Dealers need flexibility to support workers and their families

Sarah Vantine established and leads the business development center at Scott Clark Auto Group, southeast of Charlotte, N.C. Vantine, 34, supervises 15 people, including nine women, who handle incoming service-related phone calls. Her staff also contacts customers with service and recall notifications while handling such tasks as lease renewals or exchanges. Before joining Scott Clark in 2015, she was with Hendrick Automotive Group for nine years. She spoke with Dan Shine, editor of Automotive News' Fixed Ops Journal. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: How has the role of your center changed during the COVID-19 pandemic?

A: Our service business development center has continued to evolve in the level of support we provide to our clients and our staff. Prior to COVID-19, we managed all inbound service calls and all inbound finance calls. As certain state and county restrictions around how many personnel we could have in our showroom developed, we shifted all receptionist calls to our BDC in addition to the service and finance calls.

What have been the advantages of this new arrangement?

By having one department facilitate the handling of the phone call from start to finish, we reduced the amount of call transfers between departments and also have been able to more completely solve the customer's concerns or questions within that one phone call. That has reduced the customer frustration with being transferred to the wrong department.

We found that many sales calls coming through the receptionist were actually people questioning things like how much warranty was left on their vehicle, what kind of maintenance plan they had, etc. We are better equipped to convert these to a service appointment than we previously would have been with the receptionist simply transferring the call without properly qualifying first.

Do you anticipate these changes being temporary?

We likely will continue to have the majority of our phone calls handled by our business development center and will discuss plans for restructuring the responsibilities and role of the receptionists at our stores when the time comes.

How did you communicate the increased role of the center during the pandemic?

When we first were met with the challenge of adding additional responsibilities to our business development team, we planned a meeting to discuss the changes and broke the discussion into teams. I met with each group individually and let them know that in addition to their primary responsibilities, we were adding new protocols to how they were to handle and track receptionist phone calls. We then discussed those steps in detail. Our staff was very receptive to the additional responsibilities because they took the conversation as positive affirmation of how great of a job they already did with handling service and finance calls. They continue to see this increased role as a benefit because we've cut down the number of unnecessary transfers, and they have been able to secure more service appointments with our increased call efficiency.

State-mandated shutdowns have made life difficult for all workers, especially mothers. What do dealerships need to do better to help in this situation?

COVID-19 has been hard on families, and women are facing increasing demands and difficult choices on how to balance automotive careers with their children's new school remote learning, home responsibilities and the other financial and emotional stresses that have been brought on by this pandemic. Dealers need to shift their thinking on how to recruit and retain women, especially now.

We can no longer leave conversations on how to split work responsibilities and personal time to individual households and without having an active role in putting the conversation at the top of a dealership's agenda.

Previous applicants who were looking for job flexibility were told to look elsewhere because of historically long hours and need for open availability. We must do a better job of understanding that talented people are seeking balance and will turn to other industries that offer flexibility if we don't do a better job of initiating these conversations.

What have your dealerships done on this front?

Our stores have tackled those conversations and created very diverse schedules and options for our employees. In our service business development center, I created a flexible schedule that allows both men and women to set aside time to schedule family or school obligations alongside their work.

We build the calendar a month in advance to facilitate coverage and ensure our department remains completely operational. We've found that by offering flexible schedules, we've reduced the feeling of burnout and seen an increase in productivity while also saving on overall department expense. There are many strategic ways the dealerships can implement their own ways to support working families, but it all starts with proactive conversations.