[Bulti]

After being out of a job since May, I managed to get me a new job as Service Advisor at a nearby BMW dealership.



I am, or actually, I was an offset-printer, but got bored with the job and fed up with my boss and the atmosphere at work.



So, after 3 interviews and an assessment at a BMW Training Centre, I managed to persuade the management to hire me instead of the other, more experienced candidates.



Since I am quite interested in about everything that is technical and I like dealing with customers this is what I wanted. Plus, I can be around cars every day.



Tomorrow morning, it's the first day of my new life. Woehoe!



Ps.: if anyone here has experience with this line of work, any suggestions or tips are more than welcome!

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[ds968]

Congratulations ! All the best wishes in your new role, even if you will be getting dirty ( envious ) looks when you drive the 968 to work :-) :-)

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[Cloud9...68]

Yes, congratulations! Best of luck with the new job. It will be cool to be around cars all day, for sure.

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[Rap]

The customer is your paycheck, keep him first and happy. Congrats. You better not have to drive a B to keep your job!

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[Chris Vais]

Resist the temptation to up sell your customers. If the problem turns out to be bigger than anticipated let your customer know in advance. Nobody likes to find out that their $200 repair estimate became a $500 one when its time to pay the bill. Honesty and truthfulness go a long way in any service business.



Good luck with the new job.

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[94SilverCab]

What Chris said...also "Bad news does not get better with age", meaning, confront issues immediately and honestly and you will be beloved.



Good luck!



Jay

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[Bulti]

Thanks for the advice guys. It was a hectic first day at work (even for my colleagues), but fun nontheless. Great people to work with, so I'm confident it all will work out just fine.



Tomorrow round 2: more information overload :-)

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[type968]

Do you drive to work in the 968?

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[Bulti]

No, only the first two days, then they gave me a nice 1-series as a company car. They know Porsche is still my N° 1, I even told them in one of the interviews. But BMW is a good second though :-).



The 968 in a way is what got me the job. Having no chance at all coming from a completely different line of work, I added a list of the things I repaired and serviced on my car. That's what got them interested, so I had the chance to meet.



Oh, and my stunning good looks off course, lol.

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[Qfrank]

Good luck.



Here in the states advisors do NOT get company cars, so you are fortunate.



You will be living a life of customer pay repair orders vs. warranty repair orders, and how to balance the customer pay clients to keep coming back.

It's all about customer experience.

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[Bulti]

The car is mostly an extra, because we get employee contracts (as opposed to labour contracts - like the mechanics for example) and we are expected to do quite a lot of unpaid overtime. We come first and go last. The upside is, when you get hammered by telephone calls, customers waiting, mechanics asking questions, e-mails to be answered and what not, a working day is over before you know it :-)



The hardest part so far is the software (Navision) to manage the financial stuff, workshop shedule, etc. My god, that will take a while to master...

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[Qfrank]

Here OEM dealers typically use ADP, or Reynolds and Reynolds to integrate in with BMW North America system( labor hours, warranty, tech work bench, parts, payroll etc.) You several hundred screens to learn. Do you use tablets in the lane to scan in customer VINS to see appointments and customer history?

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[Bulti]

We scan the chips inside the keys of the cars, there's a bunch of info on those, depending on how old the car is (the latest keys even tell us the average mileage a car does). Most of the info we get by typing the licence plate number into Navision. Tablets are only used to manage the BMW Mobile Care vehicles, wich are used when somebody's car got towed.

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[ds968]

Oh great, I wonder how long before the chip in the key tells you how fast and how often the customer has driven that car over the speed limit and dealers forced by authorities and / or insurance companies to provide that info ? There's a paranoid conspiracy theory for 'ya , lol.

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[Rap]

I don't think that's paranoid. Info will continue to get culled from a variety of sources all ostensibly to make our lives better. 1984

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[Qfrank]

When most modern cars are scanned with Autologic or OEM scanners you can see every trip driven, average speed, time, distance, voltage drops, temperature etc.

No fooling the technician on "I did not "redline at my last DE, or not sure why it overheated.

it is only looked at for troubleshooting typically.

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[Rap]

I'm sure I have read that somewhere but this sure makes one wonder. My concern has always been ez pass somehow being used to determine speeds between points and automatically issuing speeding tickets. Years ago when I handed a paper ticket to pay upon exit from the Pa. turnpike the attendant commented that was fast! The good news is that this comment did not change my behavior.

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[Bulti]

A nice feature is: the car keeps track of the motor oil quality. When it is due for oil change, it will give a warning to the driver and store the info on the key. The key tells us when the oil should be changed. So no more changing the oil too soon or too late, as long as the customer doesn't ignore his cars' warnings. This goes for all fluids, brake pads and what not. No more service records being lost or tampered with. The entire maintenance record is on the key.

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[ds968]

maybe they can turn that key into a DUI gauge also - blow into it after the party, and if you're over the legal limit the car does not start . that feature I would endorse !

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[Rap]

So you would be using Uber more then?

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