Nationwide Coverage

Parts Management

Closing the Parts and Service Department Divide

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The effects of a poor relationship between parts and service departments is an experience shared by many dealerships. While the departments are dependent on one another, they often act as entirely separate entities creating conflicts that can quickly get out of hand.

Luckily, this doesn’t have to be the case within your dealership. 

The fact is, neither the parts or service department can maximize efficiency and turn around without working closely with one another. As such, improving the efficiency between your fixed operations is critical to ensuring optimized success, profit and customer satisfaction.

To do so, you must focus on building a better partnership between these two critical areas of operations. We recommend focusing on four specific areas.

1. Goal Development

The first step to any successful strategy is determining goals. To ensure your parts and service departments are able to work together, you must uncover the common goals between them. Otherwise you will be left with departments, and even individuals, with their own agendas.

While your goals should be customized to your company, for most dealerships and repair shops, the primary objective is to meet your customers’ expectations while also ensuring their vehicle is fixed right the first time, on time, every time they come in.

By focusing on your common goal, you can ensure you implement processes that help create a high performing team.

2. Cooperate

While parts and service are separate departments, it is important to remember that everyone works for the same company and should work to achieve success for the company as a whole.

While it is important for each department to look for ways in which they can improve operations independently, it is just as important to consider how these “improvements” will affect other departments and how you can work together to further increase productivity, satisfaction and profits.

If your teams are working independently of one another, they will not be able to align their strategies and operations. This could result in greater costs, lower productivity and increased errors.

3. Coordinate

To ensure your departments work together productively, it is important to coordinate with one another.

Coming up with systems and organizing your space so that your teams can operate together efficiently is key. Take the time to consider the strengths and weaknesses of your current processes and develop solutions that increase the effectiveness of both departments.

In doing so, your departments can work better as a whole, ensuring everyone has the information and resources they need when necessary.

Without proper coordination, your job estimations, ordering accuracy and customer satisfaction will suffer.

4. Communicate

The development of a stronger relationship between your parts and service departments will never happen without communication.

From status meetings to sharing concerns and input, ensuring your employees feel comfortable communicating with one another is the only way you will be able to resolve conflicts and implement effective processes.

At Pro Count West, we have years of experience helping parts and service teams develop a stronger relationship.

For help organizing your fixed operations so that your departments can perform as a single entity, contact us today.

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