Steve Greenfield’s Post

... availability of appointments? Did that rank

So... what are you trying to say? 😂😂😂 LOL. My question is are these valid points grounded in reality, or is this merely the customers' perception? That perception has always been the same. Because the dealerships I take my cars to are highly competitive, and it's a one-stop shop. If it's perception, then we as dealers need to better translate to the consumer that we are the best value. I say "we" because, putting my role as vendor/partner aside, I will always be a dealer at heart.

I have my car in the shop right now at a professional cdjr dealership. I have a very large ticket in on my car and they are charging me 170 per hour for labor... It's a 40 hour job. I call my neighbor who's a mechanic who said he can do the job in 15 hours, will charge me 50 per hour to bring it into his shop. Told me he'd charge a customer 80 per hour for labor (the 50 was the friend discount). I get that the dealership feels their experience is much better and more professional but is it really worth double? I question it and I've been in the industry for 13 years! Sounds like most customers agree.

If dealers delivered the level of service that customers expect, these items wouldn't matter. Our customers don't expect us to be the cheapest, they expect us to be the best. When we deliver service they can get anywhere, these factors come into play.

Anyone that's spent serious time thinking about this knows the ad spend disparity between fixed/variable. If you compare the click path experiences its even worse. 4 of these issues can be addressed with marketing. Dealerships can leverage their customer base as an audience in every campaign. It's affordable too... This is so frustrating 😤

Dealers lose opportunity because the manufacturers don’t support technician growth, therefore, dealers are logged out for weeks. Clients want convenience and fixed right the first time. If we can get cars in, the clients will come. Dealers are way too understaffed. Every store I’m in has empty bays; not good! I’ve seen, in many cases,many irf’s, chains; priced higher than the dealers.

Having spent my career with both dealers and independent repair shops my personal opinion is the draw to independent repair is convenience. Multiple times in the last two years I called my local dealer for an appointment and was told no problem we can get you scheduled in 7-10 days. Meanwhile I can get in and out of countless independent places same day.

Consumer perception vs reality hasn’t changed much over the years. Reality is there isn’t much of a difference in costs between dealership & 3rd party service centers and we have proven it over the years by setting up price comparison boards, physical and digital to educate the consumer, however dealers have not consistently followed through by maintaining their websites as proper service marketing tools as the 3rd party service sites do with multiple coupons, as low as or starting from pricing ads, instead most dealers still rely on OEM generated coupon ads that are sent out to customers who have visited their store over the last 18-24 months ignoring defectors, so the downward spiral continues. The dealers that have taken the service marketing responsibility away from their service managers and put it in the hands of pros have seen the benefits ant not surprisingly are the same dealers growing and expanding their operations!

As long as service advisors and techs continue to be paid on commission, unnecessary work will be done and #3 won't change.