Workshop Communication crisis. How Poor Leadership Training costs $1 million plus per year. Join passionate automotive trainer and coach Andrew Uglow as he exposes the hidden cost of promoting technicians without leadership training. In this episode, you'll learn why the automotive industry loses over $1 million annually per dealership. To staff turnover. Discover the critical gap between technical skill and people management, and understand how proper form and training could transform your workshop culture. Along the way, you'll hear stories including shocking data from KPMG's research on metropolitan dealership losses, and why the best technical minds often make the worst people managers unless they're properly developed. I'm your co-host Anthony Pearl, and this is the Frictionless Workshop podcast. Let's get cranking. Andrew, we should get onto the toll topic of whether there is enough information. That is given to service advisors or not, or whether they're just getting crap information. As you directed me before when we were just talking about this before we started recording the program. It's really interesting area of the right information and communication is such a critical element and it can go astray really quickly, and if they don't get the right information, it can just feel like you're up against it. What you're trying to deliver in your

job. I'm sure we've spoken about this in the past and I'd like to do this particular complaint with its identical twin, um, and its identical twin years. I don't get enough time. I don't get enough time. They expect all of this to happen in a really short space time. I don't get enough time. And if I was to, you know, rank which complaints I get most frequently, it would be these two. I either get really poor information, suboptimal information, crap information. I don't get enough time to do the job, you know? And, and I point to your experience that you spoke about, where you brought your car in, you waited for it, and they go, ah, look, sorry, we, we, we didn't get enough time. Well, the, the poor technician on the end of that, you, like, you don't know what's happened for the business. They might have had someone out at training, they might have had someone call in sick. They might have had someone have a rostered sick day off. It might've been warm and sunny, so they have to walk down the beach. I don't know. Um, but. The net result was, here's this technician, and they're like drinking from a fire hose. They're trying to get through all this work, and they just simply can't. And so they didn't have enough time to do it properly. And I go back to in, in your example, I go back to the idea that let's go and review how that happened in the business because there's gonna be a couple of things that got missed. And you go back to, well, you know, I've only got a certain number of texts, I've only got certain number of time I can do, I've got, we talk about workshop loading, the type of work that I'll permit. You know, this amount of warranty, this amount of retail, this amount of internal, all those sorts of things that, that come into play around background behind how that happened for you, but at the same time shouldn't happen. That's not, that's not good customer service. And I go back to the idea of time, which I'm gonna go. Time and information are directly linked. They are, like I said, they are identical twins and these are kind of the same face of the coin. You know, I don't get good information. Yep. Okay. So we've said this before I'm sure, but let me call it out directly. The quality of information that the technician gets is directly proportional to the speed and accuracy of their repair. Okay? So the quality, not the volume, but the quality of information that the technician gets is directly proportional to the speed and accuracy of their repair. And if they don't get quality information, well, their first step is to go and get it, because how do you fix anything, anything.

If you don't have quality information, I'll give you part two of my story, Andrew, because it's going to add value to this. So they fixed the issue fairly quickly when they got onto it. I was still at the dealership for maybe about three hours before my car was obviously in the line of things, and they fixed that problem. Then they said at the end of it, oh, by the way, you also need new breaks, new braid pants. I said, great. I said, we have to order them in. Okay, great. Order them in. Said that should be four or five days. Fantastic. I waited and I heard nothing and rang up and they said, oh, well we didn't order that. And so then they proceeded to order it in. They did tell me as, as well at the time that it was getting close to being, you know, you really should get them done, as opposed to, I'll get it done in the next six months. And I do a lot of freeway driving, so I'm like, okay, let's get that done. Anyway, they'd bring it in and I, I had said to them, they were obviously aware of what had happened before, and I said, I'm going to wait for this to be done. That was where the information clearly went to the technician and saying, all that needs to be done is this and this, it needs to be done quickly. I was in and outta that dealership in about an hour. Um, and I prepared to be there for, for another three or four hours because of the previous experiences. But clearly the information that was given to that technician at the time was, we need to do this quickly. This is all that needs to be done. Let's get it happening. And I was in and out and that was fantastic. That was a great experience because I actually was prepared to lose half a day and I got half a day back of things that I could be doing, which was

wonderful under promised and over delivered. So, and, and I go back to there's two different skills, isn't there? There's two different, two different elements that we're talking about. One is fixing the car and like a point to like, maybe not every technician, 'cause there's always special people, we know this, but by far the vast majority of technicians want to do a good job. They take pride in their work. They, they genuinely want to perform. They get a thrill out of doing well. It's personal to them. And, and versus the quote unquote fixing the customer. And there are certainly some jobs that we hate. Industry as having weight jobs and anything that is weird, like check engine lights, all that sort of stuff. We've got no idea what it is. It's like this fog that you walk into. And all we know and we talk about the quality of information, all we know is that there's a light on. Well, what does that mean? Well, that could be anything. Like most cars today and even cars in the last five, 10 years, um, there's 10,000 different DTCs that will bring up a check engine light. So, which. Or you know, as the car is alike, we dunno which one of those 10,000 I need to be looking at until I get onto the car. So doing that as a wait job is, is problematic. So coming back to the idea of information, there's a whole variety of different reasons why techs don't get good information from service advisors. And I don't wanna throw service advisors under the bus 'cause they do a really hard job. And again, like just about everyone in automotive in workshops is the meat and sandwich. You know that there's two things pulling in opposite directions for each of them. And they get stuff from this direction. They get stuff from that direction as well. So no one's living the life of Riley. Can I say, you know, one of the big challenges for the technician is technicians speak technical. They think technical. They perceive the world through technical lenses, and the service advisors just don't. And the customers certainly don't. The customers don't even have the words to use. My car's doing something and they come up with whatever phrase they've Googled. They're using language that that may or may not be correct, valid, accurate. It can have an entirely different meaning in the language of technical versus

the language of quasi technical. You know, it was almost easier in the days before Google was so commonly available, isn't it? When they're just rolled up to the dealership and said, I dunno what's going on. It's

broken,

it's

wrong. Something's wrong. One of the best questions, I'm sure we've mentioned this before, one of the best questions that service advisors can ask any customer is, is it doing it now? Yes. Okay. It's doing it now. Great. Show me, or let me get one of my technical gurus and you can show them, because service advisors are crazy time poor, so not being technically skilled. And, and so as a consequence of this, we have two possibilities. Either what's said isn't what's meant, or we end up with Chinese whispers. Something got rephrased. And so we talk about service advisors, capturing the customer's verbatim. I love that word, the verbatim. What a beautiful corporate generalization. We want to use the same words the customer said, the verbatim. Um, and that's really important. And at the same time, that's also sometimes profoundly un. And I go back to the fact that quality information or valid information has three parts. And, and I think service advisors haven't been taught this. This is a revelation for technicians. When I, when I teach this as part of our diagnostic classes and our Resourceful technician formula, we talk about the quality information model. The quim and the information is always explicit. Don't gimme vague generalizations. Oh, my car's funky. Oh, is it? Well, good for you. That's exciting. You know. Just what is, what is funky? You know, it, it busts a move on a dance floor. Like what is that? You know? So, so quality information is always explicit. Always explicit detail and explicit. The second part is that it's being tested. So when you say stalling, you mean the engine cuts out completely? Oh, no. It just moves up and down and up and down and up and, oh, okay. So it's surging or hunting. It's not stalling. That two different, you tell me it's stalling. I'm testing a whole different world of things to something that's hunting and surging. 'cause they have different meanings in technical versus in non-technical. It just drives weird. It, it doesn't feel right. It looks like it's going to stall. And so as a service advisor, my role is to test that what you mean as a customer. And what I understand are in fact the same thing because we we're chasing the meaning. As much as we're chasing the words, I, I need the words, but I, I need the meaning more. And so, quality information, explicit and specific, tested. And the third part is usable. Don't say noise in car. We talk about this one all the time. Um, noise in car. Well, okay. That's no good. Would you, would you like a hug? That must be really hard for. Can we do something about getting a better stereo in your car? You know, like what? What is that child in the ba, in the child in the backseat? Would you mind taking them for a few weeks? There you go.

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Like, look, we've had, we've had all the proverbial, like there was an ad years ago on TV for Volkswagen and this guy's driving his car and he's trying to open and close the glove box and doing all this sort of stuff because there's these noise he can hear and he pulls over to this old mechanic and the old mechanic gets into the car and listens, comes back and he lubricates the earring of the girlfriend who's sleeping. Their earring was squeaking, you know, and it was all about the quality of Volkswagen. And Volkswagen are awesome. Ask anyone who works for Volkswagen and they'll, they'll, they might tell you that maybe, I don't know. But this, this was the point that we go back to the quality of information. What, what are we actually dealing with? Is the information that you give me usable? Is it functional? So if you go, well, noise in car when turning left or noise in car over speed humps or noise in car on wet roads. Oh, okay. That, that's now a whole lot more useful for me then. Okay. I've got a large, expensive mechanical device that moves over on easement surfaces that has a large, expensive mechanical device driving it. Whether that's mechanical or electrical and it's making some noise. Well, okay, it's so what?

It happens sometimes. I'm not quite sure when it's not happening right now, but it happened the other day.

Right. Okay.

That, that should be used.

This is where we get into, um, we have for customer facing staff, the same skills or type of skill shortage that we have for technical people. And so just like it's hard to find good technical people, it's also hard to find good customer facing people because. There's a lot of money at play with cars, right? And so some customers get very upset because there's a lot of money, there's a lot at stake. Um, no one wants to spend more money. I don't know of any customer ever who woke up in the morning and goes, I can't wait to take my car into the dealership paying an enormous bill for something. I've got no idea what they actually did. I, this is so exciting. You know, I've got all this spare money. I think I'll invest it on, oh, who knows what at a dealership. No one says that. And so there's a variety of problematic elements in this, but why aren't we getting good information? Well, is it fear of customers? Is it fear of angry customers? Is it a lack of skill at the service department? Is it time because they're crazy time poor? Are we not booking our work correctly? You know, are we not booking our customers correctly? Um, one of the things that I find a lot of businesses aren't doing is. Re-booking their customers. So if we go, ah, Anthony, thanks so much for bringing your car in on Day x, day y. Super excited to be able to, to take care of your car for you. Was there anything else you want us to look at? And if you click here for yes, click here for no. And if you click yes, it takes you to a a, there's a thousand different things that it could take you to. But let's just go. Minimum viable product takes you to a a Google spreadsheet and it says, oh, Anthony, what's your problem? And you describe the problem and you go, when does that problem happen? Well, this, this, and I can give you, I, I love a menu, Anthony. When I go to KFC and they go, hi, can I take your order, please? I go, can I have two or beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese? But I don't know if you've tried this. I, I have. And you're gonna go, Andrew, really? I've got the idea. Seemed like a good idea at the. Like a, like a lot of my bad ideas, they started out as good ideas. I just wanna stir the person. And there's this silence on the other end of the, the thing. Uh, we don't sell that. It's not on our menu. And I've just gone thank you. And, and, and I go back to the idea of offering the customer a menu. Having them choose stuff. They don't have the language, they don't have the technical acumen. Give them a selection. Would you like fries? Would you like wedges? Would you like this? Would you like that? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it wet? Is it dry? Is it all the time? Is it sometimes? Is it. Startup is the first 15 minutes, does it last 15 minutes? Does it only happen after a thirst? Like give them a menu, have them go, yes, no, yes, no, yes, you can capture this in a sheet. And now I've quote unquote, got the customer's verbatim and I can hand that off to the technician and it was a Google spreadsheet and a link like, how long does it take? Realistically, how long I can send them A-P-D-F-I, I can send 'em a thousand survey. There's a million different programs that can do this. Why aren't I doing that on the front end? So that'll save time in the dealership. That'll get what you are trying to convey, because now you've got time to think about it. You're not standing there rushed, oh, you know, I've gotta get the train, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do that. I've got all these other things. I'm like, well, you do it when you got a chance to think about it. So, um, we love menus. The flip side of I don't get enough information and I don't get enough time. Well, looking at the time chunk. Again, if we're gonna test this, well, how are we measuring the job, the time that I'm allocated? Is that valid? Is, is that what it really takes or am I trying to speed things up and push? What about the skill of the tech? And I go back to is it a matter of skill or is it a matter of resourcefulness we are dealing with here? And resourcefulness isn't on automotive radar, it just isn't. We use the vague generalization of experience. It's a thing, but it's incomplete. It's actually a resource on us. What about the physical environment? You know, do, does the tech have to spend 20 minutes shuffling cars to get the car out and now they're 20 minutes behind their time because our facilities, uh, are choked with cars or, you know, customer parked or the tow truck dropped off a car or something like that and now the tech's pulling their hair out, trying to meet a time, and all of these factors were outside of their, outside of their control. What about the cultural environment? You know, what's that? Because you take a good person, put 'em in a toxic environment, they can't perform, they can't, it's just not possible. Whereas you, you take an average tech and put 'em into a good environment, don't perform. They will. So what about the environment we're we've, we've created, you know, um, and it's interesting when you start to talk about technicians, you know, this whole idea of I get crap information. And this whole idea of they don't gimme enough time. What's actually behind those complaints? And it's fear of screwing up. Like there's a genuine fear of doing the wrong thing. I don't wanna upset the customer. I don't wanna cause problems in the business. I don't wanna cost the business money. I don't want the shame of my peers in the workshop thinking I'm a peanut because I made a stupid mistake. I don't want the, the, the social consequences of failure. I don't want, you know, all these other things. It gets expressed. That's what's happening for them, for the most part that I can tell. It gets expressed as I don't get enough information, which may or may not be true, or conversely, I don't get enough time. And that could be a skill problem. That could be actually a time problem. That could be,

well, it could be uncertainty, couldn't it? Of your own work and saying, well, I feel like I think I've done the right thing. I've gotta go double check it. And that takes extra time, right? And. And that is all because of a perception of their own ability. They may actually be spot on 99% of the time, but they're still going back double protection. Yep. Matter

of competence, for sure.

Yeah. It can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing and it's how you manage that and communicate that as a business, which is gonna make a real impact.

Yeah. And so I wanna ask for these two things, you know, not enough time as a tech and poor information. The test that I wanna ask is. Where's professionalism in this? If we're gonna be professionals, right? Like I'm being paid to show up. So that means if I'm taking the money, that makes me a professional. If I'm doing it outta my own free will, 'cause I've got nothing else to do with my time. I'm a volunteer, different level of expectation for volunteers. But because I'm being paid here, the expectation is professionalism. And so where is professionalism in this? And I go back to professionalism in workshop management, better workshop leadership. Here. Am I giving my service advisors enough time? Am I coaching my customers? Am I training my customers on adding good customers? You know, because that's part of my responsibility as a service manager and, and I know that sounds really manipulative, but I'm gonna go, no, it's, it's actually, if I've got good customers, I can serve good customers better. I can be more productive, I can be more efficient, I can add more value because the customer's a good customer. So let's coach our customers to be good customers. Let's coach our front. Customer facing team to, to lead customers rather than just serve customers. 'cause that's, they're two different things. Where's professionalism for the technician? Where's the quote, unquote, development for the technician? Where is the development for the service manager? I keep coming back to this same piece. And again, when, when all you have is a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. Right? Prove. But it's a gap. It's something that we don't do. We do bits of, but we just, we, we miss. There's some, not just some gaps. There's some absolute gaping holes in what we do, and it's hurting us. It's hurting customers, it's hurting profitability, it's hurting reputations. It's a big deal. So, you know, not enough time. Mm-hmm. Well, let's go and test for that. When you say not enough time, how do you mean and crap information? Well, we can test that We use the quality information model. Is it explicit? Have you tested that? What you think it means is what the customer meant, and is this information useful or is it just. I don't know, an emotional unload, because emotional unload isn't gonna help me fix the car. It's just not useful. Like by all means, work with the customer emotionally because it's a stress, it's a thing. Do that.

What's interesting in this day and age where we have so much technology available to us, that old idea of let's go back and check the tapes. Sometimes that's actually a really interesting thing to do because I'd swore they didn't say this, they didn't do this. 'cause it could be just a listening thing and not, and the information was actually there, but they actually just didn't take it in in the right way. Maybe they didn't read it the right way.

Yeah, for sure. I've just done a skim and they skimmed it. They didn't read it. And that's the thing,

Andrew, to, to wrap all of that up, I think it is really an important thing for the technicians to understand. That there's some self-examination that needs to happen in this process.

It's never one thing. Gosh, if it was one thing, we would've fixed it decades ago. It's, it's usually a complex compound thing and shared responsibility.

Thank you for listening to the Frictionless Workshop podcast for details on how to get Andrew working with you and your technicians. Take a look at the show notes. There's also a link to some special content you can access. I'm Anthony Pearl reminding you to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.