Not “back-end” but the backbone of our operations
Here at Brian Jessel BMW, we always provide our customers with the highest level of service and continue to make the appropriate changes needed to exceed their expectations. This philosophy originates with Brian Jessel himself, and is passed on by each and every employee. Brian’s goal—our goal—is to always look after our customers and ensure they receive the best service possible.
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As Director of Fixed Operations, I have seen many changes in our business over the past 15 years. As the number of our employees in our Parts and Service Departments has grown, we have spent many hours helping them understand the importance of being committed to and delivering on our outstanding service philosophy. We are currently restructuring our Service Department to allow for our continuing growth. This is not an easy task.
However, we have made many steps towards the development of this department. We created four new Service Consultant positions, bringing our total to ten. This will allow our customers to spend more time one-on-one with each consultant and not feel pressured or rushed when they come in to see us. We realize that some of our customers may require more technical advice, and due to this demand we hired Chris Kehoe as our Technical Service Consultant. Chris comes to us with 30 years of BMW experience and has a very good understanding of our vehicles and, most importantly, our customers.
We expanded our BMW Express Service and increased the number of our Appointment Coordinators. These positions are an essential addition in order to address the high demand of our customers. As a result, we also created several new Supervisor positions, to assist with training all new employees. In August of this year we hired a new Service Manager, Rafal Chrzanowski. During the interview process we realized he would be the future star of our Service Department. Rafal has a degree in automotive engineering and has over 10 years experience in the automotive industry.
He is a great addition to the Brian Jessel management team and has accepted the challenge to reorganize and increase the level of service we offer our customers. Due to our ever-growing volume of customers, we also needed to add more experience in our repair shop. During our recruiting process, we found the customary approach to recruit new technicians was not as effective as we anticipated. We decided to try something new and held an open house at our dealership. Our objective was to invite potential employees to visit our facility and allow us to show them what Brian Jessel BMW could offer them.
We had an amazing turnout and were able to complete 32 interviews. From this, we hired five new technicians and welcomed them to join our team. We currently have 38 technicians in our Service Department and will continue to add more as required. We then discovered we had a new obstacle to overcome. With all the new employees we added to our team, we needed to find an effective way to train everyone. We promoted one of our more experience technicians to this newly created position as our Technical Trainer. We are currently
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experimenting with a new Technical Department. Our objective is to create an enhanced training program for all of our new technicians. This will allow us to educate and train each new member of our team with the least amount of disruption. With the assistance of the training tools provided by BMW Group Canada, our new technicians will fully understand the complexity of our product and learn how to better service our vehicles and our customers. Another project that is currently in process is the expansion of our service repair shop.
We are increasing the number of service bays from 19 to 24. This will assist the Service Department by increasing the capacity to allow for the increase in volume and demand. As we continue to grow we also need to consider the extra services we provide in our Service Department. We are currently the only BMW dealership to provide 65 BMW courtesy cars and have two on-site rental car companies. In the event all of our courtesy cars are occupied, we also provide alternate transportation.
With our very popular Valet Service, we go right to our customer’s home or office and pick up their BMW. If necessary we will provide alternate transportation if required. We also offer a shuttle service for those that live or work near our dealership and do not require a vehicle for the day. These services help us our reach our goals of providing the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Our Parts Department has also made a few changes. Charley Risley has been with BMW for 19 years as a very experienced parts consultant and Assistant Parts Manager; his dedication and knowledge has led him to his promotion as our new Parts Manager. Charley has a great understanding of the BMW product and the diversity of the Parts Department.
He has taken on this new role and will not only manage the employees, but also a parts inventory of over one million dollars. We are currently the number one Parts Department in Canada and will make every effort to maintain and achieve this status. As we continue to develop our Fixed Operations, we have created a new strategy team to assist with the rebuilding of our departments. We are focused and committed to providing our customers with the level of service they have come to expect.
Our strategy team meets biweekly to discuss both customer and employee concerns. This team consists of employees from both the Parts and Service Departments. They brings input from every aspect of the Fixed Operations and permit the two departments to move in the same direction and achieve the same goals. Our objective, as always, is to please all of our customers and provide a great working environment for our employees.
We believe in empowering our employees to make decisions and assist with the development of our dealership. Everyone’s opinion and suggestion is important to us and we encourage our employees to become more involved with their respective departments. We would like to thank all of our valued customers for their continued support. As we continue to implement changes to increase our customer service, we need to know how we are doing. Please feel free to offer any suggestions as we would love to hear from you!
