Why the phone rings but the workshop stays empty

I’ll die on the hill that many failures blamed on the ad agency are actually systemic failures inside the business.

The marketing works. The phone rings. But the cars never show up.

I spoke recently with my friend Liam Lezra, who knows more about marketing for auto repair shops than anyone I know. Our conversation turned to a problem he runs into often.

He takes on a new client and fixes their marketing. The phone starts ringing. But the number of cars booked into the workshop doesn’t go up nearly as much as expected.

When this happens he starts by listening to the calls between prospective customers and service advisors.

He’s found three types of customer calls that are regularly handled badly:

• the price shopper
• the busy workshop
• the ghost customer

The Price Shopper

This caller already has a diagnosis and a price from another shop. They say something like:

Okay, so it says here… transmission flush, new filter, labour… it comes to about $3,000. How much would you charge for that?

Most service advisors respond the same way:

We can’t give you a price without seeing the car.

That is technically correct. But when it’s repeated two or three times, the call goes nowhere. The customer hangs up and calls the next shop

The Busy Workshop

A customer calls with a problem. The service advisor checks the schedule and realises the workshop is already full. The instinctive response is something like:

We’re really busy today. You might want to try another shop.

The advisor is trying to be helpful, but they’ve just turned a $30 Local Service Ad call into a referral for someone else.

The Ghost Customer

A customer calls. They explain the problem with their car. The service advisor listens and gives a helpful answer.Then the call ends like this:

Okay, just stop by whenever you’re ready.

No name. No phone number. No appointment. There is no way to follow up. The opportunity is gone forever.

None of these situations require genius sales skills. The problem is that most service advisors are improvising every call. There is no script that sets out what to say and what to ask.

Now, when many people hear the word script, they imagine some foreign call centre operator stumbling through a page of text in a robotic monotone.

But think about some of the most famous lines in film.

• "You can’t handle the truth!" from A Few Good Men.
• "With great power comes great responsibility" from Spider-Man.
• Or Julia Roberts saying, "I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her" in Notting Hill.

These lines were written in advance. They’re scripts. But nothing about them sounded robotic.

A good phone script works the same way. It is not there to turn your service advisor into a robot. It is there to give them a structure so they’re not trying to invent the right words under pressure.

The conversation can still be natural. In fact, it usually becomes better.

Here are some ideas.

Handling the Price Shopper

Instead of repeating:

We can’t give you a price without seeing the car.

The advisor could say:

It sounds like you may have already taken the car to another shop. Is that right?

When the caller says yes:

Great. We actually offer a free second opinion. Sometimes we find the problem is smaller than what was quoted. I don’t want to give you a number over the phone that could be completely wrong. It might be $3,000… or it might be $30. The only way to know is to take a look. Can you bring the car in today?

Handling the Busy Workshop

Instead of saying:

We’re really busy today. Try another shop.

The advisor might say:

We’re very busy here today, but we can still take care of that for you. Our sister shop can look at it. Can you bring the car in today?

Preventing the Ghost Customer

Instead of ending the call with:

Stop by whenever you’re ready.

The script should make sure the advisor captures details and sets a next step. For example:

Great. Let’s get you taken care of. What’s your name?... And what’s the best number to reach you on?... Perfect... Can you bring the car in this afternoon or would tomorrow morning work better?

Now the shop has the customer’s contact details and a plan.

But scripts aren’t going to solve the problem on their own. You also need to make sure they’re being followed.

Liam recommends that the owner or manager review five calls per service advisor per week. If you identify a bad call, listen to it together with the service advisor and discuss what happened. What worked. What didn’t. What should be done differently next time.

This accountability needs to happen regularly, because lead handling quality inevitably decays. And when each call might represent hundreds or thousands of dollars of work, that’s not something you want left to chance.

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