The Mon Motors Group has taken an innovative approach to developing service reception staff, and boosting their performance.

Daryl Kirk, group aftersales manager at Mon Motors, explains:

“In these difficult times, all of us are looking to improve profitability, and one of the best ways to see a tangible return on investment is focusing on improving processes – to drive conversion rates for work identified in vehicle healthchecks, for example.

Service advisers play a crucial and demanding role in mediating between workshop and customers. It is imperative that they have the skills to handle customer objections delicately, while meeting the requirements to capitalise on upsell opportunities.

In January 2007 Mon Motors established a guild for all its service advisers. This league table allows staff to monitor their upselling performance, with prizes awarded on a regular basis.

To help service reception staff to improve their position in the guild – and the performance of the department – we placed many of them on Castrol Professional’s Red Carpet training programme.

Having been responsible for overseeing and delivering training in a former role, I viewed it with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Feedback from service advisers was unanimously positive. All those who took part said that it was better than any course they had attended in both content – which was specifically tailored to their role – and delivery in short, high impact modules, given on-site at the dealership.

As well as this feedback, we have seen real improvements in performances. Of those staff who have undergone the course, there has been substantial movement upwards in the guild tables. The training has had a clear and positive impact both to individual performance and department profits.

Facing an uncertain economic climate and with ambitious targets to increase our aftersales bottom line profits, we need to be confident that every opportunity is being seized. With motivated and well-trained staff, the chain between workshop and customer has never been stronger.”