A new survey by the Gillrie Institute ‘Technology in Service Department’ ranks ‘Service’ the most important area for dealership success far above New and Used Car business. Almost 9 out of 10 responding dealers anticipate that the size of their Service department will become somewhat or substantially larger over the next 5 years. As the adoption and satisfaction scores for tablet PC-based walk-around tools remain low, around 60% of the respondents indicate an investment in electronic Service Write-Up solutions over the next 12 months.
With decreasing margins in the variable business, most dealers are looking at Service to boost profit. Deploying technology in the Service workflow promises the highest upside for dealers in pursuing this growth strategy, but that approach comes with options and challenges.
It appears that Service as a business unit is turning into the major engine for a dealership long-term success. This survey aimed to better understand the trajectory of Service as a profit center, and how dealership technology is currently or will be utilized in the Service Drive to foster higher Revenue per RO, and CSI. We wanted to study the rate of adoption of service scheduling, service walk-around, and mobile tech solutions. The results of our study not only display the dealer’s decision making points when selecting dealership technology for the Service Drive, but also the level of satisfaction with the different service applications.
Stefan Drechsel, Marketing Director at the Gillrie Institute.
