Digital Dealer - January 2019 - 34

D E A L E R OP S & M ANAGEM ENT: F ixe d O per at i ons

By Herb Mast
President,
HealthyDEALER

Great Service
Managers Follow
a 4C Approach
Every time I ask service
managers about the 4th
C I get a blank stare.
All service managers
know about the 3 Cs: Concern, Cause, and Correction, but none seem to know
what the 4th C is. Why is
that?
The answer is actually
quite simple. The 4th C
is not part of the original
formula and did not exist
until I had an epiphany while
working with a client and
gave life to the 4th C. You
see, this particular client
wanted to increase their
customer experience and
after much discussion we
came to the realization that
the 3C approach does not
go far enough.
The 3 Cs seem to have
originated with manufacturers and warranty administrators as a way to hold
service departments more
accountable for warranty
billings. By requiring repair
orders to detail certain
minimum and consistent
information, manufacturers
were better able to validate
the legitimacy of warranty
claims. And, since each of
these validation items begins with C, the alliteration
of the 3 Cs was born.
In other words, in order for
34

JANUARY 2019

dealers to be paid for warranty claims, the technician's
story on every repair order
must detail the concern
underlying the claim, how
the technician diagnosed the
situation to discover the root
cause of the concern, and
what the technician did to
correct the concern.
This makes total sense
for warranty claims, but
how the 3 Cs became
the industry standard for

don't go beyond the 3 Cs
are delivering inferior quality, have higher incidences
of repeat repairs, provide a
lesser customer experience,
get lower CSI scores, and
reap lower customer retention as a result.
The good news is that
with a simple epiphany and
a small paradigm shift every
dealer can adopt the 4C
approach to provide higher
quality repairs, experience

THE BENEFIT OF
VERIFYING IS THAT IT
REDUCES THE RELIANCE
ON TRUST, WHICH IS
HELPFUL WHEN TRUST
IS ALREADY IN SHORT
SUPPLY."
customer-pay repair orders
behooves me. The reality
is that the 3 Cs fall woefully short when it comes
to customer-pay. Kudos to
those few dealers, the truly
customer-centric ones, who
figured it out on their own as
they simply sought to provide a high level of service
to their customers. Unfortunately, most service consultants still haven't caught on
and still only teach the 3C
approach.
I contend that stores who

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

fewer comebacks, and
deliver better customer
experiences while reaping
higher CSI and retention.
THE EPIPHANY:
CUSTOMERS DON'T
CARE ABOUT CAUSE
AND CORRECTION

The old axiom holds true:
perception is reality.
So, when customers
arrive in your service drive,
their issue is usually a
combination of reality and
perception together with a
dose of emotion. They are

not thinking in terms of the 3
Cs. Hence, they don't really
care how their concern is diagnosed, nor the corrective
action that is recommended/
taken. In other words, they
simply want you to make
their issue go away-provided it does not result in
higher than necessary cost
and inconvenience.
Since most dealers are
myopic, transactional, and
rationally focused they dive
right into problem-solving
mode and often don't fully
listen to the customer's concern, thereby missing many
of the subtle, but important,
emotional cues.
For those that have read
some of my other articles
you know that research has
found that emotions/feelings have three times more
impact on people's choices
and behaviors as compared to rational and logical
factors-for a refresher on
the greater impact of the
emotional brain refer to my
article, "Research Reveals
Up-Caring to be 3X More
Effective Than Up-Selling"(1).
A customer concern is more
times than not emotionally
based, like the irritation of
a rattle, vibration, squeak,
or warning light, which is
usually associated with
a rational element, like
metal-on-metal brakes,
over-heating engine, or A/C
not blowing cold, etc.
A disconnect often exists
because service advisers,
managers, and technicians
tend to think rationally
(diagnosis and correction)
while customers, who don't
understand what is done
behind the curtain, tend to
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