We have written in the past about how convenience trumps all to consumers. So here are two quick tips that will help your service lane run more effectively, make your customers happier, and even increase revenue for your dealership.
One of the biggest hassles customers will complain about at dealerships and service departments is parking. How you manage cars waiting for service and newly arriving customers' cars can set the tone for how their entire experience will be.
Making sure to move cars in your queue out of the way so that customers are able to pull directly up to the service drive and hand over the vehicle to your technicians will go a long way in customer satisfaction.
The second sounds like a no-brainer, but makes a big difference in customer satisfaction:
Sometimes service departments are so busy that they do not feel that they have enough man power to have someone solely dedicated to greeting customers.
This is where they are wrong.
The service department is only the back-end of the dealership. Who said technicians need to be the ones greeting service customers?
During busy service hours (or really just in general) have a rotation where two to three of your sales people work the service lane greeting customers, making sure they are comfortable and most importantly trying to get them in a new car.
Walk-in traffic has a higher closing rate than any other source. You have customers who have ALREADY BOUGHT FROM YOU sitting in the service drive, so why would you not treat service customers like walk-ins?