True Story: Night and Day Service Scheduling

What establishments do you frequently visit… perhaps a favorite pizza chain, local gym, or online retailer? They’re familiar with you. They know your name, your address, details from your last visit, and your shopping habits. Having this information on hand helps them provide the convenient experience we’ve grown used to as consumers. Why shouldn’t your dealership be the same?

When you’re a repeat customer, either placing an order or scheduling an appointment online, you expect some of your information, like name, email, and address, to be saved in the system. One of the main reasons for scheduling appointments online is the convenience factor. When your information is already in the system, it’s simply a matter of logging in, making a few clicks, then boom – you have an appointment.

Unfortunately, the allure of an efficient and flexible experience doesn’t always match up with the reality of online scheduling. I sat down with Aubrey to chat about her recent service experience:

Scheduling the Appointments

Aubrey connected with her local dealership after receiving a postcard from the manufacturer alerting her of a recall on her vehicle. She went to the dealership’s website to schedule the recall service and put in her information. When she brought her car to the dealership at the scheduled time, they did the walk around, made the repairs, and then contacted her afterwards. Overall, the first experience was awesome. However, a few months later, her experience was vastly different.

She had previously declined some recommended brake work, but it was now time to have the pads replaced, so she went online to schedule the appointment.

“Suddenly, their scheduling service tool was totally different. Originally, they stored my personal and vehicle information, but now they didn’t have it.”

At one point she was told to book her own service, then later she was told they’d call her to schedule it.

“It was messy and difficult trying to get back to the process I had followed before. I just wanted to schedule the service, drop my car off, give them my keys and leave.”

Working with the Advisor

A few days before she was supposed to bring her car in, one of the cylinders in her engine stopped firing. She could still drive the car, but the engine light was on. So, when she brought the car in for the brake service, she told them to look at the engine before doing any repairs. If it was a larger issue, she didn’t want to spend several thousand dollars on the car, in addition to the brake work.

After talking to the advisor about the engine, the advisor pulled her up in the system and said, “Okay, so I know you had other services scheduled. Remind me again what those services were because my system’s not pulling up what you had scheduled.” She showed Aubrey her screen – nothing but random codes with no way of seeing exactly what those codes meant.

The advisor couldn’t tell by looking at the tablet that Aubrey had requested front and rear brake pads and a cabin air filter. All of which had been previously recommended services.

“When I made the appointment, that’s what I selected to get done. She had to manually go in and enter notes for herself to reference back to, because there was no way for her to override the codes to see exactly what service was scheduled. It was messy.”

Overall Takeaways

Although there will always be an in-person aspect of the service experience, more and more pieces are being offered digitally. In fact,  72% of customers prefer to schedule their appointments online. It’s important for dealers to provide top-tier experiences for customers who want to complete some of the process online, while also ensuring a seamless transition to in-store.

While Aubrey shared that ultimately, her experience wasn’t terrible, there were key moments of frustration due to a messy scheduling process and a lack of system integration. It’s unlikely she’ll recommend this service department to her friends and family or choose to come back the next time she needs work done.

When you have a negative experience at a pizza shop, gym, or other retailer, you probably won’t go back. The same is true for your customers. This true story is a great reminder that while process changes might seem small in the dealership’s eyes, they can ultimately make a night and day difference to your customers.

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