LAS VEGAS -

 Sandy Schwartz was taking an Uber.

The Cox Automotive president asked the driver, how many miles do drive each year?

“And he says, ‘Well, I used to drive 10,000 miles, but now that I’m doing this, I’m driving 30,000 miles,’” Schwartz said.

The lightbulb goes off: two big potential business-generators there.

“One is, he’s going to need more service, and two, he’s going to need a new car a lot sooner,” Schwartz said. “So in my mind, opportunities galore. Mobility’s just changing how we do it.”

The service side of the business is a huge opportunity, Schwartz said, one that includes high margins and strong brand loyalty.

There’s a lot of potential for expansion in the service drive.

And innovation.

Shortly before the NADA Convention & Expo in Las Vegas, Dealer-FX — which provides integrated service and retention tools for dealers and automakers — released an updated route sheet designed to give service advisors and technicians a way to manage work flow more efficiently and spot issues ahead of time.

The product incorporate predictive analytics to accomplish this. The end result the company aims for is a more efficient operation with stronger retention and loyalty.

The route sheet is designed to benchmark each step of the service process, tallying everything from the time it takes each step to be completed to sales/penetration metrics, customer satisfaction and performance indicators.  It also aims to show where there are logjams in the service process.

“As the leader in customer-focused service lane technology, Dealer-FX has demonstrated successful engagements with OEM clients who are increasingly looking for new ways to improve customer retention within their dealerships. We are excited to add this new dynamic route sheet to our product suite,” Dealer-FX president and chief executive Gary Kalk said in a news release on the product.

“Customer confidence in traditional service departments has been eroding over time, driven by the impression that advisors are hiding information behind ‘black box’ terminals,” he added. “Now OEMs are determined to reverse these perceptions and create an improved customer experience.”

In an interview at the NADA Convention, Kalk said that over the past few years, there has been a “big shift” in dealers becoming more tech-savvy when it comes to the service department. By and large, they realize there needs to be change.

In fact, all of the automakers are going to be offering service-lane technology in the near term, he said.

“Every one,” Kalk said. “It doesn’t matter who they are.

“I think the industry now recognizes this is a must, not a ‘should have,’” he said. “It’s a ‘have to have.’”

Why Rapid Recon moved into recall space

Dennis McGinn, the chief executive officer at Rapid Recon, was watching the recent recall landslide develop, and initially thought it wasn’t a slice of the car business he wanted the company involved.

But as the situation developed further and he learned more, McGinn realized helping dealers address recalls made sense for Rapid Recon.

“Because that’s what we’re doing; we’re helping getting the cars ready to sell, and (addressing recalls) is just one more thing that needs to be done,” McGinn said during an interview at NADA.

Rapid Recon’s Recall Management tool aims to help dealers address and close open safety recalls on vehicles more efficiently.  The company teamed up with safety recall management solution provider AutoAp, and has incorporated the latter’s safety recall verification system into its own reconditioning program, Rapid Recon said on its website.

This, the company explained, lets dealers “now close the loop on safety recall risk inside of the reconditioning process, by identifying safety recalls on their in-brand and off-brand pre-owned inventory daily.”

So, dealers can spot the open recall from the get-go, when, for instance, the customer walks in with a trade that’s under an open recall, McGinn said. That helps the dealer in a few different ways: for one, the dealer can give a bit more clarification to the consumer. Additionally, it opens up an opportunity for service department revenue that they may have missed otherwise.

And it helps prevent that car from reaching the front line with an open recall.

“One in four vehicles today has an open safety recalls on it, and though dealers trust their VIN safety recall notifications, we’re finding a 30-percent error rate in that data instead through our Recall Management app,” McGinn said in a news release heading into NADA. 

Beyond equity

A description for Naked Lime’s XtremeService product on the company’s website boils it down simply enough.

“They come for service. You get a new sale,” it reads.

“I would say, ideally, what it really does in — in kind of a CliffsNotes version — is that it helps you, No. 1, move used units,” said Chris Walsh, vice president at Naked Lime Marketing, during an interview at NADA. “You’re going to take used cars that come into your dealership in the service lane, put them into a newer used car. But as a byproduct of doing that, I think what it can help you do is improve your inventory mix.

“You can run specific campaigns targeting owners of specific types of vehicles,” Walsh said.

Any time you talk trade-in, the term “equity position” comes into play as it relates to the consumer. While XtremeService — which can be used to drive both new and used sales — is designed to go beyond that.

“If you’re just looking at it from an equity perspective, you’re missing rebates, you’re missing manufacturer incentives that are out there,” Walsh said. “So, someone who, on paper, looks upside-down $1,500, when you factor in those other things, now it’s a good deal for you to go out there. You have to think about it outside of just what their equity position is.”

Walsh also touched on how XtremeService relates to customer loyalty. Look at your customers:  what you will find is that, “the chances of you getting that customer to buy another car from you is about 50 percent. You’ve got a 50-50 shot at getting them,” he said.

Through XtremeService, Naked Lime “disrupts that trade cycle,” Walsh said. 

“Because they’re not in the market to buy a car, they just came in to get their car fixed,” he said. “But if you do it right, and you can identify the right people with the right parameters, and then go have that conversation about, ‘Hey, what if I could put you in the same car, same trim, same terms for $10 less than what you’re spending right now, would you be interested?’”

For most people, Walsh said, the answer will be yes.