At 6:45 a.m., a porter calls off. Within minutes, a highly compensated service leader can be rearranging coverage, texting employees and trying to keep the morning lane from falling apart. I have watched some version of that scenario play out countless times through our work at Citrin.
What makes it notable is everything else that same leader is responsible for: advisors, technicians, CSI, warranty performance, profitability, customer escalations and department growth. When routine frontline staffing issues repeatedly rise to the top of that list, I think the dealership has a span-of-control problem hiding in plain sight.
Service Managers Have Become the Backstop for Everything
Most dealership organizations do not intentionally design an enormous span of control for the service manager; it accumulates over time. Porters, wash, shuttle, loaners, valet pickup and delivery all tend to land under service because they touch the department. Eventually one leader is responsible for virtually every person and process around the service operation, even when those functions require a very different kind of day-to-day management than advisors and technicians.
Small Problems Consume a Surprising Amount of Attention
Porter and valet operations aren’t necessarily complicated, but they are management-intensive. Call-offs, time-off requests, new-hire training, uniform standards, misplaced keys and customer complaints are all fairly ordinary issues on their own. None of them would appear on a dealer group’s strategic plan, yet together they consume a surprising amount of management attention every day.
I’ve watched a $16-per-hour call-off become the most urgent issue facing a highly compensated dealership leader at 7:00 in the morning. To me, that is less a people problem than an organizational design problem.
What Should the Service Manager Be Doing?
The highest-value service managers I’ve met are great coaches and operators.
They should have time to think about:
- Advisor performance
- Technician productivity
- Hours per repair order
- Effective labor rate
- Customer retention
- Technician recruiting
- Capacity
- Department profitability
- Process improvement
- Leadership development
Those are difficult problems with enormous financial leverage, which is why every hour spent solving preventable porter scheduling issues is an hour that cannot be spent on higher-value fixed ops priorities.
Span of Control Eventually Reaches the Customer
An organizational problem eventually becomes a customer problem. If no one truly owns the frontline service operation, the service manager becomes the default owner, and when that manager is occupied elsewhere, the lane begins to slip: cars stack up, customers wait, wash gets behind, advisors start moving vehicles, and technicians begin looking for cars. Everyone compensates for the same missing layer of ownership.
I see this especially during peak periods because that’s when informal systems get exposed.
Look at Management Capacity, Not Just Headcount
One of the most useful questions a dealership can ask is not simply, “Do we have enough porters?” It is, “Who owns making this operation work every day?” That person needs responsibility for training, scheduling, coverage, standards, coaching and execution. Whether the dealership builds that leadership internally or uses a managed partner is a secondary decision; the first step is recognizing that the function requires real management.
I’ve become convinced that the question isn’t whether a service manager can manage the porters, wash operation, shuttle and service lane. Most good service managers can.
The question is whether that is the highest-value use of one of the dealership’s most important leaders.