Truck owners often complain about the lack of communication from dealers during the truck service and repair process. But some of America's top truck dealers note that communication goes both ways.
When we spoke to the American Truck Dealers/Heavy Duty Trucking Truck Dealer of the Year nominees, we asked them for their tips to help speed along the repair process and other ways to work with your dealer.
"Sometimes we give the customer the written estimate, and the customer doesn't respond back to us," said John "Jack" Saum, chairman of the board of Beltway Companies in Baltimore and the 2010 ATD/HDT Truck Dealer of the Year. "I've got a limited number of bays and technicians, so if he doesn't respond in a timely manner, we have to push that truck back out," he explained.
"I think sometimes the customer needs to better understand that timely communication with the dealer does keep his repair in the proper cycle. If it takes him 24 hours to make the decision, the odds are pretty high the truck had been pushed back out of the shop." And it has to wait its turn to get back in.
TWO-WAY STREET
Nominee Mark Gillam, president of Floyd's Sales & Service in Scottsbluff, Neb., has the same problem. "Many times we call big fleets and it takes a long time for them to get back with us to give us the OK to repair the truck," Gillam said. "Quicker response from them would help us considerably. And I know they need that from us as well. That's a give and take there."
Jay Ellison, president of French-Ellison Truck Center in San Antonio, has made communication with customers a priority in the last four or five years. But the effort is most successful when fleets return the favor.
"Sometimes it takes us three or four phone calls to the customer," Ellison noted: One for an authorization, one for an estimate, one for a purchase order, and another for the final bill. "It's a two-way street. They're requesting a lot more information, but sometimes they're not real good at providing us with information. I think we've still got a ways to go to meet the expectation the customer has, and also for the customer to have a system in place that allows us to meet that expectation. If they require an estimate and we can't get hold of anyone by phone or e-mail, then the system breaks down." The truck gets pulled back out of the shop, and may be delayed getting back in once you've gotten back to the dealer.
Greg Lesher, president of Lesher Mack Sales & Service in Lebanon, Pa., wishes customers would be more honest when they bring the trucks in. "Sometimes someone will say they need it back in three hours when they really don't," he said. "They may just be afraid that if they don't say that, their truck won't get looked at immediately."
Blake Jackson, president of Peterbilt of Utah - Idaho, said the more detailed you can be with the information you provide the dealer, the better, especially with issues that are tricky to diagnose. "The thing that has helped us the most is documentation," he explains. "The customers that have very detailed notes or repair history or downtime information, those are the customers we're able to help diagnose the problem quickest and fix the problem going forward."
BUILDING A PARTNERSHIP
There's also more long-term communication at issue. Dealers say if fleets communicate more about their needs, both short-term and long-term, the dealership will be better able to meet those needs.
"International I think does an incredibly good job of providing services to a customer that will reduce his cost over the life cycle of the vehicle," Saum says. "When we go out to a customer, we do a customer solutions presentation and try to match the needs of a particular customer with what we have available. Some customers don't want to listen. But when they're willing to, I think generally speaking we are able to partner with them to reduce their costs over the life of that vehicle. I think once they make that thought change, 'How can I partner with the dealer to reduce my life cycle costs,' it really is a win-win for the customer and the dealer."
Ellison noted that there are some truck buyers who go from dealer to dealer, buying almost entirely on price. "A lot of times, those customers, they get shortchanged, in that no one really gets to know what their equipment needs are," he explained. "If you buy a truck you're going to keep for five or six years and you save $3,000, by the time you spread that over six years, it's not that much money." By buying only on price, he said, you could get a truck that's not as durable or efficient or doesn't fit your particular needs as well as you could if you were working with a dealership to make sure you get a truck with the right specs for your operations.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SERVICES
The dealer nominees noted that they offer many services today that fleets can take advantage of to keep costs down and make their jobs easier.
For instance, Lesher's dealership does pickup and delivery within a one-hour radius for service. Not only is it convenient for the customer, he says, but also the drive back to the shop gives the technician a feel for what the problem may be.
Lesher also offers consignment parts deals with some of his larger customers - it doesn't cost the customer anything until they pull it off the shelf, so the fleet doesn't bear the expense of carrying that inventory, there's no worries about obsolescence.
For fleets that aren't large enough for that kind of service, Lesher says, they have designed a template that customers can just fax or e-mail in for parts orders, and the driver can drop off the parts. He gets frustrated that more customers don't take advantage of this. "They want to see that face out in the field, but at the end of the day, that face costs more money. Obviously if you're not sure what part you need, you need the expertise at the counter, but there's no need to tie up the outside parts sales guy" for routine parts orders.
DON'T SKIMP ON PM
Bob Nuss, president of Nuss Truck Group in Rochester, Minn., and the Truck Dealer of the Year finalist, pointed out that doing regular preventive maintenance on your trucks will save headaches both on the road and at the dealer. This has become a problem with the tight economy the last couple of years.
"We see a lot of customers who are doing reactive maintenance to breakdowns," he said. "Instead of doing routine maintenance like changing the gear oil, some of that stuff doesn't get changed until they have a failure. They have breakdowns that cause them a headache, then it causes a crisis at our place because they have to get in right away, they've got a load of strawberries or a load of meat."
Nuss cited an example from a couple of years ago where an engine failed. The customer claimed the engine was defective, but after downloading the electronic information from the truck, the Cummins shop discovered it had been run with the yellow warning lights and on the red shutdown lights signaling low oil pressure for 30 day before the truck failed. Simple preventive maintenance could have prevented a catastrophic failure, he said.
Read about the ATD/HDT Truck Dealer of the Year winners in the May issue of Heavy Duty Trucking, along with the nominees' thoughts on issues ranging from the recession and the medium-duty market shakeup to what they're doing on their end to improve service communications and turnaround and the trend toward more complex trucks.
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