The Core Breakdown of the Aftersales Customer Journey
In this upcoming 5-part series, I am dissecting the Aftersales Customer Journey to challenge the industry Status Quo. Here is our roadmap for the next few weeks:
- The Core Breakdown: Detailing the phases, processes, and steps that form the standard “status quo” repair journey.
- Identifying Bottlenecks: Pinpointing exactly where and why the process stalls.
- The Tech Stack: Highlighting the essential digital tools for each phase, a deep dive into the software that powers your service bay.
- Leveraging Information: How to extract actionable data from the service journey and turn it into real-time analytics.
- The Experiment: I will disrupt and rearrange standard processes, much like the Service Advisor did during my recent, surprising dealer visit, to learn from a radical redesign.
Note: I plan to share additional topics featuring practical examples from recent customer visits that are worth discussing.
Part 1: The Core Breakdown
Whenever I aim to improve dealership operations, I stick to one rule:
You must fully understand the existing (as-is) process and all its variables before you can suggest any changes or improvements (to-be).
Today, we are diving into the high-level architecture of the Aftersales Customer Journey. As displayed in the maps below, the process can be divided into several logical phases. Each phase contains specific milestones, components, and operational steps. Broadly speaking, in aftersales terminology, we handle the Appointment phase before the vehicle’s reception, and the Repair phase after reception.
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I have outlined these steps to provide a clear, high-level structure without getting lost in the weeds. This baseline allows us to see the “big picture” and creates the foundation for our future discussions on how to move or reimagine specific steps.
Note: Naturally, some steps may be skipped due to process variations (for instance, handling a Walk-In customer bypasses the Booking phase). Additionally, peripheral tasks, such as arranging a courtesy car, run in parallel with these core steps.
In my consulting practice, I utilize two different types of charts to discuss process flows, each serving a distinct purpose:
1. The Chevron Process Flow. I prefer this style when we need to isolate and discuss the specific steps of a particular phase. It provides a clean, linear breakdown of the stages of the journey.
2. The Operational Flowchart. On the other hand, when I need to explain process dependencies and logical interconnections, I use this detailed flowchart. This format helps us pinpoint exactly where data is generated, such as parts, labor, or liquid usage, and makes it much easier to propose and track experimental changes
Once we have successfully mapped the service journey, we can start digging into specific situations to identify common process bottlenecks, such as vehicle reception, discuss how to improve efficiency, and determine how to manage each step more effectively with the right digital tools.
This edition serves as the foundation and introduction for our upcoming deep dives. I plan to use these frameworks as a reference throughout the series, and I am committed to providing the very best insights.
I hope you will enjoy the series!
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Original Article you may find here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/17-weekly-data-driven-dealer-insight-core-breakdown-aftersales-hanus-t4dke
