Taking your truck to a dealer to get worked on is much like the medical professional and how they care for their patients.
All day long, a truck repair shop is performing triage between the quick fixes and the major repairs. The balancing act comes into play when they keep pulling technicians off of the major repairs to take care of the garden variety simple repairs.
From the customers perspective, it can look a little different. I have only brought you a simple repair, why can’t you get to it now? For the customer who is in for major repairs, they typically do not expect any delays of the process of getting their truck up and running.
It seems as though we could help ourselves and the repair shops by scheduling our routine maintenance. There still will be the unexpected “emergency,” but it would go a long way to improving this whole process if the scheduled maintenance was done by appointment.
Each one of us feels as though our case should be the most important matter to be taken care of when we arrive for repairs. This process would never end because no repairs would be completed if the technicians were looking at the next repair before completing the project they are currently assigned.
As for myself, I would have no problem if a dealer called and asked me toreschedule routine maintenance due to them being swamped for emergency repairs. I would prefer this over going through the process of bringing my truck in for my schedule appointment, and the technician unavailable because of a different truck emergemcy. If I receive that phone call I can call the shots of either rescheduling for a later time or date, or trying to procure the services from another shop. Either way, the shop that calls me with this information will gain my loyalty.
One method of making this process smoother has been to schedule my repairs to be performed when the truck will not be in service for multiple days. Giving the repair shop a few days to complete my routine maintenance allows for flexibility to accomplish the task at hand. This, in time, has helped to grow a great working relationship with my local repair shop.
Another bonus to scheduling my repairs has been the ability to have the same technician repairing my truck on a regular basis. By having the same technician working on my truck, I create an opportunity to build a relationship with my repair shop. An additional benefit to having the same technician working on your truck gives them the ability to “know” your truck.
In the end will these steps make the repair process perfect? The answer is probably “no,” but it sure can’t hurt.