As a former motorcycle manufacturers service rep (almost 25 years), this was really nice to watch. During those years I tried to train dealers to be more open with their customers.
Here’s the problem. It’s great to have customer centric policies, until you realize how much money it costs you to do it. When a customer walks into service, and takes the time of the technician, he makes less money, the dealer makes less money as the labor time is being spent on conversation, and not on production. This causes the effective labor rate to go down, parts sales per hour of labor to go down, and overall profit to plummet.
The habitual visitor who needs to ask questions every time they stop in, will become a problem. You know the ones, they haven’t bought a new unit ever, but have many questions about the used unit their uncle has sitting for 20 years in the corner of the garage.
I’m not saying that customer centered operations can’t be successful. But, you need to have a plan on how to deal with the people that think your time can be wasted repeatedly on a social call.
Every dealer needs fixed ops training from an outside source. One such is Manana No Mas, by Kurt Von Ahnen.
Kurt is an industry specialist who trains dealer staff. He’s the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.
Lastly, you probably belong to a 20 group, that has you set up Lightspeed to segregate sales sells bikes, parts sells parts and accessories, and service sells labor (not a Lemco fan). If you are configured this way. You will never see the truth in how your dealership is performing. Service sells parts and labor. Sales sells accessories and parts.