Truck Parts and Service | Heavy Duty Trucking, Aftermarket, Service Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/821175
16 Looking at the service industry as a whole, Payne says, "Sometimes we don't know or we don't ask [how to communicate]. We get caught up and forget. Then their preference is email but we end up calling and we're on hold for an hour." "You never want to be sit- ting there just waiting," adds Tim Grabow, vice president of operations at Blaine Brothers. Pre-service conversations also have expectation-related value, says Blaine Brothers' President Dean Dally. "Each customer is differ- ent in their expectations for a repair, both for communica- tion and price," he says. "With new customers, that's a big challenge for our shop supervisors." Dally says Blaine Brothers has a detailed presentation it uses with new customers to describe a customer's repair order, with thorough pricing explanations and a completion date estimate. The presentations also are transcribed, which Dally says creates a reference point for both parties if questions arise during a repair. T R U C K P A R T S & S E R V I C E | M a y 2 0 1 7 In 2014, the Service Provider study group of the Technology & Main- tenance Council (TMC) began work on a new proposed recommended practice (RP) for 'Service Event Data Transparency.' The task force formed to cre- ate the RP spent its fi rst weeks attempting to narrow the scope of such a broad topic. Eventually, task force co-chairs Bruce Love and Mike Payne, along with Service Provider study group chairman Kenneth Cal- houn, determined the best direction for the RP would focus on technology —— specifi cally a clear guideline for service and fl eet management systems to build application program interfaces (API) that would allow dis- semination of data from both sides through the entirety of a service event. Calhoun says the scope hits on a conversation point he's been discussing with fl eet customers and industry colleagues for years. "We [service providers and fl eets] are both constantly inputting vehicle information and service information into our systems. Why in the world can we not just get those systems to talk to each other?" he says. "We are living in the age of technology. Why don't we approach this from a technological standpoint?" He adds, "As an industry, we are way too sophisticated to continue to rely on phone calls as the method for customer updates." A consensus was met for the proposed RP in February at TMC's Annual Meeting, and the document will go to ballot at the organiza- tion's fall meeting in September. If it passes there —— Calhoun, Payne and Love are optimistic —— it will then go through a brief appeals process and will be published early next year. The proposed RP will apply to all customer types, and has been devel- oped to sync with several other TMC recommended practices regarding fl eet/service provider relationships. "We want to leverage the technol- ogy and processes we already have to make [the RP] work," Payne says. Among these documents is RP 802E, which features guidelines for using Vehicle Maintenance Report- ing Standards (VMRS). Three VMRS code keys —— Code Key 17 (Repair Site), Code Key 24 (Repair Status) and Code Key 76 (Reason for Delay) —— are featured throughout the document. Decisiv's Michael Riemer says standardizing the document's lan- guage with VMRS is a no brainer. "When you can structure infor- mation in a standard way it is much easier to deal with," he says. TMC Recommended Practice on service transparency nears completion Using software to input and distribute service information to customers in real-time is a signifi cant boost to service event transparency. Cover Story