text_messaging.03.16.15

Text Messaging in an
Automotive Business
Rick Moody 2/16/15 Business Communication

TEXT MESSAGING IN AN AUTOMOTIVE BUSINES
i
TEXT MESSAGING IN AN AUTOMOTIVE BUSINESS
Prepared for
Westwood College
BUS 500-WCO V21
Prepared by
Rick Moody
February 16, 2015

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January 12, 2015
Automotive Group
201 Anywhere Dr.
Somewhere, CA 99999
To the Director of Operations,
The attached report, requested by the Automotive Group in a letter to the Director of Operations
at the dealership dated December 18, 2014, describes the research needed to determine the
viability of using text messaging in your dealership.
This study was designed to research the possibilities of increasing revenue in the automotive
dealership through a change in communication styles. To determine:
 The added revenue through the use of text messaging between employees at the
dealership
 The added value to our customers using text messaging pertaining to their automotive
service recommendations
 The costs associated with bringing text messaging into the dealership
 The liability of the company concerning the use of text messaging in the dealership
The research consisted of various legal journals and online research in statistics related to cell
phone usage. Further research determined percentage of people that would prefer text messaging
over voice calling.
The secondary research consisted of costs associated with current communication. Finding a
source for free Short Message Service (SMS) and a vanity line. Business that are already using
text messaging as an alternative to face to face or voice communications.
I welcome the opportunity to share with you the results of the research, this report, and the
conclusions at your earliest convenience. I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to help
guide you in your decision…
Sincerely,
Rick Moody
Service Manager

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Executive Summary
The automotive dealership at somewhere, CA will greatly benefit as well as all other dealerships
owned by Price Simms by using Short Message Service (SMS). The questions raised to start the
research on the subject were about the value and costs associated with initiating a change in
communication styles in the dealership. Our team of experts has conducted an in depth research
project to verify the validity of value added by incorporating text messaging (SMS) into our
communication channels.
We achieved this by first studying the value of our technicians’ time.
 Time: We examined the fact that technicians’ work on a flat rate scale based upon time
sold. Technicians’ time equals money for the dealership.
o The team associated wasted technician time with face to face communication.
o We delved into Customer Service Index (CSI) and determined that in order to
maintain CSI we need to find ways to harness the time.
o We introduced a new term to many called ¼ time, this is the acceptable time to
call the customers back with any additional recommendations.
 Research has determined that there is a way to harness the extra revenue by keeping
technicians working on the cars.
o We studied the demographics for Smartphone ownership.
o We determined that text messaging is a common way for Smartphone owners to
communicate.

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 We found that other businesses are using this form of communication and it is working
great for them.
o The Coca-Cola company
 Our team found a company that offers a free vanity phone number so employees will not
have to use their own personal cell phone numbers.
On the basis of all of the research performed by our team we highly recommend the
usage of text messaging as another form of communication. We developed the costs associated
and presented a plan for the employees to opt-in to the new form of communication. Our team
came up with a cost effective way to compensate the employees for using their own phones for
text messaging. Rules were developed to limit the liability of the company for the employees
who chose to opt in to the program. Our implementation plan involves monitoring usage and the
productivity of the technicians using this new form of communication.

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Introduction
This study was designed to research the possibilities of increasing revenue in the
automotive dealership through a change in communication styles. It examines both the benefits
as well as the disadvantages of using text messaging in the automotive shop. The automotive
dealership is not a stranger to technology, cars change with technology every day. This report is
an opportunity to utilize technology to gain revenue through maintaining a technician’s ability to
stay working. Minimizing down time for a technician is the answer to the productivity questions
that arise.

vi
Background
In an automotive shop there are two profit centers:
 Parts department
 Labor sales
The parts department consists of a retail side selling directly to customers; a wholesale
side selling to local body and repair shops, and an internal side selling parts to the service
department. The parts department purchases parts and marks up the cost to its customers; retail,
wholesale, and internal to pay the overhead of the shop. This includes but is not limited to rent,
electric bill, and support staff.
The labor profit center consists of getting paid for technicians’ time. This can come from
one of three streams retail customer, warranty, or internal used car department. The key element
to consider in the labor profit center is the amount of technician time sold. The shop is ran based
upon a flat rate system every shop has a door rate, warranty rate, and internal rate. Every job is
based upon a set amount of time to complete the task. The manufacture of the vehicle has their
own time guide and includes the amount of time it will pay per job. All non-warranty jobs are
computed using a flat rate guide. Each job can be found through various sources. Mitchell
OnDemand (Mitchell on demand, n.d.) and AllData (AllData, n.d.) are two of the most
commonly accepted. The flat rate time is multiplied by the rate to determine the amount of labor
to charge the customer.
The goal of this report is to determine how to raise profits through increasing the
available technician’s time through the use of text messaging.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary----------------------------------------------------------------------- iii
Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- v
Background--------------------------------------------------------------------------------vi
Table of Figures and Tables ---------------------------------------------------------------viii
DISCUSSION: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1
It’s all about time ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1
Time equals money--------------------------------------------------------------------- 1
Technicians are concerned about their tenths ---------------------------------------- 1
¼ Time is the first element of time ---------------------------------------------------- 2
Absence of ¼ time creates chaos---------------------------------------------------- 3
The problems commonly associated with face to face communication---------------- 4
There is a more effective way---------------------------------------------------------- 5
Research phone usage --------------------------------------------------------------- 6
Text messaging in other businesses------------------------------------------------- 7
Recommendations-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8
Related costs associated to the recommendations--------------------------------------- 9
Implementation plan--------------------------------------------------------------------10

viii
Conclusion -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11
References --------------------------------------------------------------------------------12
Table of Figures and Tables
Figure 1 breakdown of technicians’ day......................................................................................... 5
Figure 2Smart phone ownership ..................................................................................................... 7
Figure 3 Average text messages ...................................................................................................... 7
Table 1 Billable Hours ……………………………………………………………….6
Table 2 Associated Costs ……………………………………………………………..9
Table 3 Potential benefits of Implementation…………………………………………9

Running head: TEXT MESSAGING IN AN AUTOMOTIVE BUSINES
1
DISCUSSION:
It’s all about time
Time is the number one problem when it comes to communication in the automotive
industry. The time equation comes into focus from several different directions. Time is one of
the highest priorities in an automotive customer’s agenda. The technicians get paid based upon
tenths of time produced in a flat rate shop. The Service Advisors get paid based upon how much
of the technician’s time they sell. The shop makes money based upon how much technician time
is sold. The value of time cannot be understated in the automotive dealership, therefore finding
ways to harness time is a key ingredient to increased profits.
Time equals money
Most automotive shops have taken the step of having technicians working four days a
week at 10 hours a day. The door rate, or flat rate at the shop is $130.00 an hour for customer pay
labor. With these figures in mind a technician working full 10 hours a day with an hour lunch
break should produce for the shop $1,170.00 in revenue. The facts are that the average technician
can produce over 110% efficiency. At proper efficiency ratings an average tech should be able to
bring in $1287.00 a day. The technicians’ time is broken down into six minute intervals known at
tenths every tenth of an hour at average technician rate is a minimum of $13.00. In other words
every six minutes of the technicians time that can be harnessed can result in an extra $13.00 of
revenue. The problem is not in the large chunks of time but the small wasted chunks of time that
add up.
Technicians are concerned about their tenths
Technicians are concerned about the time since most shops are flat rate the technician
gets paid based upon this rate. If a technician makes his 10 hours a day he gets 40 hours a week,

2
however just by getting five tenths a day more he will increase his pay by 10%. How many
employees would like a 10% raise? Technicians understand the concept that is why they buy
large toolboxes and arrange their tools the easiest way to do the jobs. Technicians spend
countless hours going to physical and online classes to learn the quickest way to perform repairs.
They are always purchasing the latest tool that can increase their productivity. They know the
only way that they are making money is while they are physically working on cars, anytime that
is wasted costs them money.
¼ Time is the first element of time
Quarter time is the first ¼ of time between when a customer drops the car off they are given
an estimated time of completion. It could be anywhere between 15 minutes to two hours
depending upon the work that is being performed and the estimated time of completion.1/4 time
is the key to notifying the customer of any additional repair concerns found during the service
process. There are three reasons why this is important;
 It lets the customer know that you are indeed working on their vehicle (it’s not still on the
back lot)
 Customers really like to hear updates about their vehicle, this is important to Customer
Service Index (CSI)
 When notifying a customer within ¼ time there is still an opportunity to repair the vehicle
the same day, or give the customer time to arrange alternate transportation.
Quarter time is a small window of opportunity that when taken advantage of can increase
the profits in a dealership. An example of ¼ time working properly is the customer drops of the
car at 8:00 AM and the promise time is 12:00 PM. By 8:45 AM the technician has the vehicle in
to perform the service and notices that the brakes are below minimum specifications. There is a

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15 minute window to gather the parts information (prices) and labor amounts (flat rate * door
rate), build and estimate. Notify the customer and sell the job. Enable the technician to continue
working on the car through its completion. As a result the customers’ car is ready by the
promised time and this increases the customers’ satisfaction in the service visit.
Absence of ¼ time creates chaos
The scenario above is a great example of how time should be spent in order to create
revenue and increase the satisfaction of customers. However without working ¼ time the
example would have been chaotic let’s take a moment to see what the normal is. The car is still
on the rack and being inspected and brakes are found to be defective at 8:45 AM. The technicians
comes up to tell the service advisor about the condition and the advisor is with another customer
at the time. The technician has two options write it down on the repair order, or wait until the
customer in front of the advisor has left. This can take anywhere from 7-10 minutes and is what
technicians call “dead time” because nothing is happening on the car on the rack. After the
customer in front of the advisor leaves the tech explains the problem to the advisor suggests a
course of action. The technician goes back to the service on the vehicle and waits until the
service advisor gets free time to gather the prices and put together an estimate and call the
customer. By 9:30 AM the tech has two options put the wheels back on and pull the car outside,
or wait on the busy advisor to call the customer and sell the job. By 10:00 AM the car is outside
and the technician is working on another car. The sale is made by 10:00 AM when the customer
calls to get an update on their car but the technician is working on a two hour job and cannot get
the brake job out until 1:30 PM. The service advisors takes the repair order to the technician and
communicates face to face to let the technician know the job was sold and the promise time

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needed. The promised time is exceeded and customers expectations have not been met and CSI
suffers.
Without ¼ time the customer does not know if their car is even being worked on yet, and
does not give them an opportunity to make plans for alternate transportation in the event of more
repairs needed. This keeps customers calling to ask if there car will be ready on time and keeps
the service advisor putting out the fires created by all the calls.
The problems commonly associated with face to face communication
Communication comes in many forms at automotive dealerships we use memos to announce
changes in company policy. We use e-mail to communicate with the office and upper
management. We use the telephone to communicate with our customers. However, the form of
communication that takes the most time is the one that we use on a day to basis with our
technicians. I am talking about face to face communication. Face to face communication is used
when;
 Service advisor gives technician the job
 Technician informs the advisor of added repairs necessary
 Service advisor tells the technician the jobs are sold
 Service advisor checking on the status of the job
 Technician completed the job
With face to face communication it easily could take up to 1 tenth of an hour, or six minutes per
time. At times it even takes longer and when adding up the time wasted during face to face
communication it is easy to see that one job could take up to four tenths of the technician time.
Using the conservative figures above we see that the cost of face to face communication on one

5
job with one technician is a staggering $52.00 in lost revenue. This results in technicians
communicating with service advisors 25% of their day. (fig.1)The next thing to bear in mind is
there are 10 technicians who work on an
average of five cars a day. This is a potential
loss of $2,600.00 a day in face to face
communication in a month open Monday thru
Saturday average 21 days or $54,600.00 in lost
revenue. The problem has been there all along but
until we take the time to understand the costs associated with face to face communication we will
never address the issue.
There is a more effective way
Imagine a technician texting the recommendation of repairs to the service advisor, if
asked he can even send a picture of the failed part. This takes less than a minute and can be
performed at the work station during the inspection. The service advisor with the information in
hand can begin his work and put together an estimate and text the picture as well as the
additional costs of repair over to the customer. With the customers authorization to proceed the
service advisor could text the technician to begin the work. With the car still on the rack the
technician could proceed with the repairs. When completed the tech could text the advisor back
to confirm the car is completed. The service advisor could text the customer to notify of
completion of their car. Using technology that is already in place the dealership just saved the
Figure 1 breakdown of technicians’ day

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potential of $52.00 on one repair order. When the math is presented it is staggering how much
money is lost through face to face communication on a daily basis between the technicians’ and
the service advisors. Though it is estimated that 25% of the technicians’ day is consumed in face
to face communication our team build a chart just adding 10% of billable hours per day. (table1)
The increments start off small but just regaining 10% of the technicians’ day over a month period
of time is 14.4 hours. While texting will not completely take away the face to face
communication it can replace a high percentage of it.
Researchphone usage
According to the Pew Research Center smart phone ownership as of May 2013 ranges
from 72-90% between the ages of 18-64 (fig 2) (Smith, Pew Research Center, 2013) Smart
9.9
39.6
158.4
10.8
43.2
172.8
ONE DAY ONE WEEK ONE MONTH
Flatratebillablehours
Billable Hours for just one technicians at
only 10% increase
No change Benefits of Implementation
Table 1Billable hours

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phones are here to stay and growing popular with
all age groups this technology is not going to go
away. According to the article “How Americans
use Text Messaging” in research performed by the
Pew Research Center 2011, 31% of cell phone
owners prefer to be contacted by text. (Fig 3)
(Smith, How Americans use text messaging, 2011)
These are interesting figures concerning the latest
research that I could find was performed
2-3 years ago. As a father of children
between the ages of 18-24 I know that
texting is my best form of communication
with my kids. They hardly ever answer the
phone but a text will get immediate results
90% of the time.
Text messaging in other businesses
In order to get a full grasp on text messaging in the automotive business it is important to
see if it is working in other businesses. According to an article from Huffington post, a
spokeswoman from Coca-Cola, Amanda Roester said Coca-Cola has decided to change the tools
and methods in ways we communicate as a company. (Berman, 2014) The article goes on to state
the problems with voicemail is it is a waste of time checking it, if the message is important they
will call back. Texting is more efficient way to leave a message that can be tracked back to the
Figure 2Smartphone ownership
Figure 3 Average text messages

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sender. (Berman, 2014) Maggie Lonsdale form Work Etiquette says “why not learn more about
how to utilize this cheap, easy method of staying in touch.” (Lonsdale, 2012) According to
Maggie you have two choices, learn more about this method of business communication, or get
left behind. (Lonsdale, 2012) The Houston Chronicle had an article that causes us to examine the
possible downside to using text messaging in the workplace. In order take an objective look into
this report it would not do it justice without looking at the cons.
 Employees with less technical experience may try to avoid texting
 The costs associated with SMS for the phone
 Employees have a more difficult time tracking and recording text messages for
future reference
 The casual nature of texting could cause employees to cross the line with
unprofessional conversations that could lead to harassment accusations
 Texting can distract an employee from their other duties (Frost)
These cons must be addressed, but they can be addressed in policy. Many rules are in
place in the employee hand book and it makes up company policy. Using text messaging
internally is the starting point as there are many benefits to using this form of communication
with customers. These will be reviewed on the next report after we have realized the benefits of
internal texting in the automotive dealership.
Recommendations
After reviewing all the pros and cons about implementing text as another form of
communication it is quite clear that idea has merit. The concerns of this report are about the
possibility of abuse of this communication. We feel as though paying for the cell phone usage in
the way of a spiff of $20.00 a month will give our employees the incentive needed to use their

9
own phones and opt in. By giving the employees the choice we are empowering them abide by
the rules.
We recommend that this can be a trial period of 90 days. We will monitor and evaluate
the progress after 90 days to determine the increase in available technician time gained through
productivity reports. At this point it will be up to management whether to continue the program
or make necessary modifications. We recommend that this be offered up to the employees as an
incentive to opt in with this approach it can be taken away if abused at any time.
Relatedcosts associated to the recommendations
The cost that I have already pointed out is the $20.00 spiff for the technicians and service
advisors. Using the figures that we previously introduced there are ten technicians, four lube
techs, and three service advisors. (table1)
Table 2Cost
Technicians Service
Advisors
Lube tech Per month
cost
90 days cost
20.00 each 10 3 4 340.00 1,020.00
1.25
20
$11.70
$187.20
23.4
374.4
35.1
561.6
46.8
748.8
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
ONE TECH ONE DAY
ONE TECH ONE MONTH
benefit based on 130.00 door rate
Potential Benefits in 1% Increments
4% benefit 3% benefit 2% benefit 1% benefit Cost of Implementation
Table 3 benefits of Implementation

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Implementation plan
 Memo for all employees to attend a power point presentation and given the
opportunity to opt in to text messaging as an additional form of communication.
 A power point presentation explaining all of the benefits as well as the rules will be
available to any employee that wants to opt in
 Every employee that opts in will be given a list of the rules and will sign along with
the disclosure statement making them liable for its use
 A list of all of the text messaging rules will be posted in the employee break rooms
 Every employee has the right to download Google Voice so that they have a number
that can be used in a work application only
 The list of cell phone numbers will be distributed to all who opt in
 The text messages will be monitored to insure conformity to company policy and
standards
 Productivity reports will be generated and monitored to see if there is changes in
productivity due to the change
 At the end of 90 days all productivity reports will be turned into management and
thoroughly investigated to determine the value to cost ratio. We will monitor
productivity, efficiency, sales, and CSI

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Conclusion
The journey that we have taken you on started out with time as being an important aspect
to any automotive dealership. We brought you through the time aspect of technicians’ time and
presented hard evidence as to the importance it holds. We brought a new aspect of time into the
equation called ¼ time. The value of contacting the customer with ¼ of the time that car is in the
shop about needed repairs on their car. We showed examples of when ¼ time is working and
when it is not. We consistently revealed to you where the technicians available “billable” time is
going. We presented to you an alternative to face to face communication through text messaging.
Presented you the facts that with every change there are costs associated with them. We broke
down the costs and presented a benefits analysis along with the cost analysis. We presented a
plan to introduce this form of communication into our business. This plan started with a minimal
set of rules that can be made policy to those employees that wish to opt-in to the program. We
found an option to giving our private phone numbers of the employees by using a company
Google Voice to have vanity phone numbers. We have offered up a ten minute power point
presentation that explains the benefits of text messaging.
The team believes that they have uncovered overwhelming evidence that supports the use
of using personal cell phones for texting in the automotive business. Based upon these
recommendation should start the processes of the implementation plan immediately, because as
we pointed out “time is money.”

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References
(n.d.). Retrieved from AllData: http://alldatapro.com/includes/main.jsp
Berman, J. (2014, December 22). Coca-Cola employee no longer have to llisten to voicemail.
Retrieved from Huffington Post: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/coca-cola-
employees-no-longer-have-to-listen-to-voice-mails/ar-BBh7fQq
Frost, S. (n.d.). About texting in the workplace. Retrieved from Houston Chronicle:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/texting-workplace-12302.html
Lonsdale. (2012, November 4). Using text for business communication. Retrieved from Work
Etiquette: http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/using-texts-business-communication.html
Mitchell on demand. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.prodemand.com/
Smith, A. (2011, September 19). How Americans use text messaging. Retrieved from Pew
Research Center: http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/09/19/how-americans-use-text-
messaging/
Smith, A. (2013, June 5). Pew Research Center. Retrieved from Smartphone ownership:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/06/05/smartphone-ownership-2013/

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