Dale Hanna and Ron talk about the technological tools available to assist in the management of repair labor in the service shops and in the field.

And one of the blogs you talked about the fact that Customer service was necessary at the speed of text.

And what you've done with fleet management SMS is exactly that, isn't it?

Yeah, we had a discussion recently with Ed Wallace relative to what he calls worthy intent, which is... Tell me more. Well, it's the foundation of customer service, people caring about the relationship back and forth. The service department has been a place that has not necessarily been viewed as somebody that communicates well. They're technical people. They're busy. They don't pick up the phone and say, hey, Dale, I've had a problem, such and such. What the SMS piece of fleet management does is they automate all of that, don't they?

So as we go through, the dealer defines what the communication points are that they want to use, correct?

So they give that to you as kind of a decision tree, just to use different jargon.

That this happens, that trigger. This happens, that trigger. This happens, that trigger. And it's all automatic. It's

You know, it's remarkable how over the years, let me just say it that way, decades maybe, we've developed standalone systems. And they almost existed in silos. And now with, I'm going to call it the Internet of Things, which is what everybody seems to want to call it, instead of those vertical silos being separate, We've made it a condominium and put them all together so that now GPS and telematics and sensors and instructions and work orders and labor entries and parts order, all of those things are handled almost like in a mission control type of way.

Kind of interesting. We've had a very slow evolution. Almost everybody is computerized now, just to use a term. Yes. A laptop, a tablet. Almost everybody has systems involved in their job. Correct. Which when I was growing up and in high school, there was a cartoon of a button being pushed, replacing people. The computer just pushed the button. I was going to replace a bunch of people. So they started scaring the devil out of us. And slowly but surely, they morphed into systems. But my complaint has been the dealer management providers. They're looking at business process, business flow, a work order from opening it to invoicing it, a parts order from entering it to shipping it, a machine order from speccing it to shipping it. Where you fit in exactly what you were just saying, now we've got these specialized tools that are almost bolt-ons. So it's like an attachment to a machine. Oh, you want to dig a trench? Terrific. Here's a ripper.

You want to load hay? Terrific. Here's a fork. Blah, blah, blah. And now they're all coming together, but how do you find the communication with the traditional dealer business system people, the infors and DISs and CDKs, et cetera, et cetera? Are they trying to do what you're doing or are they letting you do it?

Right.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I agree with that. It's going to be really interesting. There's parallel planning in organizational structure. With the pandemic, And the last two years, instead of a natural evolution, we've been kind of had a we've had a compression in change, which is part of the anxiety society's feeling along with everything else. But organizationally, you know, the traditional organization, the pyramid, the bosses at the top in the front of the room with a shaded hat looking down on the people because he's raised. So we've got that vertical organization. Then that moved to more horizontal when we went to total quality management, got rid of layers, which was only allowed to happen because of technology making people more productive. So for instance, if you were a secretary, it wasn't a good time. But when computers first arrived and word processing arrived,521,000 secretaries lost their jobs because the bosses did their own. male.

And then we got a matrix organization, which was the beginning of specialization, wasn't it? So here you got an ERP and we have, I'm going to call the ERP a generalist model. It's a tool to handle most things. And then you've got the specialist, let's use Salesforce as your example, where they know sales, maybe they got a tool. And we'll bolt it on to your ERP.

And we make Salesforce monolithic and huge so that the ER people, I'm not going to go do that. They're there. It's kind of like I want to build an airport in Phoenix to compete with Sky Harbor. Like, where do you start? You know, how do you get there? Right. So here we are with the communication from the service department to the customer about a repair. in process. The customer must love this.

So that comment of Ed Wallace's with worthy intent, what the SMS tool provides for the customer is the caring and empathy without interfering with the time that the service management has to spend to manage the labor, to make the repair, to track the progress, to deal with difficulties, to inspect other things they find. So that you're giving the management a tool without them having to do anything.

Because of people like FedEx and UPS and Amazon and Walmart, others, they all do the same thing.

It's coming ubiquitous. It's everywhere. And those that don't play in that arena are going to be left behind.

Yeah, it's interesting that, you know, the old fashioned definition of customer service is understanding what the customer's expectation was before the event. And then what was their. After the event, what was their realization? What was their experience? And if the expectation doesn't match the delivery, you get a blank in customer service. If it does, what's becoming nasty about that is if it does, it's expected.

So really the sore points, the sore spots that are sticking up is when you fail. Previously, we didn't know that. Correct. Neither did the customer. Correct. So now if they use your tool, and there's others out there that provide a similar tool, but if they use your tool or not, those that do have a heck of a step up on those that don't.

So the expectation to perception gap on customer service becomes much more plain and clear to the customer. Yes. I deal with dealer A and they give me this information. I appreciate having a status every day with a picture of where you're at. We can do that.

Yeah. There's a reason for all of this. The other thing that comes along with that kind of circumstance is the time I just did a a piece on Henry Ford from the late 1800s with the assembly line, et cetera. The time from the idea creation to it becoming normal. So example, I'm an inventor of a telephone. I'm Alexander Graham Bell. I have an advantage for decades before competition has caught up with me. Yes. That time gap, which used to be decades, is not even years anymore. It's months.

It is so easy to duplicate what you've done. I don't mean this in a bad way, but you have, it's kind of like the Walkman that first came out. It's, it's, it's a, it's a device. It's a, it was a tape, different deal. And I'm listening to music. And then from that, it went to a desk from that. It went to a chip. So with the tape, I wasn't able to get through to a particular song easily. With the disc, I was able to get there. With the disc, I can set up a playlist. So how did, I think it was Sony that created the first Walkman. How did they stay ahead of the crowd as they were catching up? They kept hyzaning. They kept improving the product as it went. What are your dealers, your customers asking you to do to the SMS to make? it more productive for them? Is there anything yet that they're bringing back?

In other words, what they're doing, they're finding other ways to use a similar application. They're finding other aspects, other tools, other source bots that can be solved using similar technologies, similar thinking, inspections.

I'm thinking, okay, they're tracking the repair. Correct. They do an inspection. Correct. Inspection leads to a quote. Yes. text out the inspection. I can text out the quote. I can get discussion with the customer without, like you said earlier, one of the problems was calling a guy. Well, he's out in the field. I can't reach him. Or calling a guy. This is another one that he's underground in a mine.

And texts get past a lot of that and they're instantaneous. And the 90 minute to 90 second time war.

Now we're creating an expectation on the part of the Manager of a function. What other areas? Here's a backorder. Boom. I'll give you information like right now.

So where it sits now with Foresight Intelligence, you've created a product, I'm going to call it fleet management, and now you've got a suite of things in fleet management, one of which is SMS.

To facilitate the interface between customers and suppliers of things.

So that could be used for washing machines. It could be used for pickup trucks. Oh,

So I think we've pretty well covered the SMS slide. In order for people to get more information, how do they get in touch with you? Is it a website or an email? What should people do who want to find out more information about SMS within?

Okay, so dhanna at foresightintelligence. com. That'll be an email that gets right through to you.

Perfect. Dale, I appreciate it. Thank you very much for this time. And I'd like to thank the audience for listening in to us, and I hope you're going to join us with another candid conversation in the near future. Thank you for listening to our podcast. We appreciate your support. Should you have any thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us at www. learningwithoutscars. com. The time is now. Mahalo.