How To Increase Average Repair Order?

By Author: Chris "Chubby" Frederick
Total Articles: 5
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Most shops with low ARO do not have a measurement or quality control system for their courtesy checks. You should expect 75 percent of your daily car count to receive a complete courtesy check, if you inspect the forms being attached to your hard copy. Assuming your techs are doing complete courtesy checks can cost you money and customers if you are not physically inspecting the forms.

If you have drifted away from using a form, you should expect a 20 percent sales increase when you start focusing on it again. Let your techs design a new maintenance-friendly form so they buy in to using it. Make it their form!

ARO is important in that it attempts to measure what the average customer is spending when he comes into our shop.

In a larger sense, it measures the quality of the relationship we have with our customers, how thorough and consistent our inspection (courtesy check) process is, and finally it tells us how effective we are at selling. There is no doubt that if we have good relationships with our customers and that if we make an effort to establish and renew that relationship with every ...
... customer at our counters, we will have a much greater chance of selling them all the repairs and services they would need.

Understanding the customer's needs and relationship with the vehicle are important, as is checking service history and previous recommendations — which should have been entered when closing the invoice. We also need to be comfortable and confident in presenting our findings to our customers. In other words, we need to sell.

It is important that we first understand what we are selling and why. I strongly recommend that service advisors take a moment to look at the vehicle, and even ask the technician why we are recommending each repair and service item. This will help us understand the specific issues with the vehicle and ensure that the recommended repairs and services are truly needed. It will also make us much more confident selling it.

A very important aspect in driving sales and in increasing ARO is the relationships we develop at our counters. I don't care how many years of experience a service advisor has, and I care even less about how knowledgeable he is. It doesn't matter if he is not happily and conscientiously interacting with your customers. Being right and accurate doesn't matter if your customer is not feeling the love and seeing your care and concern for his car. This is particularly true in the maintenance world, where nothing is broken and our ability to have customers see value in the services we would recommend is greatly heightened by our ability to be their friend — or at the least in our being caring and concerned.

Cars break, and cars need maintenance. Your customers are smart enough to understand this. Honestly and accurately inform your customers of repairs and services you would recommend. Make an effort toward being both informative and concerned about their individual situations and you might just find yourself making a lot more sales.

Building Loyalty

The reality here is that all customers want to find a place to call home, and it is up to us to welcome them, comfort them and reassure them that they are in the right place. A side benefit here is that when we make the occasional mistake or fail to finish their car on time, they are willing to forgive us. That is what relationship-based selling is all about.

If we fail in this, the chances are very good that they will find someplace else to call home, and we will not have to worry about it. Fail often enough, and we will have no more customers — or even a business — to worry about. The choice is yours.

ARO is nothing more than a symptom of the health of your shop. A very busy shop with a low ARO might be cherry-picking the cars and not performing complete courtesy checks. The inmates are running the asylum! This could force the customer to go to other shops to ensure a completely safe vehicle because they don't trust your techs.

Some shop owners have misguided belief systems in that they feel courtesy checks are simply overselling. If you were to tell your customers that you were going to do a courtesy check to make sure everything was OK, they would be expecting a phone call if you found something that needed attention. The majority of your best relationship based customers would rather get the necessary work performed in less visits — and who is to say they won't break down in front of a competitor if you don't inspect their car?

If you have good relationships with your customers, are thorough and consistent in checking out the cars you are seeing, and are a reasonably good salesperson, you will go a long way toward assuring the health of your business. You will also have an ARO representative of your efforts. In most markets, this would be somewhere between $300 and $350. In a busy tire dealership, a goal of $250 would be good.

If you are not taking the time to get to know your customers and if you are not inspecting the cars you are seeing, I can assure you that you are missing opportunities — and this alone will have a huge impact on ARO and sales. ARO will tell you that there is a
problem, but it is up to you to address the symptoms and then maximize the opportunity that every car and every customer represents.

Your commitment and leadership will consistently deliver ARO at or above your expectations. Your friends at the counter are the secret here, and they rely on you to make it happen. Don't sell them. Love them, service their vehicles and welcome them as a long-lost friend every time you see them, even if you have just met for the first time.

To get more information on how to increase Average Repair Order, visit Automotive Training Institute