If you’re look­ing to set up your own ser­vice depart­ment, here’s a basic look at how the process works. Exact pro­ce­dures vary from deal­er­ship to deal­er­ship, but they tend to be similar.

When a cus­tomer first pulls into a dealership’s ser­vice drive, they are greeted either by a ser­vice con­sul­tant or a porter who will direct them to an avail­able ser­vice consultant.

The ser­vice con­sul­tant asks what the cus­tomer needs help with, writes up a repair order describ­ing the work to be per­formed. The cus­tomer signs the repair order–which often has an esti­mate of the repair costs on it–and heads to the wait­ing area or gets a ride home or a loaner vehi­cle, if the car will be in the shop for a while.

Once the repair order, or R.O., is com­plete, the ser­vice advi­sor will either hand it to a dis­patcher, who will assign the work to a tech­ni­cian, or if the deal­er­ship does not use a dis­patcher, the advi­sor will assign the work directly.

Learn more about the process!

The auto­mo­tive Inter­net mar­ket­place con­tin­ues to grow by leaps and bounds on a yearly basis.

Auto­by­tel was the orig­i­nal inno­va­tor of Inter­net auto leads.

Over the years, Auto­by­tel  has con­tin­ued to pro­duce cutting-edge prod­ucts and ser­vices to help your car deal­er­ship turn leads into sales.

Fol­low these Inter­net best prac­tice tips:

• Respond to all pur­chase requests with 30 min­utes (dur­ing work­ing hours)

• Send pro­fes­sional look­ing emails that pro­vide a pos­i­tive impression

• Send the price quote email before call­ing for an appointment

• Ask ques­tions in an email to open the inven­tory selec­tion and find the customer’s hot buttons

More …

Despite pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment that con­sumers 25 years old and younger are really not inter­ested in buy­ing a vehi­cle, this group of con­sumers has rep­re­sented a steadily increas­ing pro­por­tion of total retail auto­mo­tive sales since 2009, and those young dri­vers who pur­chase a new vehi­cle are enthu­si­as­tic about own­er­ship, accord­ing to the recently released J.D. Power 2014 U.S. Auto­mo­tive Media and Mar­ket­ing ReportSM —Win­ter. Here are a few of of the report’s Key Findings:

Image and Per­son­al­iza­tion: Among young vehi­cle dri­vers who pur­chase a new vehi­cle 33 per­cent say they “com­pletely agree” that they like their vehi­cle to stand out from the crowd, while just 20 per­cent of new-vehicle dri­vers across all age groups say the same.

Joy of Dri­ving: These young dri­vers have a pas­sion for dri­ving. Nearly one-fourth (22%) of young dri­vers say they “com­pletely agree” they like to drive on chal­leng­ing road­ways with hills and curves, and 41 per­cent indi­cate they pre­fer a vehi­cle with respon­sive han­dling and pow­er­ful accel­er­a­tion vs. the indus­try aver­ages (13% and 36%, respectively).

Pride of Own­er­ship: Young dri­vers take pride in own­er­ship, with 29 per­cent indi­cat­ing they wash and wax their vehi­cle them­selves, com­pared with the indus­try aver­age of 24 percent.

Check out the full press release for more details.