Ask an auto dealer about their detail department, and they will usually rattle off a litany of problems. Or, if you ask them what the biggest problem in the dealership is, they will usually reply, “the detailing department.”

However you ask the question, the answer is always the same: detailing departments in dealerships pose problems for the dealer.

What are the problems?

The most cited problems are generally always the same with most dealers:

  • Dirty, disorganized and an eye­sore for the dealership
  • High labor costs
  • Undependable and unreliable employees
  • Extremely high chemical and supply costs
  • Poor quality work
  • Slow turnaround

The Detail Department Reflects the Dealer

Simply stated, a detail department is a reflection of the dealer principal’s or general manager’s attitude about the detailing department. Hard as that statement might be for a dealer to accept — or as much as they might try to justify the “whys” for these problems — the burden and the solution rests squarely on their shoulders.

Be honest. How important is the detail department to you? How much time do you spend to make it better?

If you go into a restaurant and find the service poor and the food marginal, it is due to one thing: bad management.

The same is true of a hotel where desk clerks, bellmen, restaurants and overall service is lacking. It is traced to the hotel manager.

If the dealer principal or general manager is not responsible, then who is? When asked to evaluate a dealership’s detailing department and make recommendations involving major changes and/or a substantial investment to upgrade, it is always the dealer principal who has the final word.

Therefore, if a dealer expresses dissatisfaction with his or her detail department but is unwilling to make any effort or investment to improve the department, it’s telling me they don’t really care that much about changing anything.

To Be More Specific

This is not intended to be a critique of dealer principals or general managers, so let me offer some possible solutions.

Over the years that I have consulted to dealers and others in the detail business, I have found that problems can be categorized into four areas:

  1. Attitude
  2. Management
  3. Personnel
  4. Technology

All of these play a major role in the successful operation of a dealership detail department.

1. Attitude

Simply, it is the dealer principal’s attitude about the importance of the detail department in the overall operation of the dealership that affects what you will find in the department. This attitude trickles down to GMs, sales managers and the detailers themselves.

 

2. Management

Any dealership that processes a minimum of 100 to 150 vehicles per month requires management, supervision and accountability.

In a dealership, the sales department (new and used), service department and body shop all have managers or supervisors and are held accountable for certain standards. However, this is not the case with the dealership detail department. Management is given to the used-car manager or the service managers, who really do not want the responsibility and do not even know what to manage or how to manage the department to make it better. So, how can it be better? Those in charge are basically a “babysitter” for the department.

3. Personnel

Detail personnel are the one problem you hear voiced by more dealers than any other. Why? That is simple! It is easier to blame someone than to assume responsibility.

Face it: who hires the personnel? The dealer, GM, or whoever is put in charge of the detail department. If you do not put sufficient time and effort into selective hiring and proper training, you will end up with unsatisfactory employees.

In my opinion, the reason for the personnel problems in most detail operations is that managers hire “typical detailers.” That is employing the unemployable, and trying to train the untrainable. When you hire an experienced detailer, the first thing they want to do is change the chemicals being used to the ones they have used before. If you have detailing procedures, they will want to follow their own. They are not interested in following; they want to do what they know, and few really know anything. Most of them have never had any formal training. When a detailer says he has three years experience, we say, “No, he has had three months experience doing the same thing two years and nine months.”

Bottom line: hire people with good values and potential, not skills. People with good values can be taught skills.

4. Technology

Bottom line: dealership detail departments are inefficient because no one knows what good detail technology is available. The dealer does not; the GM does not; the service manager does not; and neither do the detailers. Most are using the same technology that has been in detailing for the past 60 to 70 years:

  • Portable shop vacuums
  • 10-pound electric buffers
  • Hand scrub brushes
  • Plastic squeeze and spray bottles
  • Rags and scrap towels
  • Buckets

There are new technologies such as central vacuums, soil extractors, vapor steamers, air tools, orbital tools (that will wax a car in five minutes), automatic chemical diluting and dispensing systems, etc.

These new detail technologies can eliminate most, if not all, off the common problems facing dealers with an in-house detail department; but it requires an investment of time, money, and effort. If a dealer is not willing to expend the time, money, or effort, then they must be willing to settle for what they have always had.