Is Your Service Department Performance Repeatable and Consistent?

Do all of your service technicians provide service that is repeatable and consistent? Think about your service department for a moment. It is profitable? Staffed properly? Is it steady in workload? Are you growing? Is it a department you’re proud to run? Here are a few things to consider in order to make your service department the best it can possibly be:

• Technical ability of your staff should match the needs of your customers. If you’re trying to get into commercial or some other sector, you may not have the right people for this type of work. Consider this on the other side as well. You want to make sure you have the right people for the right job.
• The service should be equally high regardless of which tech you send to the home. Do you do it the same way every time? What order do you do it in? Think about McDonald’s. Everybody talks about the McDonald’s model — maybe we need the fast food chain, and maybe we don’t — but the one thing we can all agree on is that it’s consistent. Standardization is built into their process. If you can’t decide who to send out to a call, it probably means your service is not consistent.
• Pricing and what you charge should be consistent. We owe it to our customers and to ourselves to be consistent with pricing. If this isn’t consistent, then profitability probably isn’t either. A customer is less likely to haggle something with a price tag on it. It doesn’t mean we never give out deals, but the technician should not be the one deciding these price changes. You should be the one to manage the discounts.
• Your team should deliver your brand the best way every time. I’m talking about vehicle appearance and accountability for what that looks like. Your brand is even affected by how well your techs drive. Are your techs showing up to a home with a clean uniform? Do they take it to a cleaning service or do they take it home? If you’re giving more slack to certain departments, consider the customer’s perspective — the customer doesn’t see different departments, they just see your brand. If installers get dirty, they should still be clean when they first meet the customer. You don’t get a second chance to make that first impression with a customer. Your team is watching how much you care about the brand.
• The promises made by the office and what is delivered in the field should be congruent. If someone on the phone says your technician will do one thing or the other, then they must do it. It should go the other way from techs in the field — they should be communicating with the office if they make a scheduling or fulfillment promise to a customer. Make sure everyone at the company is aware of and understands the promises made in the media: specials, coupons, etc. through marketing pieces you’re putting out there.

This all sounds simple enough, but I wouldn’t say it is. I will say that it’s a realistic expectation of ourselves, and, when we focus on delivering it, we can. It is achieved through consistent training and a process that supports your expectations.