Not everyone grasps car terminology easily, and so it sometimes happens that customers walk away from a conversation with their service advisor feeling confused about what exactly is wrong with, or is happening to, their car.
As a future automotive professional, you can employ a few tricks when communicating with car owners about what needs to be done to their vehicles. By ensuring the people who come to you for assistance understand what is going on, you can promote yourself and your place of work as being friendly, fair, and professional—and draw return customers.
Here are a few techniques you can use to explain car jargon to your customers.
1. After Service Advisor Training, Use Simple Comparisons and Explanations With Customers
When people become familiar with a subject, they sometimes become used to using language that newcomers have not been exposed to. Because even the most basic terminology may be alien to people with less exposure to the subject, this can be a problem.
When you work as a service advisor, you can help less-informed customers by taking the time to explain terminology to them. Use simple comparisons and explanations to get the main idea across, taking care that you don’t sacrifice too much accuracy when doing so. When explaining something to customers, you might also take the initiative of inviting them to ask for clarification when needed. This could be the push that shyer individuals need to ask for a bit of extra help.
2. Physically Showing Customers What You’re Talking About Can Help Them Understand
After your service advisor training, you will likely find that some customers will be satisfied with a clear vocal explanation, but others will understand better if they can visualize what it is you are talking about. For these customers, it can be helpful to take a moment to walk over to their car and point out the issue you are trying to explain.
Being able to see a car part can help illustrate why it is important that it needs to be fixed. It can also help to contextualize things. Maybe they’ll be able to understand why they are hearing a certain noise, or be able to tell by colour or appearance that a particular part is damaged. It can take a couple of minutes to perform this sort of walk-around, but if it helps customers understand what it is their car needs, it’s a worthy investment of your time.
3. To Greatly Simplify Things, Automotive Service Advisors Can Create Grading Systems
In your career as an automotive service advisor, there will always be some customers who have an exceptionally difficult time understanding the severity of the problem you are explaining. For these people, it can be helpful to offer a letter or numerical grade.
The main disadvantages of this approach are that this tactic is fairly subjective, and may simplify things but sacrifice a little accuracy in exchange. On the other hand, it can be a good way to explain the importance of a suggestion to customers in terms they will be familiar with. Being told that you rate a certain part “D-” or “a fail” will be a simple way for them to grasp the seriousness of their situation.
Employ this strategy sparingly, but don’t hesitate to use it when you think a particular customer will benefit from a bit more of an explanation.
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