I wonder how many hours per day a tractor salesman could spend keeping every one of his customers "in the loop"? If he only sold one or two tractors a day, after a while that could add up to a few hours per day simply calling, texting, emailing. And remember each one of those customers thinks that his problem is the most important thing in the world.
several comments worth mentioning
Most dealers aren't out to sell 1 or 2 tractors a day. They'd like to sell 10-50 a day if possible. Kubota is more or less pushing the little dealers into bigger and "better" things, similar to what JD did in the early 2000's. In doing this they're kinda forcing dealers to carry more and bigger stuff. With more volume and bigger equipment they gotta figure out how to support it all. That is where the struggle is.
I managed a service department for 25 years. The last 3 or so they hired a dedicated service manager. I was a working service manager meaning I was in the shop getting filthy dirty, while answering phone calls, calling people with estimates, doing paperwork out the yazoo, filing warranties and pre-approvals, running parts for 2 other techs, crunching numbers, occasionally helping out in parts and seldomly in sales, I also did new vehicle assembly and predelivery inspections as well as trade-in appraisals and inspections. For a number of years, state motorcycle inspections as well. Mind you I had 4 major product lines, 7 at one point but for the majority of that 25 years, 4 major lines. Just using myself as an example.
Finding time to sit down and call customers was, painful. It was necessary, but in my case I had to actually prioritize calls. Equipment under warranty was priority over out-of-warranty paying customers (per the boss). New vehicle assembly and PDI priority over everything. Basically, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I took between 90 and 130 phone calls per day during peak season (April through about November). I did my best to keep the other techs off the phone so they could work and even then I couldn't do it all and they had to help out once in a while. That job was a pain in the butt but it prepared me for what was fixing to come later on in my working life.
Almost all dealers are short staffed. They also don't pay their guys and gals nearly enough $$$ to do all the stuff they gotta do. Because of being short staffed and lack of decent pay, it was very common for folks in all departments to fail to communicate with the customers. Parts folks have to deal with the hundreds or thousands of parts coming in off the trucks, check them in, then figure out who gets what. Special order? Shop? Stock? Then they're calling customers. So they don't have the time to call, and on that note the majority of the time people don't answer their phone anyway. Most folks are 37% more likely to answer a text message than a phone call, and 18% more likely to answer a text than an email. So it's text--->email--->phone call, in that order. Return phone call? LOL! Salespeople have a list of emails and phone calls to return to generate sales. Then the ones that walk through the doors, the most important ones. They ain't got time to call people for service stuff, and if they do, they won't. Trust me. So the shop customers get called by the writer OR service manager assuming they have the time, and again the majority of folks don't answer their phone so it's text--->email---->phone call. And consider that each phone call takes an average of 5 1/2 minutes (that was my rolling average for the year that I logged them), times how many a day? There just ain't enough time, and aint enough personnel, to do it, unfortunately. It's not just tractor dealers either, car dealers are often in similar situations. Unfortunate.
60% of what we sold was lawn and garden. L&G customers are completely different than tractor customers and they are different than construction equipment customers who are alll different than boat customers. You get the idea. Scheduling sucks at most dealers. Way it works is, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. You have two or 3 techs. You have 1 of them dedicated to fast moving jobs, oil changes and blade sharpening (you get the idea). He's going an oil change and notices that the bellhousing drain is leaking. Tell service manager. He calls customer (maybe). Customer says split it and figure it out. Well the other techs are scheduled up for the next x amount of days/weeks so it sits on the back burner, perhaps after already sitting in a backlog of a week or three. Meanwhile, some lady pulls up and is going berzerk because her $1500 riding mower won't start and that the world's fixing to end cause her grass is knee high (and it usually isn't) if she can't get the yard mowed cause family's coming in for the weekend, yaddya yaddya. I've heard a bunch of excuses over the years. Sometimes they're true but not often enough. People have a tendency to over dramatize situations. So that wheel just got squeakier and needs grease sooner than so-and-so's oil change so the oil change sits another day. Tomorrow comes and some other catastrophe shows up, maybe a M-60 with a failing DEF header in the middle of hay season. Oil change goes further down the line, days weeks whatever.
it's all about scheduling. Communication is key. Any tech that this sounds familiar with, here's something you can do. Get a notepad (or you can do it electronically) and write down a list of every job you see that comes through your work area. Cross them off as you finish them. Do this in order, start at the top of the page and work your way down. If you see one near the top that ain't crossed out, find out why. Communicate with either the service manager or perhaps directly with the customer which is what I did because the SM didn't do it in a timely manner. After a while you'll get the hang of it and it works. Some dealer systems do it automatically but the 4 systems I used over the years did not.
but none of it changes the fact that you need a manager that manages, not just a boss that is quick to point out how you did something wrong. That's fine to do that, but there also needs to be a positive that comes out of a negative. If I did something wrong, the owner would let me know, but also made it a point to explain how it could be done differently. Then new company took over, corporate, if I did something wrong, I'd have 3 or 4 people calling texting or just showing up to tell me I did wrong but if I did something right, nary anything. Zero. Zilch. U get the idea. You gotta take care of your customers but one person cant take care of them all so they depend on the entire dealer to work together. If they can't work together they can't take care of their customers and their customers ain't gonna take care of the dealer-or Kubota.
As I have said many times, times are changing in the kubota world. I'm certainly glad I got out while I could. New challenges now, but I'm happily accepting them-and learning a LOT.
