Overland Park, Kan. ― NCM Associates, a leading provider of retail automotive 20 Group services, Education, Retail Operations Consulting and the originator of the NCM Benchmark® for Success program for automobile dealers, today announced that René Isip Toyota of Lewisville has boosted Customer Pay RO’s by $100,000 a month, citing NCM® Associates as a valued resource through its broad network of information and best practices for his businesses.
Re-engineering a Fixed Operations department is no small feat, but when you do it and boost your customer pay repair orders by $100,000 a month, the reason for the change has to rest on solid management principles and access to the best retail automotive peer network and Benchmark® analytics in the industry. Fortunately these are both resources possessed by René Isip, one of the top minority dealers in the country and winner of the 2011 NAMAD Lifetime Achievement Award.
Since he started in the auto industry back in 1984, Isip learned that studying the best practices of successful dealers could be a fast track to sustained profitability. To gain those insights he joined a dealer 20 Group and that was the beginning of his relationship with NCM Associates in 1993. The knowledge he gained from the groups was put to good use and he further expanded his relationship with NCM when in 2004 he opened the doors to René Isip’s Toyota of Lewisville in Lewisville, Texas and just a few years later in November of 2007, Honda Cars of Katy.
Speaking to the value he has found in his relationship with NCM, Mr. Isip said, “Over the years, I’ve looked to NCM to provide me with information and tools to help me assess the impact of our strategies, not just in the context of our operations, but against some of the industry’s best performers.”
Over the last year Toyota endured a number of recalls and the earthquake in Japan further caused issues for Toyota dealers. While some dealers saw this as a disaster, René Isip saw it as an opportunity to connect with his customers in the service department and offer repairs and other maintenance outside of the warranty claims.
This meant sharpening the sales skills of service advisors, implementing new processes that made customers feel at ease and strengthened their confidence in the expertise of the service department. Vehicles in for warranty repairs were inspected and other maintenance or service issues were brought to the owners’ attention. These consistent efforts helped to boost customer pay repair orders by $100,000 per month.
In addition to owning his two dealerships, René serves as an Officer of the John Eagle Corporation which owns 11 other dealerships. By affiliating his two stores with the John Eagle Corporation, René is able to leverage economies of scale and bring broader solutions to the entire group.
Customer retention is the key to long-term profitability in the retail automotive business and knowing that it is more cost effective to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones, René created a BDC department in October 2010. The department measures their customer contacts against repair orders to determine gross revenue as a result of their efforts. During a relatively conservative nine month roll-out period servicing five of the John Eagle stores, they have delivered over $2.8 million in Fixed Ops revenue.
Seeing how dealers were opening up Quick Lube centers to keep customers from deserting their service departments, René studied the landscape and decided that he didn’t want to offer that service as a defensive strategy, but wanted to make it a profit center in its own right. Offering a consumer-friendly price and fast in and out service at the quick oil change location was a hit. His Toyota store is seeing about 3,000 Repair Orders a month and the Honda store runs from 2,000 to 2,400 repair orders a month. The dealership has also seen these “convenience hungry customers” moving to the full service department for other repairs not offered at the lube center and that boosts profits even further.
Have René’s efforts paid off? The Toyota store consistently ranks high in the zone and district CSI reports, and the Honda store has earned the President’s Award for its outstanding CSI performance. High customer satisfaction, tremendous revenue growth, solid business practices and leveraging NCM resources has proven to be a strong and winning combination for René Isip.
About NCM® Associates, Inc.
NCM Associates, Inc. is the originator of the automotive industry 20 Group peer collaboration process and has been providing dealership Benchmark® analytics, management training and Retail Operations Consulting services to the industry since 1947. Located in Overland Park, KS, NCM provides a robust suite of services designed to drive dealership profitability using its proven, operations-focused Benchmark® for Success program with new and pre-owned U.S. automotive dealerships, as well as with dealerships in more than 20 other industries. NCM is proud to be 100% employee owned. For more information about NCM Associates, visit www.ncm20.com or call 800.756.2620.