12:22 pm, July 21, 2008
HAVE your service advisers received enough training?
If they haven’t, they are hitting your profits for six.
Castrol Professional’s ongoing survey into franchised service departments reveals that over half of service advisers have received less than the industry-recommended minimum of five days’ training.
This has a direct link to profits: the more training they’ve had, the better they are at upselling. Given how important this is to generating business, you can see why the stats are so alarming.
The fact that one in five advisers have received two days’ training or less has wider implications, too. Such advisers are less satisfied in their jobs, and plan to leave the role within the next two years.
Don’t think you can over-egg things, either. Even those advisers that receive the most training (nine or more days per year), or who have many years’ experience in the role, don’t reckon they’re getting too much training. 85 per cent believed that the training they receive is valuable.
‘While any training on top of a manufacturer-specified programme will inevitably have some cost implication, dealers must ask themselves if they can afford not to invest in better training their staff,’ said Adrian Brabazon, Castrol OEM and workshop marketing manager.
‘If staff feel unable to upsell additional work to the customer, the dealership will miss out on this increasingly important source of dealer profit.’
