Poorly written work orders can cause even the most competent technician a lot of headaches. Some work orders are easy to write: “Change Oil & Filter” or “Rotate Tires” is fairly straightforward. “Service Transmission” or “Tune Up and Replace Fuel Filter” should lead to further questions on the part of the service advisor AND the technician. But what about those times when customers are coming so hard and so fast that accuracy of information is sacrificed on the altar of hasty expediency? There are questionnaires that customers are supposed to fill out for intermittent concerns, but they don’t cotton to that very much, and the service advisor may or may not use those sheets as a guideline when he or she asks the questions. One service writer at the Ford/Jeep dealer where I worked hammered out a repair line that said “Windshield won’t separate rain from water.” Who on earth knows what that means? I drew a work order on an Econoline van with several repair lines, the first of which read this way: “Unit won’t start without left turn signal on.” It was such an interesting problem that I fought it for about thirty minutes before I found that the wiring had been deliberately modified to work that way. When I asked the service advisor about it, he said he the customer had informed him of the modification – (it was supposed to be a theft deterrent) and that he had added that comment so I would know how to start the van. The Oxford Dictionary word “DOH!” came to mind. Thanks a lot for putting it on an R.O. repair line! A third writeup dealt with an ABS brake warning light problem, and the customer described it very well, but the information he gave wasn’t passed along to the wrench man. The result was that the master cylinder was replaced because of a trouble code that pointed to the fluid level switch (which was fairly common on those Rangers), and the ABS warning light went away, but the exasperated customer had to return with the same concern to explain that the ABS light only popped on right after the parking brake was applied. I drew the job on its second visit, and with the customer’s diligent explanation of the concern, it became evident that there had been an information disconnect between what he had told the service advisor and the simple “ABS light comes on” writeup. In this case, the technician never applied the park brake, so he assumed he had repaired the concern when he replaced the master cylinder. Gathering enough pertinent information from a customer is an art that a service advisor has to develop (some never do), and even when the customer knows enough to give a good description of the problem, communication of those thoughts on a work order can be pretty tough. But what about those times when the customer sees something else going on that they don’t consider significant enough to mention for whatever reason?
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 10:21:33 +0000
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