderstanding regarding how serious that was for the efficiency of the technician. Interruptions kill efficiency on any kind of work. Office work has the same problem.

Think about the task of closing work orders. You sit at your desk and review the time taken and the parts used on the job. You look at what the customer wanted and how you satisfied the problem. And as you go through the review of the job the phone rings and interrupts you. You answer the telephone and complete the work caused by the call. Then you go back to closing the work order. Now let me see…. where was I? Can you understand what I am saying? Interruptions kill efficiency

The approach that I took to explain the point was the same that I always use. We are the doctors. This time I was the surgeon and he was the patient. He was on the table and open and I had the scalpel in my hand. The phone rang and someone wanted to talk to me. I left him there on the table and went to the telephone. How likely do you think that would be? I think I made the point.

The time is now.

Service Statement v1.8

The comparison in the last service blog to the doctor is a clear statement on how I view the responsibilities of a service department.

  • We are here to keep the machine operating as it was designed.
  • To reduce the owning and operating costs for the machine owner
  • To protect the residual value of the machine

That to me is very clear, straight and to the point.

And I also believe that without properly conducted maintenance as prescribed in the owner and operator manual we cannot achieve those objectives. But today more than ever I am excited. With telematics we will be able to monitor equipment all day long. We will know how many hours it is working, how long the engine is idling, if the filters are clogged; we will know everything.

Imagine that world. You will have a “mission control” – walls of computer monitors on the walls, each representing a machine, with people manning the “support center” 24/7. You will be able to “alert” the customer to anything and everything about their machine that is abnormal or needs attention. This will become a new service for you to offer. And guess what? No one else will be able to do this for your branded equipment. Very rarely do we get second chances in life but this is clearly a second chance for you to obtain and retain service market capture rates. The question is now in the air. Will you take advantage of this second chance? I sure hope so. The time is now.

Service Statement v1.7

The last service blog listed a series of items that are required if we are to give customers the certainty they want when they work with the service department. The first of those required items is an inspection. Yes I know the customer tells us what is wrong and what they want done. And yes I agree that many of the customers are very knowledgeable. And finally I agree that most customers know their machinery better than anyone else. So why don’t I want to trust their diagnoses? It is really quite simple.

I refer you back to your doctor. I know many of you don’t visit your doctor as regularly as you should, particularly you men. Women are much better at preventative maintenance, oops medicine, than men are as a rule. Perhaps that is why so many men customers believe that preventative maintenance is only about dropping fluids and changing filters. But go back to the doctor if you will. They see you once a year, perhaps more, and have a discussion with you, check your vitals, blood pressure, temperature, pulse, weight, etc., and then they send you to a lab for blood work, perhaps for an x-ray or an MRI depending on the situation. But don’t you know your body better than anyone else? So why not just tell the doctor what is wrong and have the doctor fix it? Of course you know the answer to that one don’t you? Then why don’t we operate the same way when it comes to the service department? You have to have an inspection. It should be done by specifically named inspectors. It should be a predefined series of steps and indications. It should have the machine operating as it would in a work environment, at operating temperature. Then we can be certain of the causes for the customer complaints. Then we can be more certain on our quotation and completion dates. That is what the customer wants and needs for us. The time is now.

Service Organization Webinar – Tuesday September 25th

The organization of a service department is about more than technicians and clerks and management. Designing the structure is about facts and not feelings. The time for shop and field jobs starts the design. The technology, tooling and processes used take us the rest of the way. Exploring the service department organization from a factual foundation is the goal of this webinar.

The density of supervision to technician has long been in dispute in this Industry. This webinar aims to put that dispute to rest by providing definitive measures of labor efficiency and quality in the forefront and not having “cost” drive decisions about those two fundamental elements of a service department.. From Roman times to the current US Army supervision has been a constant and defining attribute of high performance. We discuss the appropriate levels of supervision and provide a model for the participants to use for their business.

The clerical support in a Service Department covers all aspects of record management as well as labor controls, job controls, job process and work in process, as well as everything to do with warranty and technical documentation, either in printed or electronic format. The dealer business system is critical in supporting this function. This webinar will be of benefit to everyone in management and supervision of the service function.

 

Service Pricing Webinar – Tuesday September 25th

Too often dealerships call around to the neighboring dealers and ask for their service pricing. While it is understandable to know what the pricing is in your territory it is more important to develop a price structure that is required to attract the business and also produce the profit necessary to operate a dealership.
We will expose the “peanut butter” labor pricing for what it is – an over simplified unrealistic pricing mechanism – and provide an alternative to consider. It all starts from the skills of the men and the degree of difficulty of the work involved. That requires we must know the skills of the men we employ and then use their skills on jobs that match that skill. Consider that the wage that is paid to the men is a direct reflection of the skills that the men have and we have a starting point to determine labor rates. It is called a “wage multiple.

This methodology has been in use for a long time but not by sufficiently large numbers of dealerships; currently most of us over price low skill work and under price high skill work. We will define and describe the wage multiple so that upon the completion of this webinar the participants will be able to return to work and recalculate their labor rates with this new method and evaluate whether or not they should apply it in their Service Department.

Work Order Process Webinar – Monday September 24th

The core function within every Service Department is the work order process. Yet little attention seems to have been given to this most important function. During this webinar we will take you through the complete process from the “Service Request” up to and including the Invoicing of the finished job. The process is not complicated but there are a lot of details which if mishandled will not satisfy either the customer or the dealership.

The only group within an equipment dealership that allows a business to differentiate itself from the competition in the market is the Service Department. Yet the typical dealership leaves the service Department and the dealer business system to establish the methods to be used. This webinar addresses the complete process from labor posting to outside purchases; from ordering parts to returning them; from introducing the structure of the job to the scheduling of work. We will address them all.

The individual elements will be covered in complete detail in further webinars but the basic structure to employ will be detailed in this session. You will be able to return to your work and review how your structure relates to these “Best Practices” and begin the transformation of the department from a place where repairs and maintenance are performed to a productive, high quality, and safe service shop. This is the type of work order process that attracts talented people to work within it and retains customers who use it.

Service Inspection Webinar – Monday September 24th

Customers, for the dealership service department, have grown used to performing service maintenance and minor repairs either themselves, or with the help of independent mechanics.  This has led them to the conclusion that repairs are easily done and that they can diagnose problems with their equipment without much help from anybody.

While it is true that some of the customers employees and independent mechanics can perform very technical work it still remains the dealership that has access to all the technical expertise that is provided by the manufacturers of the equipment.
The parallel that will be presented in this program is that of the doctor.  The technician performing the inspection is a qualified analyst, trained to know what to look for and what the symptoms mean. The inspections that we are talking about here are diagnostic inspections to be performed prior to conducting any repairs, quality control inspections to be done after work has been completed, and machine appraisals which would be required of machines being traded in or been purchased used.

This program, on inspections, will provide you with an outline, a process, to follow in developing the inspection programs, listed above, for your dealership that will allow you to improve all repair processes as well as have a more consistent condition report on used equipment.

Service Statement v1.6

Customers want certainty. They want to know the price of the job before they give you authorization to proceed. They want to know when you will be finished, a completion date before you start. They tell us this is every survey that I have seen in the capital goods industries.  If they tell us what they want why don’t we deliver it?

No guts no glory used to be the saying in place for things like this. Today I say no systems and no structures no glory.

  • You need inspections
  • You need understandable job codes
  • You need standard times
  • You need segmented work orders
  • You need good supervision

Then you can give a GUARANTEED completion date. I mean GUARANTEED. You will provide a reduction in price, a penalty, if you don’t meet your completion date. For instance you will credit the job with a day of labor for each day that you have missed the completion date. Are you ready to stand up and make a difference for your customer? Needs statements from the customer require that we deliver, not just talk. The time is now.

Service Statements v1.5

Telematics brings technology to our service business. For decades we have struggled with a declining market share of labor on construction, mining, forestry and light industrial equipment. In my experience this started accelerating in the early 1970’s. At the end of WWII most of the equipment manufacturers were specialists. There were tractor companies and loader companies, excavator companies and truck companies, etc…  In the 1970’s several suppliers started offering more model families to customers to provide a one source option to them. This put incredible pressure on the dealers to keep up. They had to cope with new tooling requirements and personnel skills to name two major elements. They also had to deal with warranty failures.

The typical response from the dealers with this increase in warranty labor was to drop something of less importance. The first thing to go was maintenance.  This thinking persists even today in the minds of many Service Managers. Maintenance is less important than a repair. Well a lot of customers believed in maintaining their equipment to manage equipment operating costs. They were right then and they continue to be right. So what did they do? They hired one of the mechanics from the equipment dealer to do their maintenance work.  This then morphed into non-technical work as well. This took us down the slippery slope of ever declining market share in labor. This also led to .lower market share of parts as the customer mechanics didn’t have the same loyalty to the OEM brands.

Now arriving on the scene are telematics and computer diagnostics. We will know with either GPS connections of cellular signals where every machine is on the planet. AND we will know the condition of machines and components based on where the telematics are installed. We can determine if an air filter is plugged, or an engine is overheating, or if a machine is idling. This is significant. We can monitor the health of the machine for the customer form our “Telematics Technical Command Post.”  This TTC will be like mission control for NASA. We can have alerts when predetermined conditions exist that would initiate a call to the customer. We will have the TTC manned by skilled technical personnel. We can sell this service to our customers as a tool to allow them to reduce their owning and operating costs and preserve their equipment residual values.  Shouldn’t we get going on this now? After all those are two of the main reasons for our existence in this Industry; Reduce Owning and Operating Costs and Preserving the Residual Value. The time is now.