Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/467551
March 2015 | Boating Industry | 25 [ 17 Strategies of a Service Superhero ] www.BoatingIndustry.com 13. Understand the impact of all departments The service employees aren't the only ones who need to understand their importance – the rest of the dealership needs to be aware of their impact. "Often times [the service department] is overlooked by owners, it is pushed to the back of the house," said Dantzler. "[Owners] need to understand how important the department is to the success to the entire dealership and the other departments need to understand [as well]." Equally, the service department has an ob- ligation to the rest of the dealership employees to understand that without them, service doesn't exist. Service employees should support sales at every turn. Dantzler provided an example from the auto- motive industry: If a repair order on a car is es- timated to cost $1,200, a customer would rather trade in for a new car than invest that money in the old car. This can be easily applied to the marine industry. "At what point is the service department putting a fl ag up to the sales department, saying 'I have a big enough repair order estimate that you might want to talk to this guy about buying a new boat.' That's a one-off scenario but that needs to be the norm in the service department," said Dantzler. "There's a lot of friction [between departments] normally. We need to grease the wheels a little bit in both directions." 14. Use detailed scheduling processes universally Processes defi ne the service department and ultimately impact the customer. Using a dealer management system can drastically improve the department, but only if it is actually being used. Any system is only as good as the information that's entered into it so everyone needs to be on board with contributing to the DMS. "If scheduling is fuzzy, everything is fuzzy and it's impossible for us to deliver customer service," said Ziebron. "It's really where a lot of internal strife and confl ict comes from interdepartmen- tally – when we don't have a schedule." 15. Share tracked hours with the service team Ziebron suggests that service departments also look at how many labor hours are on each ticket on a weekly and monthly basis, and share that information with the team. Often the service de- partment will only complete the work the cus- tomer asks for and the customer ends up back in the service department the following week. "A customer doesn't buy a boat to be in the service department – they buy a boat to be on the water," said Ziebron. "They want us to be able to catch everything when it's there and tracking those hours per RO lets us know if our team is doing a good job of that, especially as we start getting busy. The knee jerk [reaction] can be 'Get to the next ticket,' but we need to slow ourselves down." 16. "Triple Check": Quality control on all service jobs Marine Connection's Quality Assured program was put in place to ensure all jobs were done properly before the boat leaves the service de- partment. The technicians check their work, followed by a service manager inspection and ultimately completed once the operations man- ager reviews the job. Goldenberg wanted to add the third step because the operations manager in his service department is responsible for all deliveries. "If that boat gets delivered and it's not done cor- rectly, the delivery person faces that problem and it puts them in a very awkward situation because they don't know what's been done or if it's been done properly," said Goldenberg. "The customer is guar- anteed that whoever is delivering the boats checked it and is aware of what's been done. If something goes wrong, he can address it right there." 17. Always be evolving A commitment to continuous improvement is the mark of any service superhero. Just ask Brown: Clark Marine is the most recent winner of the Boating Industry Top 100 Best Service De- partment award. He will tell you that no mat- ter how good you may think or be told you are, there are always holes to be fi lled. "I think we would get bored if we were not constantly messing with our processes. Every time we adopt a valued change we always look at each other and say something like 'How did we not see to do this all along?' It's all in the evolution," said Brown. Change does not have to be life altering; change can often be more appreciated in the simplest of forms. "If it's a little change and it really isn't going to impact the process that great but it's going to impact the team member and their opinion or attitude, you have to bring that into account," said Brown. "It has to be good for everybody." Brown lays out a service process plan on a counter and the team writes modifi cations and suggestions to perfect it.