Ailing auto dealers spiff up service departments

Aware of the difficulties — and of the fact that good service can increase sales — automakers are keen to help. Lord said customers are eight to nine times more likely to return to a dealership when they're ready to buy if they've been happy with the sale and the service.

That's an eye-opening statistic at GM, where just three in 10 owners come back to dealers for servicing over the life of their vehicles. If even one more owner in 10 came back to the dealer for service and was happy with the experience, that could translate into 360,000 vehicle sales over five years, Lord said. But it's a difficult leap, since the average GM dealer has 50 service competitors, he said.

"If you haven't got a good, strong service department now, it's difficult to create one overnight," he said.

Enter the GM-developed scent, which soon will waft through dealerships nationwide. To Lord, it smells like the leather in a Cadillac. GM also is working with dealers to promote service departments and technicians, who are trained to work on increasingly complicated vehicles.

"We are helping to teach our dealers to merchandise service," Lord said. "It certainly helps a dealer through challenging times."

Lord said import brands typically have more customers return to dealerships for service, since independent repair shops may not have the training to work on those brands. Toyota Motor Corp. spokesman Xavier Dominicis said Toyota's rate is higher than GM's, particularly for the Prius hybrid, but the company wouldn't release figures.

At Extreme Dodge Hyundai, Lutz is trying to win customers by listing the most common maintenance items on an electronic message board and calling around town once a month to get pricing on those services from five competitors.

"We can't be more expensive. People have lots of places to spend their money," he said.

He said the hourly labor rate at dealers is about the same as other garages. If the rate is higher, it's because dealers use more expensive factory replacement parts rather than those made by aftermarket manufacturers, Lutz said.

He also promotes that his dealership has invested in Internet connections at every service bay and diagnostic equipment that can connect straight to engineers at Chrysler LLC.

Colussy said he initially was skeptical about the GM scent, but he's gotten such positive feedback that he plans to put another machine in the showroom. Colussy said between 15 and 18 percent of his new car customers come back for service in the first year, a number he'd like to raise to 30 percent by the end of this year.

"We're trying to create and build trust with customers, and we want it to be as comfortable an environment and as pleasing an environment as it can be," he said.

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