New Way of Working: Customer Service Operations Model

Today, Navistar operates 620 service locations with more than 8,000 technicians, service advisors, and other key players involved in getting a vehicle serviced to back on the road. When it comes to service, time is money for International Truck and IC Bus customers, and every minute a vehicle is down affects profit.

Under Service Solutions’ new way of working, dealers are working to prioritize preventive maintenance, schedule routine services, and become a well-oiled machine to reduce downtime for customers.

Reactive Repairs to Proactive Productivity

Based on data collected throughout Navistar’s dealer network, if a customer comes to a dealer with unplanned maintenance, it takes an average of 12 days to get the vehicle back in operation. The goal with Service Solutions’ new customer service operations model is to shift the dealer network’s mindset from reactive repairs to proactively planning maintenance.

Service Solutions has recognized the challenge of transforming a dealer network that fixes vehicles well, but struggles with unknown work coming in, into a more predictive workshop, and customer expectations are driving the change.

“Customers are becoming more business-minded and astute to how much downtime really costs than ever before in the trucking industry,” said Cory Just, director, Field Service.

“Our objective is to transform our reactive service model into a proactive model that will service the customer in a more mindful way,” said Jon Sergersten, VP, dealer service development. “This will provide better customer experience and a more consistent experience dealer to dealer.”

As discussed under the new way of working, dealers will touch base with customers weeks before their maintenance intervals to set up their appointments, ideally 21 days ahead. This gives International dealers time to order necessary parts so everything is ready when the vehicle arrives for service.

“Rather than the phone constantly ringing, the dealers get to be the ones reaching out and maintaining a positive point of contact with each customer,” said Cory.

The Scania Solution

Navistar’s new customer service operations model has been crafted through Scania’s successful dedicated customer service model. With Scania’s model, proactive and preventive maintenance are prioritized to keep their dealer locations running smoothly.

Recently, several International Truck and IC Bus dealers were invited to see how the Scania dedicated customer service model works in person by visiting dealerships around Europe. This visit gave key dealer personnel the opportunity to observe a high-functioning and data-driven service business model in action.

“In Europe, this change has come faster than in the U.S., which is why we are using Scania as a reference and proof that we can change and be successful,” said Jon.

Dealers spoke with program managers to understand metrics, service bundles, flexible maintenance, processes and workflow, the Digital Dealer platform, and how the workshops work on the ground level. From this, they saw the foundational pillars that run Scania’s model and were hopefully inspired to implement this new way of working to enhance the customer experience at their own dealerships.

Trying it Out

Service Solutions has been working with a group of pilot dealers around Navistar’s dealer network to test drive the new customer service operations model and obtain dealer buy-in.

A few dealers have been involved in a pre-pilot where the customer service operations team was working directly with service managers to create the standards that will support this new way of working. Using the Digital Dealer platform (stay tuned for more in the next New Ways of Working Series installment), the dealer teams were able create a scheduling process and begin the necessary change management to keep the process rolling.

“Our learnings from these pilots have been extremely positive,” said Cory. “We have asked the dealers if they will continue to use these tools, they are all emphatically on board. They have discovered that when you get to a stage where you are working more systematically and frontloading work instead of being reactive, the dealership will experience a better work environment.”

“This is not a Navistar initiative; this is an initiative to support the customer,” said Jon. “Once dealers, technicians, dealer staff, Navistar employees and all stakeholders understand the ‘why’ of this new model, they have begun to see just how imperative this change is and the large difference it makes.”