Pub. 13 2023 Issue 3

Ways to Increase Your Service Department Traffic Although your parts and service departments are fixed operations, there are ways to increase traffic and, ultimately, your net profit. The first and most obvious one is keeping expenses down. That could be worth a separate article, but assuming you’ve already done that, the next step is to increase net profit by focusing on creating new business. There are several ways to accomplish this. You could focus on the profit margins for labor and parts sales, increase the number of sales per repair order or increase your repair order count. This article is about the last option, a fancy way of saying you should increase foot traffic. Examine Capacity Challenges We would all like to think that the pandemic is behind us; however, pandemic-related consequences continue. The shutdown prevented many people from maintaining their vehicles on time, and many owners are still playing catchup. The auto parts supply chain is still dealing with shortages, thanks partly to a brittle and arguably too-long path between the factory and the service department and partly to shutdowns and employee shortages. Currently, there aren’t enough loaner cars because many businesses sold off their fleets to generate needed income and haven’t been able to replace them. Thanks to labor shortages, some auto dealership service departments are understaffed. 24 Illinois Automobile Dealer News

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