Friendly Ford Advanced Service Testimonial

Randy Yockey is the fixed-ops manager and co-owner of Friendly Ford in Roselle, IL.

“We’ve been here 21 years. Our growth on the service department this last seven months has been better than it’s ever been since we’ve been here. The growth has been phenomenal.

“A lot of it is because we made some changes within our own departments. We didn’t go out and start changing people all over the place. We’ve simply taken a new system and we’ve implemented it.

“The electronic stage that we’ve migrated into has driven our gross labor sales up 130% in seven months. We’ve never seen that growth before. One of the highest in Chicagoland area. It’s been a wonderful tool and — you know what? — people like it.

“We’ve taken on the automated dispatch, which has taken an employee out of that office. I’ve personally sat in that office for 10–12 hours a day, monitored cars and monitored tickets, and tried to negotiate who’s going to do what. With Reynolds and Reynolds dispatch system, we’ve been able to 100% eliminate that position.

“The other part of this is the recommended-not-done process. Our technicians can go ahead and list everything that car needs, send it up to the writer. The writer has the ability to modify it and to send it to the customer via email, phone call, text if he chooses.

 “What I would say to a fellow dealer: look at everything. But before you make a decision, go to Reynolds and Reynolds. I believe bar none, it’s the best system out there for our entire organization.”

Matt Yockey is the service manager at Friendly Ford.

“About two hours a day per tech is what they say they lose walking to parts and talking to the advisor.

“They’re in their bay working. They’re not going to walk around and start up a conversation on the way to parts department or up by the writer. They’re not looking for an excuse — they can’t find the excuse — it’s not there.

“We don’t have to add up tech hours at the end of the week for payroll. At the end of the month, we don’t have to try and find paperwork. We don’t have to look for lost ROs. We don’t have to worry about a booking slip that got lost.

“Everything’s right in the computer, just making you more efficient. At the end of the day, that’s what you want to be — is more efficient.

“There’s not a day that goes by that somebody doesn’t come in at least for one thing that says, ‘Hey, last time I was here, you said this.’

“I think as of right now we were 36% over what we were last year at this time. We use SPG now. The customer knows that we’re just not throwing random numbers out there. They know that you call in for a water pump, you call four of us, and you’ll get the same price down to the penny every time.”