Service Writer Training…How to make it STICK!

One of the greatest things that ever happened in our shop is service writer training. We have tracked our training experiences and how they affect each individual, and have at times actually experienced an increase in our sales, average repair order, and of course, our profits…sometimes as much as 30% after a single training!

The down side of this is that it usually didn’t last! It seemed we could not sustain the results from training for more than a range of a few days to several weeks…but almost always, the majority of the information was either lost, forgotten, or discarded within 90 days.

The good news is you don’t have to put up with wasted time and money…here’s how we’ve reversed that trend in our shop…

1. Constant training…every day, every week.  We never stop teaching our staff what we expect and how they can improve.
2. We got them onto WebTools™ so we could measure everything they do, and hold them accountable to our expectations daily. We also are able to better appreciate them when they are doing it right.  The key word is accountability…set benchmarks, track their numbers daily, and make sure that both you and your service writers can see their training turn into real dollars.  (You don’t have to use WebTools™ to do this, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better or easier-to-use tool.)
3. We make sure that ownership is on the same page by having owners attend the training with the service and sales staff. If the owner is above what we’re trying to teach, then he’ll never get the employees to do it 100%.  Why? Because he doesn’t even know what the training specifics were, so how can the owner hold the staff accountable to performing something he didn’t attend?

But before you can make that training stick, you’ve got to get to the training in the first place, and doing that comes with a whole host of downsides…seriously, how many of you have had to deal with some (maybe even all) of the following?

1. Cost of classes is often higher than the value delivered.  $199-$399 to pick up one little gold nugget of info is too much for most of us to afford on a consistent basis!
2. Cost of travel, hotels, food, planes, cars…makes the cost of the experience skyrocket!
3. The amount of time away from the shop is often harmful to the service our customers experience, because it means we have to operate short-staffed, usually for about 3 days while the writers are traveling and in class…not good.  Lowering the level of service for a few days, so you can raise it back up for a few days??? That’s never really made much sense to me…
4. If the training isn’t fantastic, or doesn’t stick (and like I said, it usually doesn’t for long) all our money and time have been wasted. And we might have even lost a customer or two because of the understaffing we endured for the three days or so the guys were out trying to get educated.
5. The same trainer doesn’t usually do a series of classes, so when our service writers go to another trainer for more education, they end up getting mixed messages from one so-called “guru” to the next…and often the info conflicts.
6. Almost NONE of the trainers in today’s market operate a shop we can all go and see…much less a shop that is performing at the level they say you can reach.  A lot of them claim to have had crazy successful operations, but there is no evidence to back that up… no any news stories, no local legends…  So who are they to try to tell you how to do it?

There’s no denying that service writer training is incredibly important for your shop, your profits, and your long-term growth, but before we as shop owners can get the most out of it…it seemed pretty clear that some things needed to change.

Which is why we’ve decided to do things completely differently.  First off, in order to help my clients, my staff, and other shop owners and operators out there, we have taken just about every aspect of what we do and how we do it in our own $3.5 million repair shop (hitting those numbers with 5-6 techs and two writers, mind you) and broken it down into to create our training classes.

This allows us to offer a different service writer training class every other week by telephone.  By doing it this way, we’ve found that teams can stay FRESH, be taught and pointed back on track CONSTANTLY, and develop a relationship with the trainer.  The last part is huge…when the trainee starts to feel comfortable with the trainer, they begin to get comfortable enough to ask the hard questions and get the answers they each specifically need…without feeling embarrassed like they might in a one-time class in front of a bunch of strangers.

I know…I’ve gone on long enough.  I’d really like to know what bothers you when it comes to service writer training.  Anything I missed?  Drop a line in the comments below.

And if you’d like to see what this service writer training is all about, click here to  join us this Thursday (Thanks to all the shop owners who joined us! – David), when we’re going to teach a LIVE tele-class on “The Critical Points of Customer Contact, and How to Maximize Your Results by Controlling Each One!” This class is free for our consulting clients, but is only $49 for everybody else…it’s going to be a very fresh perspective (nobody’s offered this before), and is good for any shop owner, service writer, counter professional, customer service person, drive greeter, or manager who will answer a phone, or talk to any one of your customers on any occasion!

Hit me with your questions in the comments below, and air those grievances you’ve had with past service writer training!