Does your S-P-G have the F-L-U?

Here in the North, we face the dreaded winter months. They’re full of stuffy noses, sore throats, and endless coughs. Although sicknesses like the flu are preventable, we aren’t always diligent about using the tools we have to stay healthy.

The same principle applies to tools in your service department. When employees value and actively use them, you can look forward to a healthy and profitable service operation. When neglected, your dealership’s tools will come down with “the flu.”  Let’s diagnose the symptoms of underutilized pricing guides and explore remedies to get them back to full health.

Symptoms to Watch For

According to Kelley Blue Book, forty-eight percent of drivers were frustrated with their most recent service visit. Common reasons cited include wait times and prices proving higher than expected.

Do you find your team giving money away in policy adjustments due to inaccurate estimates? Are you losing customers because of abandoned calls or lost transfers between service and parts? Are you giving customers “gut pricing” estimates over the phone?

When your pricing guides aren’t fully leveraged, the symptoms can manifest in various ways. These symptoms could come from jobs not mapping to your pricing guides or a lack of trust in system-generated pricing, leading employees to override or ignore the guide entirely. You may also notice inconsistent pricing and manual price changes, creating inefficiencies and frustrations for employees and customers.

These issues can lead to missed opportunities. An underutilized pricing guide doesn’t just mean inefficiency. It directly impacts profitability. As adults take medicine to combat the flu, your pricing guide also needs the right “prescription” to get back on its feet and regain its full potential.

Remedies for Your Underutilized S-P-G

If any of the above symptoms are showing up in your service department, here are some remedies you can take advantage of.

1. Make sure everything is up to date and mapped. Outdated configurations can prevent your pricing guide from functioning effectively. If it’s been some time since the system installation and your tool is not performing as expected, checking for updates regularly can help ensure your pricing guide reflects current labor rates, parts pricing, and other variables critical to creating accurate estimates. This can help eliminate the need for those manual adjustments too.

2. Run usage reports. Running reports helps you monitor how often the guide is used by each member of your team. With this information, you can spot shortfalls in the pricing process and where opportunities are to earn more money in each RO. If your pricing guide usage is low, you may be missing out on billed hours, labor profit, and parts profit per RO.

3. Work with a specialist. Working with a specialist will ensure everything is properly configured and tailored to your dealership’s needs. A specialist can also help your team fully utilize the tool and provide necessary training. With this partnership and guidance, you can reduce write-offs caused by misquotes and narrow the gap between your door rate and effective labor rate. As a result, you’ll prevent significant losses on each RO and increase the use of your pricing guides throughout the entire RO process.

How to Tell if Your Pricing Guides Are Healthy 

After implementing the recommended remedies, how can you tell if your pricing guides are at peak performance? When healthy, an optimized guide embeds pricing throughout the entire service process, from the initial appointment to the final payment. This ensures accuracy, consistency, and transparency for employees and customers, leading to increased profitability in your service department. It also eliminates guesswork for your service advisors, improving their productivity.

Your pricing guide is more than just a tool. It’s a key driver of efficiency and profitability in your service department. You can unlock its full potential by addressing symptoms early, following prescriptions diligently, and adopting a mindset to improve operations continuously. The road to a healthy, thriving service pricing guide starts with maximizing the tools you’re using today. After all, the difference between a service department plagued with inefficiencies and one that runs like a well-oiled machine might be a fully utilized pricing guide.

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