A successful dealership involves multiple departments moving seamlessly in tandem, but Bob Clements believes one of those departments carries a bit more weight than the rest.

“Service is the backbone of the dealership,” says Clements, president of Bob Clements International. “The first thing you have to do to have a high-performance dealership is get your service department right. Once it’s right, everything else starts to work well. 

“But if the service department is misaligned in some way, the rest of your dealership is going to struggle because that backbone is the most important part of it.”

In order to foster a properly aligned service department, Clements advises dealers to embrace the art of the process.

“Everything in a dealership is about processes,” he says. “Why do we do processes? Because repeatability creates profitability. The more times we do something the same way, the faster we will be in a shop.”

Clear Information is Key

One of the first processes a service department should define is its written service procedure, Clements says. “We have to have a good check-in procedure when a customer calls or comes in,” he says. “This is where it all starts in a shop.”

When a customer brings in a piece of equipment to be repaired, Clements says the same 2 pieces of information should be collected every time — the customer’s name and their cell phone number. 

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“The first thing you have to do to have a high-performance dealership is get your service department right…”

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“I want that cell phone number because I want to text them,” he says. “We’ve got to start texting with customers. The average person will respond to a text in 3 minutes or less.”

After that, Clements wants employees to gather specific information about what’s wrong with that piece of equipment. “I don’t want to see something on a work order that says, ‘Customer says equipment’s not running correctly,’” he says. “Get detailed information.”

Not only that, but Clements expects a service technician will watch the customer use the equipment and demonstrate what the problem is before leaving the machinery in the shop.

“Many times [the problem is] a customer operation issue, not an equipment issue,” he says. By asking the customer to demonstrate the problem firsthand, Clements says valuable work time can be saved and applied to a different job.

Create a Simple Visual Process

Once the work order is completed and the equipment has been dropped off at the shop, Clements asks his service techs to adhere to a process for equipment storage so that equipment lots aren’t overly cluttered and nothing on the lot is overlooked.

“We have a staging area for when [the equipment] comes in, and then we move it through these other staging areas as the equipment goes through [the repair process],” Clements says.

The first component of that process involves tagging the equipment, regardless of what kind of machinery it is.“Everything in our system has a ribbon attached to it,” Clements says. “The ribbon starts off red, which tells us this piece of equipment has been here less than 24 hours and nobody’s looked at it yet.”

That’s important in Clements’ shops because the expectation is that each piece of equipment will be looked at by a service tech within the first 24 hours it’s on the lot.

“We don’t try to fix it, but we look at it so we can communicate back to the customer what we found in the first 24 hours,” he says. “We want to be the first one to call the customer.”

Triage Tells the Big Picture

Once that first 24-hour period has passed — and some initial evaluations about the equipment have been made — the red ribbon is exchanged for a blue ribbon, which indicates the equipment has been viewed by a technician and gone through what Clements refers to as the triage process. 

“We have triage sheets for every piece of equipment in the shop, and those sheets go through everything you should be looking at on that piece of equipment,” he says. “The technician who’s going to work on it is the one who triages it. The moment you start the triage process, you clock onto the work order because we’re going to bill for this time.”

Clements anticipates that the triage process will take 15-30 minutes, depending on equipment size, and he expects his techs to look at every single component of the piece of machinery.

“As we’re triaging, we put conditions down on everything we look at,” he says. Technicians note whether things are in a condition ranging anywhere from poor to excellent, and that information is then used to determine how the customer will be billed for the repairs. 

“Each level has a different labor rate charge,” Clements says.

Additionally, techs can use the information from the triage sheet to see if there are other things the customer should be contacted about. Clements says this process provides an excellent opportunity for techs to upsell labor and increase dealership profits.

“Shame on you if you’re only fixing what [the equipment] came in for,” he says.

Once the triage process is completed, equipment will be tagged with one of two ribbons — yellow or green. A yellow ribbon tells service techs that repairs are on hold, either because the customer has been contacted about a newly discovered issue or because a necessary part is being ordered. A green ribbon indicates that repairs are complete.

Streamline Tech Work

Not only do clearly delineated processes help a service department consistently document new and existing work orders, but they can be used as a tool to ensure that time in the shop is used effectively. Clements says dealers frequently make the mistake of thinking they need to hire another technician because they’re struggling to complete all the work in their shop.

“That doesn’t mean you need another technician,” he says. “It may mean you just have terrible processes. The first thing you do is fix processes. You don’t add people to a problem.

“Technicians are not normally your problem. As a matter of fact, when you get your shop fixed and your numbers right, you’re going to find you have more technicians than you need. Because a technician can turn out a ton of work if they’ve got good processes in place.”

According to Bob Clements, having clear processes in service allows for repeatability, which in turn creates profitability. Image Jeff Lazewski

A key element of those processes, Clement says, is clearly outlining a technician’s responsibilities — and ensuring those responsibilities are focused solely on work completion.

“I don’t ever have a technician pick up anything I can hire somebody for $15 or $16 an hour to do,” he says. “That makes zero sense to me, and yet I see it happen all the time in shops. My technicians are there to do one thing and one thing only — bill at $135 to $140 an hour.”

Clements also doesn’t want service techs to bring a piece of equipment into the shop and start working on repairs until they know they have all the parts they will need.

“Then it becomes more like a NASCAR pit stop,” he says. “That’s why we can get equipment through our shop so fast — because I’m not clogging up my shop with equipment that’s torn apart and waiting for things.”

In order for that process to work effectively, Clements asks his service department to rely on his parts department to assist with parts acquisition in a timely fashion.

“If I knew I was going to need a big part, my parts department knew 5-7 days before I needed it because I got that information through the triage process,” he says. “They can get all my major parts on a stocking order. When [the order] is in, I bring the equipment in and I start doing the service on it.”

Always Bill for Clean Up

Another way Clements reduces wasted time in his service department is by establishing protocols regarding clean up and prep work for the next day’s tasks.

“My shops start clean in the morning, and I expect a clean shop at the end of the day,” Clements says. “Every time we move a piece of equipment out, we don’t stop billing on that equipment until the bay’s cleaned again and the tools are wiped down and put back up. We’re never not logged onto a work order on something, so we don’t have half an hour each day wasted on cleaning a shop that nobody pays for.

“My billing stops on a work order when that shop is cleaned back up and your mess is out.”

Additionally, Clements has trained his service techs to keep as much mess out of the shop as possible. “I never bring a dirty piece of equipment into our shop,” he says. “We power wash everything before we ever work on it. I’m not bringing all the dirt in because if I do, I have to get [the dirt] back outside.”

Not only does that strategy reduce the time spent cleaning up after each individual job, but Clements says it makes his technicians happier and helps them work more expediently.

“Isn’t it a lot nicer to work on an engine that’s power washed and clean?” he says. “Technicians love it, and it makes their job easier and faster.”

Flat Rate Billing is Best

Clements encourages dealers to remember that the primary goal of their service department is simple.

“The essence of a service department is the same as a parts department or a sales department,” he says. “Your dealership exists for one reason and one reason only — to make money. That’s it.”

Clements relies on his billing practices to guarantee the profitability of his service department.

“Time and material billing is the absolute worst way to do billing in a shop,” he says. “You spend all this money to train your technicians. You spend thousands of dollars so they get faster and better. Then you charge the customer for the time it took [the technician] to do the work. How do you win in that situation?”

Instead, Clements advocates for flat rate work to ensure the service department’s profitability, particularly when it comes to his A level technicians.

“We never put an A level tech on a time and material job,” he says. “They can make a ton of money for me, so A level techs are on flat rates.”

While Clements acknowledges that some jobs require time and material billing, he stresses that those tasks shouldn’t comprise more than 20% of a service department’s output. Additionally, they should only be taken on by B level techs.

“Since we’re going to bill for the hours anyway, I put a good B level tech on it,” he says. “That way, a B level tech is going to be at 100%.”

Timely Work Yields Greater Profits

Not only do effective processes increase speed and profits, but they help generate customer satisfaction.

“If you have a lot of customer issues in your dealership, guess where they originate from? The service department,” Clements says. 

He wants dealers to remember that customers frequently enter into a service department with unrealistic expectations about how easily or quickly a piece of equipment can be repaired. Because of this, Clements says it’s critical that a successful service department clearly and efficiently communicates with customers throughout the repair process.

“[Otherwise] when the work is done, the customer is upset and frustrated, because it [took more time] than they wanted,” he says.  

However, Clements says, if customers are satisfied with the repair timeline for their equipment, they’ll be happy to pay more money for the work.

“Our shop is based upon speed and quality,” he says. “When we have speed and quality, we get to move our labor rate up. We get to charge more for what we do. People don’t care what you charge. They care about the quality and the speed at which it’s done. 

“Better processes create more profitability. And our goal in the dealership is to have strong profitability.”