Fixed Ops Journal - October 2019 - F22

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

LONG DAYS, GOOD OUTCOMES

Dealerships expand service hours to meet growing workload without adding bays
STEPHANIE HERNANDEZ McGAVIN

foj@autonews.com

hen Joe Miller became service
manager of Webster Groves Subaru in suburban St. Louis in October 2018, he found his shop didn't
have enough time or space to do its work.
While the service department typically filled
40 to 50 repair orders a day, it carried over another eight to 10 tickets to the next day.
"We couldn't get all the work done that people
were coming in for," Miller told Fixed Ops Journal. "We were having a tremendous amount of
carryovers and frustrated customers."
Almost immediately, Miller extended the
store's Saturday service hours to 8 a.m. to 4
p.m.; the shop previously had closed at 1 p.m.
Last December, he also extended the dealership's weekday service hours - previously 8
a.m. to 4 p.m. - to 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. He overhauled his technicians' work shifts to accommodate the longer hours, and he hired two
more techs to fill out his team of 10 line techs
in the eight-bay shop.
The changes contributed to increased sales,
Miller says, because service customers appreciated the shorter waits and greater convenience. The techs were happier too, he adds,
because their schedules were more flexible
and created more consecutive days off. (See
related story, Page 23.)
As demands for service increase, limited
shop capacity is a growing problem for many
new-vehicle dealerships. Cox Automotive reported in its most recent Service Industry
Study that customer wait times are getting
longer as use of service bays grows. As 86 percent of dealership service bays are in use on a
typical day, the study notes, 30 percent of
consumers reported their biggest complaint
with dealership service was that it took longer
than they expected.
To address these issues, "more and more
dealerships [are] offering service hours in the
evenings and on weekends, even on Sundays,"
says Darrel Ferguson, director of performance
management at Cox Automotive's Xtime subsidiary. The Cox study suggests that about half
of dealerships are handling higher demand by
scheduling more service on weekends. Extended hours also enable a dealership to bring
in more techs and keep them busy without
adding service bays, analysts say.
Terry Weszner, fixed operations manager at
Kupper Subaru in Mandan, N.D., says his

PAGE 22

OCTOBER 2019

Service technician James Stoeckel works
10-hour days at Webster Groves Subaru.

4 freedoms

Fixed ops consultant Lee Harkins
identifies 4 key advantages to
extended service hours at dealerships.
1. Consumer convenience: Service
customers have more choice over
when to bring in their vehicles.
2. Shop efficiency: Longer hours allow
for greater use of service bays.
3. Cost control: Dealerships don't
have to add bays to meet customer
demand.
4. Tech flexibility: Extended hours let
shops schedule service techs to work
longer but fewer days.
Source: M5 Management Services

shop was scheduling appointments as much
as two weeks in advance because his techs
couldn't keep up with demand, even when
they doubled up on using service bays.
Weszner couldn't add a bay, so he extended
his shop hours to 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. six days a
week. The shop previously was open week-

days from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturdays
from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The expanded schedule
allowed him to hire four techs.
"It's definitely reduced our wait time,"
Weszner says. "We went down to a couple
days as far as booking out, and sometimes
customers can even get in the next day."

Tight squeeze
Lee Harkins, CEO of the fixed ops consulting
group M5 Management Services Inc. in Pelham, Ala., notes that many automakers are
pressing their dealers to boost service capacity to help meet increased customer demand.
But adding bays is expensive, and many dealerships lack the space to do so, he says.
Ideally, Harkins says, a dealership's service
hours would match its sales hours. Still, any
service extension provides more convenience
to time-pressed customers, who often must
schedule service visits around their own work
hours, he says.
Harkins says that when a dealership client
he declined to identify added Sunday service
see HOURS, next page

Fixed Ops Journal - October 2019

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