Business 16 www.aftermarketonline.net FEBRUARY 2025 Charting a course to workshop success In this first of a two-part article for Aftermarket, Jay Wheatley AAE MIMI, business coach and mentor at Absolutely Automotive, highlights the importance of service advisors to garage teams The service advisor role is often underappreciated, but is without a doubt, one of the most critical positions in any garage. Whether you’re a garage owner or a service advisor, understanding the nuances of this role is vital to improving operations, customer satisfaction, and overall profitability. Let’s explore what makes a great service advisor, the difference between proactive and reactive working styles, and how finely tuned advisors can help a business thrive by carefully selecting the right jobs and customers. The service advisor’s role At its core, the service advisor acts as the bridge between customers and the workshop. But this simple description doesn’t capture the dynamic, multitasking reality of the role. If you’re a service advisor reading this, you’ll know it requires a unique combination of technical understanding, people skills, and organisational superhero-type prowess. Calm under pressure, you’re the linchpin who keeps customers informed and technicians focused. For garage owners, it’s essential to appreciate this complexity — and invest accordingly in the right people and training. Think about it, we spend time trying to make our technicians more efficient with training, tooling and even mapping how far they walk to get tools during a job. Yet sometimes we fail to invest in the very role we rely on to ensure overall efficiency in the first place. We should not overlook the importance of an accurate job description, costed correctly, with the appropriate parts ordered. Profit comes as a by-product of a service advisor doing the job right, coupled with giving the customer that personal, smooth and hassle-free experience. Contrary to common assumptions, a technical background isn’t always necessary to excel in the role. While technical knowledge can help, it’s often more important to employ someone with excellent communication and customer service skills. After all, you can train someone on systems and technical knowledge, but it’s harder to teach empathy, a sense of organisation, or the ability to connect with customers. To illustrate how different working styles affect outcomes, let’s look at two hypothetical advisors — ‘Reactive Ronnie’ vs ‘Proactive Penny’. Reactive Ronnie knows the job inside and out. Customers like him, the team gets along with him, and he has solid technical knowledge. However, his approach to the role often leaves him overwhelmed. Ronnie waits until cars arrive to raise jobs and orders parts only when the vehicle is physically in the workshop. “No point in ordering parts for noshows,” he reasons. While this might sound logical, it causes delays and inefficiencies. Ronnie doesn’t ask customers detailed questions when taking bookings. Instead, he focuses on filling the diary and during the day he takes on extra work that has not been allocated time to complete. At the end of the day, Ronnie feels like he’s barely keeping his head above water. Customers have been served, but there’s a growing backlog of estimates, warranty claims, and parts returns. Ronnie leaves work stressed, thinking, this job is always chaos. Proactive Penny shares Ronnie’s knowledge and experience but takes a different approach. For Penny, planning is key. She ensures bookings are wellorganised and follows up with automated reminders, resulting in fewer no-shows. Penny uses quieter
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