Dialing service customers brings them back

Patrick Brooke considers himself a "big follow-up person" — a trait now instilled across Beyer Auto Group's service departments.

When the dealership group noticed a drop in service revenue and repair order counts last June as people stayed home and drove less because of COVID-19 restrictions, Brooke steered the group back to the basics by implementing a simple yet effective strategy: calling customers.

"Let's get a hold of these customers — not only just to find out about what was going on with the service of their vehicle, but if we could do anything to help them out in general," said Brooke, fixed operations director at Beyer, which has eight franchises across five campuses in Virginia and sells Kia, Land Rover, Mazda, Subaru, Volkswagen and Volvo vehicles.

"We followed up with everybody," he told Automotive News.

To set up the practice, Brooke said, he spent hours combing through Beyer's dealership management system to see which customers hadn't been in for service in a while and added those customers to a spreadsheet. The list was then shared with the group's service managers, who are tasked with verifying that employees are calling those customers and recording the outcome of each call.

"We put a lot of effort into calling people — more effort than we ever had in the past," Brooke said of the group, which sold 3,700 new and 3,000 used vehicles in 2020.

Now, the group's nearly 30 service advisers call between eight and 15 customers a day. The advisers also are given various scripts to use as a guideline depending on each customer's service and repair needs.

Brooke is adamant, however, that customers are never pressured to come in. "We wanted the customer to understand, hey, we're here for you. You're due for service. We'll pick the vehicle up," he said. "Make it more personable than anything."

At its Subaru store in Alexandria, Va., for example, 27 of the 42 customers called made appointments for service.

The strategy also has enabled the group's service departments to easily notify customers about relevant service and repair specials.

"We started using more of our operation codes where somebody may have declined something previously," Brooke said. "We called that customer back and offered them an incentive to come in and get those repairs done."

Since making a bigger commitment to customer calls in July, Brooke said the group had 24,752 customer-pay and warranty repair orders in the second half of 2020 compared with 20,829 in the first half of the year — an increase of nearly 19 percent.

"We were probably down about 1,500 repair orders as a company halfway through the year," said Brooke, comparing pre-pandemic numbers. "By the end of the year, we were still down some, but it wasn't anywhere quite like where we were."

The group, which previously relied on business development centers to reach out to clients, also saw an improvement in customer satisfaction.

"When they get a phone call from the person that they've always interacted with, it's so much more effective," said John Altman, Beyer's COO.

Through the pandemic, Altman said, employees have realized business isn't "unlimited" and they have to work at building relationships and making those customer check-in calls a habit. "All businesses need to stay in touch with their customer," he said. "Putting that structure in place — simple as it is — it makes a big difference."