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What are the qualities of a sucessful service writer?
I have no experience with hiring a SA. I am the current SA but it’s time to add one.
1. In your experience what makes an awesome writer?
2. Has anyone hired an applicant from a outside the trade and found it was a homerun? If so, why?
3. The top 5 must have qualities of a SA would be? 1 being the most important.
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8 Replies
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You need someone who knows how to fix cars and who knows how to fix people. You can gain the people skills in less time than you can “get” vehicle technology.
This may sound odd but many states employment divisions have incentives to hire injured/disabled workers. I know one tech who was injured skiing and is now a service writer. The shop owner got some financial assistance while getting the tech up to speed as a service writer.
If you find someone that you like that does not have a service writer background get a committment from them to take a business psychology class at the nearest community college. They have to learn how to fix people.
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17 Years 2 SA’s. First was from the business, sent for a week of training 2 years into the job. #1 proclaimed training “a bunch or crap”. Customers complained about condesending attitude, very messy front counter. He hoarded old Sweedish cars. #2 from a sales/manufacturing background. Great attitude, every day is a beautyful day. Sent him out for the same training, he came back and stated “What a great program! I can see how this is going to help me help the custiomers”. Positive, helpful attitude raised average ticket $75.00. My opinion is that SAs’ that come from another shop/dealership will bring bad habbits and a set attitude about customers. Spend the time and train a positive person, you’ll do much better.
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I never had a service adviser that was any goo that was also a tech .
The Rang Rover and Mercedes dealer in Miami is very successful with ex female Realtor’s as service advisers. We are training a lady now to help with overflow .Who knows she might be the next service adviser in our shop. So far she is really good.
Myles Swift wrote:
> You need someone who knows how to fix cars and who knows how to fix people. You can gain the people skills in less time than you can “get” vehicle technology.
>
> This may sound odd but many states employment divisions have incentives to hire injured/disabled workers. I know one tech who was injured skiing and is now a service writer. The shop owner got some financial assistance while getting the tech up to speed as a service writer.
>
> If you find someone that you like that does not have a service writer background get a committment from them to take a business psychology class at the nearest community college. They have to learn how to fix people.
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A positive, service first attitude is critical. I started in this business four years ago as an assistant service writer with no prior automotive experience except for my own tinkering under the hoods of my cars. I am now the service manager and we have a very loyal customer base with a better than average ARO. I learned the technical things over time. To prioritize qualities to look for…
#1 – Positive, friendly attitude
#2 – Sales skills (easily obtained with some training)
#3 – Professional appearance
#4 – Detail oriented and organized
#5 – Technical Knowledge
Good luck with your search!
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There is a short book titled “You can’t send a Duck to Eagle school”
by Mac Anderson. You can google a three minute clip thay may help you.
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Learn to seperate talent behavior from learned behavior. The best managers can identify the talent necessary for any particular job. Ask the questions to yourself. How do you want to service the customers? How do you want the service advisor to handle difficult situations? How do you want the service advisor to sell? How important is the image of the company? There are a host of other questions you need to ask yourself. One on the big ones is are you the person to decide whether you can determine the talent of a particular individual. I am sure there are many people will read this post and think to themselves that they know certain individuals that would make great advisors but that person is doing something else. Think of this, they taught a monkey to fly into outer space; try to find a person that has the requirement you need but you would be unable to teach them that same requirement. Read the book ‘First, Break All the Rules”. It is a great book about management and people.
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I work with service advisors every day and you can teach vehicle knowledge but most peplle can’t sell. I know that salesmen is a bad word but nothing happens until the sale is made. A good service advisor is a very hard thing to find.
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I think I agree with all the replies except the one about hiring a tech to be an SA. I think personality is one of the biggest things. Hire a people person. Hire a customer service oriented person. They can be trained to do business your way, they can even be trained about cars and how to sell car service, and tehy can even be trained on sales in general. The more of these things they already know, the better, but the one thing I think you would have the hardest time teaching is customer service skills. These things need to come naturally to them or your customers will think they don’t care as much as you.
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