Customer Detective Work Helps DOWNTOWN AUTOMOTIVE Help You!

One might say the most challenging part of being a Service Advisor is diagnosing a problem before it can be fixed. Cars are made up of a bunch of complex systems. There usually could be a number of reasons for any given symptom, therefore it can be challenging to track down the actual cause of the problem without bringing your vehicle into Downtown Automotive for inspection. It can also be frustrating for the vehicle owner because it can take time and money to get to the bottom of a problem. If it’s not something obvious, it’s easy for the customer to focus on the fixing and not the diagnosing.

Let us introduce to you something we’ll call Customer Detective Work – that is helping our Downtown Automotive Service Advisors find clues to what’s wrong. We start with the detective basics: What is the problem? Is there a noise? What kind of noise is it, scraping, squeaking, grinding, thumping etc? Where is the location of the problem? and When did you start noticing this? For example, you come in and your car is making a funny sound: “Where’s the sound? Around the right front wheel. What kind of sound?  Kind of a clunk, clunk sound. When do you hear the sound? When I turn and accelerate. Right and left? Forwards and back?” You see where we’re going. You’re gathering additional information to help our Advisors and Technicians know where to start. Based on your car and your Service Advisor's experience, they’ll know where to look and can start with the obvious points of inspection. You can see how that would be more helpful than dropping the car off at Downtown Automotive with a note that says “Making a funny noise”.

When you think you need to bring a vehicle in, make some notes about the problem. Rather than just saying “it’s leaking” tell your Service Advisor the color of the fluid, and approximately where under the car you see the puddle. Things like “The car is stalling or sputtering” are often very hard to diagnose because they’re intermittent. They may not happen every time you drive and may not be happening when you actually bring the car into Downtown Automotive. So, it is a big help for you to describe what’s happening in detail as much as possible.

Your Downtown Automotive Service Advisor will need to be able to duplicate the problem if possible so they need to know details, like “It stalls after it’s been driven for about 20 minutes and I go over 80 kilometers an hour”. If the Technician can experience the problem personally, they're better able to make an auto diagnosis and repair and will be able to test to see if the repair solved the problem.

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