Hello, may I help you?

"I don't know about you, but every time I make a phone call to my bank or to a big company, I run into somebody who clearly wasn't trained in customer service," says Nancy Scheewe, owner of DuFresne's Auto Service, in Portland, Ore. "Your service advisor has to be trained in customer service. He or she needs to 'wow' the customer. That's so important to your business."

Scheewe's assertion is backed by her 41 years of experience as the owner of a successful repair shop, and by her hands-on experience working the shop's front desk once a week. In addition to customer service skills, Scheewe says that a service advisor needs to be honest, professional and to have integrity — as well as the ability to make a customer comfortable enough to explain the problem they are having with their vehicle.

"You have to understand — nobody wants to be here," she adds. "Nobody gets excited about having their car repaired. You have to make the customer feel special by listening to him or her, and by making eye contact. Find out what the customer needs to have done, or if there is a more serious problem you need to explore."

According to Tom Ham, owner of Ham's Automotive in Grand Rapids, Mich., customer service is the key to a successful business, and a shop's counterstaff figures heavily into this equation.

"You want people on your counter who are 'people people,'" he says. "Being a service advisor is not unlike being a hostess or a waitress in a restaurant. You want someone who is people-friendly and who generally enjoys dealing with people on a daily basis."

Ham also advises finding a service advisor who is not easily frustrated, and who can be patient when dealing with customers. And the best way to find the ideal candidate, he adds, is to take your time and "make the hiring process a slow one." Ham even goes so far as suggesting that shop owners give their service advisor candidates a personality assessment test, such as the DiSC® personal profile assessment, to ascertain if they have the "right stuff" for the job.

"This business is so different from what it was just a few years ago," Ham says. "Back then, customers didn't demand service. Today, everything is customer sensitive — especially at the counter. A service advisor almost has to be a concierge to get the job done right."

The right stuff: Customer service vs. training

There are a lot of schools of thought about what it takes to make a good service advisor. Some experts say that anyone with a good set of customer service skills can do the job, while others vehemently feel that only an individual with an automotive background is qualified to represent a shop as a service advisor. Scheewe falls into the latter category.

"I like to see a service advisor have some knowledge of the automotive industry," Scheewe says. "A salesperson can sell, but in auto repair, some knowledge is necessary to communicate what needs to be done to a car from customer to technician and then back from technician to customer again. The best person to have on your counter is someone who has a knowledge of cars, because it's much easier for them to explain difficult procedures to the customer if necessary."

Terica Devoreh-Spratt, a service advisor at Hawthorne Auto Clinic in Portland, Ore., began her automotive career on the shop floor as a technician. That experience, and the technical knowledge she gleaned from her co-workers, is vital to her success as a service advisor, she says.

"Some people think that as long as you are good at customer service, you'll be fine on the front desk," Devoreh-Spratt adds. "But I would disagree. It takes a knowledge of automotive systems to answer a customer's questions, to prioritize repair work, to assess if a customer's vehicle is safe to drive and to explain what needs to be done and why."

Devoreh-Spratt says she recently attended a service advisor class in which attendees were asked to call each other's shops to see how the competition's phone skills and customer service expertise added up. According to Devoreh-Spratt, almost 80 percent of the shops she contacted had a person with little or no technical knowledge working the phones.

"The automotive business is really about selling trust," Devoreh-Spratt says. "You're asking people to trust you with their cars, because most consumers don't know anything about their cars. So, as a service advisor, you have to build a customer's trust in the shop and its technicians. If a customer doesn't trust you, they won't be happy with the shop or the technicians and they'll take their business somewhere else."

Ham, on the other hand, firmly believes that if a shop puts procedures in place to automate the job, a good "people person" will meet expectations every time.

"You want to make sure the service advisor doesn't have to make a lot of decisions or depend on his or her memories all of the time," he says. "If you automate the procedures they need to follow, they don't have to figure out what they're doing as they go along and the whole process will go according to plan."

On the flip side of the coin, Scheewe points out that if someone doesn't have a background in the automotive industry, they won't be able to figure out if they're ordering the right parts for a repair job or getting a fair price on the parts they do manage to order.

"I still feel that the best service writer you can have is somebody who has some knowledge of cars before he (or she) comes to you," she says. "That way you have a lot less training time."

The battle of the sexes

While the necessity of having an automotive background sparks intense debate, so too does another hot-button topic surrounding service advisors: Who makes a better service advisor — a man or a woman?

"Truthfully, women do," says Sheewe. "But only because they do not use technical terms with the customers, and the customers like that. I've also heard that people will trust a woman running the counter more, but I can't prove or disprove that statement."

Ham, however, says that a shop's demographic and customer base can play a huge role in selecting a counterperson.

"With some customer bases, women do very well. In others, they don't. It can go either way," he adds. "It really just depends on your shop's clientele. In an ideal world, you'd have two counterpeople on staff — a man and a woman. But in a smaller shop, you just have to figure out your staffing needs based on what, and who, your customers respond to."

But according to Devoreh-Spratt, gender isn't as important as finding a friendly, customer-oriented — and knowledgeable — service advisor, as well as one who is sympathetic to the customer's plight. In fact, if a service advisor isn't that way naturally, she says that they won't last very long on the job.

"A good service advisor has to show the customer that they really want to help them," she says. "You can teach someone about cars, show them how to order parts, or even help them to become more organized, but you really can't teach them customer service. That's something that just comes naturally to certain people. And that's the kind of 'something' you want your service advisor to have."