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Have you tried calling your service department recently? What was the experience like? In this 2-minute video, Xtime Performance Manager, Tiffani Stefanescu, outlines a few minor changes you can make at your dealership to go the extra mile and demonstrate why your service experience is superior.

Identifying the right sales software for your team can be challenging, especially because today’s solutions deliver much more value than yesterday’s CRMs.  

This guide arms you with questions that will help you determine which solution provider offers the best capabilities in these categories:  

• Lead management 
• Deal management 
• Shopper data and personalization 
• Reporting 
• Marketing 
• Partnership 

Ready to find the best CRM for your needs? 

Download our guide and begin your evaluation process.

Daniel Watts presents a quick video update showcasing how Hunter integrates with Xtime Engage to give your service professionals a quick and accurate glance at the inspection information they need.

When the technology in your service lane doesn’t sync with the rest of your dealership, you end up with manual processes and broken workflows that frustrate both your customers and your employees — and cost your business time and money. Watch the webinar.

Your service department needs to create seamless experiences that win repeat customers and add additional revenue for the business. But without better workflows, your team may struggle. The key? Boosted efficiencies with an automated flow of data between your DMS and service technology. You can leverage connected technologies to unleash your dealership’s potential and maximize profits.

Optimize Your Service Drive with Engage

Learn how your dealership can benefit from the intelligent connections that exist between Xtime Engage and Dealertrack DMS. When combined, these two powerful tools can boost your service drive by facilitating:

• Faster ROs that save advisor time
• Advisors that aren’t tied to their desks
• Digital processes that customers prefer
• RO and customer creation through Engage tablet

Maximize Profits with Xtime Integrations

By leveraging the connections between Xtime Inspect and Dealertrack DMS, your dealership can:

• Add RO lines in Dealertrack with proper Ops cods
• Push MR/QL with Ops codes
• Simply manage parts write back on ASRs
• Ensure that all grids, taxes, and shop supplies match across systems

To learn more about how to unlock your dealership’s potential, book your personalized demo, today.

About the Webinar Presenter

Matthew Warpinski

Matt is the Manager of Performance Management at Xtime. With a background in business management and marketing, Matt has more than 15 years of experience as a manager within automotive service departments. That experience has given him first-hand knowledge of nearly every aspect of a dealership and an impressive ability to reduce costs and increase profit.

According to research from Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. So there’s no question of if your dealership should offer shoppers personalized buying experiences, but many dealerships today are left wondering how.  

Manually personalizing every email and landing page is complicated, expensive, and simply unrealistic for most dealerships. But innovative dealership marketing tools exist that make personalization at scale possible and profitable.

Watch this short video from Mo Zahabi, AVP of Sales Engineering at Cox Automotive, to learn how marketing automation can make a big difference for your bottom-line results.  

See for yourself how Automotive Marketing Platform engages shoppers and boosts results. 

Learn more

Successful dealerships don’t operate in silos. When your departments work together, your employees, customers, and business all benefit. While Dealertrack DMS already has a wealth of data available, integrating with Xtime provides better insights and increased accuracy to help you make the educated decisions that drive business.

Hosted by Matt Warpinksi, Manager of Performance Management at Xtime, and Jade Mitchell, Sr. Manager of Performance Management at Dealertrack DMS, view this webinar to learn how to optimize Dealertrack DMS and Xtime integrations, including how to:

• Set up your technologies to increase employee efficiencies
• Produce consistent and accurate pricing between technologies
• Increase effective labor rates and drive profitability

Your customers expect a superior service experience that prioritizes personalization and caters to their every convenience.

Across all industries, there is more and more focus on customer experience. The service lane is no different – if you want to increase retention, boost satisfaction, and maximize your customers’ experience, we’ve outlined key areas to focus on.

• Strategy 1: Simplify the Appointment Process – Getting on your service schedule should be the least of their worries.
• Strategy 2: Keep Customers in the Know—Download the Xtime app for ease of communication.
• Strategy 3: Ensure Efficient Greetings and Check-Ins—Try self check-in with a tablet.
• Strategy 4: Present Additional Recommendations Effectively—Communication and attaching photos and video builds trust.
• Strategy 5: Close with a Lasting Impression—Xtime makes it easy for customers to pay and schedule future appointments.
• Strategy 6: Keep in Close Contact with Your Customers—Send special offers and mention declined service for a customized experience.

Keep these 6 tips in mind and your dealership will be on the way to a memorable service experience that creates repeat customers.

To learn more about these strategies and other tips, check out our guide, “Best Practices for Maximizing the Customer Experience”

A day in the life of most service departments is an adventure. From the moment you turn on the lights, power up your equipment, and open the service department doors, your customers are waiting and your team is busy with another round of repairs.

Before you know it, more customers show up unexpectedly, you can’t keep up with call volume, your business bottlenecks, and the day gets away. At this point, your team is just doing the best they can. In all the confusion, well-intentioned service processes go out the window and it’s every tech and service manager for themselves, each working to get the next customer and RO out the door.

Unfortunately, this kind of chaotic service process means that each customer gets a different experience—some are satisfied, others, not so much. To make matters worse, your technology can’t keep up with your team. Your current solution is difficult to use. It doesn’t facilitate communication between your team, your BDC, or your customers. And, in the end, you (and your customers) get an inconsistent, antiquated service process that lacks efficiency and any semblance of consistency.

If all this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. A day in the life of a typical service department is a dance that exists somewhere between controlled dysfunction and sheer determination to get the job done. It’s a common service complaint, and it’s one reason why so many customers are opting for other service options and many dealers are leaving dollars on the table.

There’s a lot of room for growth and improvement, to say the least. In fact, according to a 2021 Cox Automotive Service Industry Study¹, there’s roughly $214 billion in potential revenue up for grabs. That means dealerships willing to prioritize processes and give their customers the type of service experience they’re looking for could be first in line to capture a huge chunk of the market currently left on the table.

Consider the following process improvements to help you prioritize the service process and give your customers the experience they expect.

Innovate Your Operation with Digital Tools that Drive Better Processes

Your customers are looking for honest solutions to their automotive problems. They drive up to your service bay, speak with an advisor about a needed repair, and expect your team to provide a trusted recommendation.

For their part, your team is ready and waiting to offer friendly advice and proceed with needed repairs. But they can’t do it alone. Your multipoint inspection software should set them up for success with digital tools that remove barriers to inefficiency and establish a consistent workflow from the get-go.

You can’t just ask or expect your employees to work harder. You have to provide a defined pathway to improve workflows first. An automated service inspection technology that’s easy to use can help your team focus on the customer, while also helping you maximize shop efficiency.

When your technology is intuitive, customer-focused, and follows the same proven inspection formula every time, efficiency naturally follows. In fact, the right digital vehicle inspection software could help you grow your revenue by $123 per repair order.

Make Convenience Your M.O.

There’s a lot of money to be made from your service department (remember that $214 billion that’s up for grabs?), but improving profits is just one piece of the service process—the final piece, to be exact. And if you’re only focused on your bottom line, your customers’ experience will suffer.

The truth is that most of your customers don’t fully understand their vehicles’ exact repair needs. They do, however, understand what they want. They want your service team to thoroughly inspect their vehicles and present them with every repair option. And, they expect this process to be completed quickly, conveniently, and efficiently.

The multipoint inspection influences the entire service experience. The right solutions can deliver convenience from start to finish—from scheduling, approval of service, and even payment and financing options.

Service departments with a customer-first focus find ways to become more profitable. When you prioritize the process, a standard operating procedure that gives your customers a consistently convenient experience, you boost the reputation of your entire service center. This leads to an increase in referrals, repeat customers, and positive online reviews. Profits always follow process.

Unravel the Mystery of ‘Under the Hood’

You know cars. Your customers most likely don’t. While this information gap keeps your service drive alive, it can also lead to an inherent sense of distrust. In fact, two out of three drivers in the U.S. don’t trust you—an unsettling statistic given that trust is one of the four most important qualities your customers consider when they choose a service provider.

The consumer experience is now even more important than the car repair itself. As expectations continue to rise in this customer-comes-first culture, the service process becomes even more important. Your customers don’t want to deal with a subpar or even good-enough experience. They want convenience and they want transparency—transparency in service recommendations, estimates, and approval process. When transparency is lacking, it leads to declined services and frustration. When it’s present, your process and profits improve.

A multipoint inspection technology that utilizes photo and video sharing can give your customers inside access to your service department without being there in person. When your customers see and understand the need for a recommended repair, you inspire trust, promote retention, and lift your revenue in the process. It also leads to a 70% lift in revenue per RO when video is attached to ASRs.²

Again, your customers don’t always understand what goes on underneath the hood of their vehicle and they’re reluctant to invest in repairs without a trusted recommendation. But once you’ve established that trust, once you’ve shown them that your service experience is built around their interests, your customers will reciprocate the respect. In fact, 53 percent of customers will stay loyal to your service department because you developed that trust.³

A day in the life of most service departments is an adventure. But it can be an adventure for all the right reasons: a customer journey of convenience and transparency made possible by the right process and the right tools.

If your service process has been more chaotic than convenient, more trying than transparent, it might be time to rethink your multipoint inspection software. A well-structured, consistent service process that considers your customers first is so much more than routine. It gives your dealership the digital tools to address rising expectations and capitalize on operational opportunities.

Integrating the right multipoint inspection software into a dealership’s daily fixed operations can enhance your team’s capabilities, improve customer engagement and retention, boost efficiency, and help you stake claim to your portion of a billion-dollar opportunity.

Ready to learn how you can revolutionize your daily service routines and improve customer convenience, transparency, and trust? Take a tour of Xtime’s Multipoint Inspection Technology here.

¹2021 Cox Automotive Service Industry Study

²2016 AAA Survey, 2018 Cox Automotive Service Industry Study, Xtime Data, Period Analyzed Q1 2021

³2016 AAA Survey, 2018 Cox Automotive Service Industry Study, Xtime Data, Period Analyzed Q1 2021

New technology is often packaged in promises: perfectly robust—a solution that can do everything and deliver next-level customer experiences, no problem. Sounds too good to be true? Often, when you’re evaluating new technologies and tools for your service department, they just might be…

That’s because no matter how proficiently trained your service technicians are, or how adept everyone is with the highly complicated systems you’re using to run your business, your service pros will eventually move on. The next generation of employees that come on board will need to get up-to-speed (and fast) on your technology to deliver the customer care you’re known for. So, it begs the question: are you evaluating technology for its ability to adapt to your business? Is it easy to use?

When your shop management solution is both robust and easy to use, you can maximize your team’s productivity, facilitate more consistent processes, and easily manage your workload. In the end, all those efficiency gains get passed along to your customers by way of a better service experience. Consider the following benefits of an easy-to-use shop management solution.

Technology that Facilitates Service Capacity

Peak-time bottlenecks lead to poor service practices. When service customers are lined up at your dealership, your team doesn’t have the time to diagnose and identify every additional repair order. They’re too busy trying to get one customer out the door, so they can welcome another in.

Your service scheduling technology should help you visualize capacity, so you can easily make daily adjustments and space out your service visits to avoid bottlenecks to your business. An easy-to-use shop management solution can help your team manage shop capacity and put a daily cap on certain types of repairs, creating a steady flow of appointments that balances the day.

Technology that Facilitates Helpful Support

Even when your solution is easy to use, it’s nice to know that you have an experienced support team backing you up to answer questions, provide solutions, and even strategize with your dealership about how to get the most out of your technology and your team.

The right shop management solution will be easy for your team and your customers to use because it looks like the technology they interact with every day. It doesn’t have a foreign, unfamiliar interface. It’s intuitive in its design. And, when you do need support or ideas to boost the efficiency of your team, your provider is there to help you maximize your shop management solution.

Technology that Facilitates Communication

Whether between your team or with your customers, communication isn’t always the most effective way to spend a day. When your techs have to ask for an opinion on a repair or check for parts availably, it takes them away from the job at hand and slows down the entire service process. On top of that, your customers want constant updates about their vehicles, and taking phone calls and reaching out to them takes time that could be spent maximizing the repair process.

When your shop management tool facilitates instant communication between team members, you can increase efficiency and maximize repair orders. Prioritize a shop management solution with a chat functionality that allows your team to easily share pictures and videos of repairs and get on-hand parts and inventory information.

Your shop management solution should also facilitate communication with customers. By giving customers the ability to make decisions about repairs during the scheduling process and real-time status updates on their phones throughout the service process, you make it easy for your customers to do business with you.

There’s hidden potential in your service department. It’s just a matter of finding the right shop management technology to help you tap into that potential to address excess service capacity, improve communication, and get the most out of every repair order.

Book an Xtime Inspect demo today to see how an easy-to-use shop management solution can help your dealership.