Strategic Staffing to Grow Your Business

By Dan Kaus

Any fast lube operator who has worked on the front lines in the service bays, at peak volume, in the middle of summertime heat, where customers and service staff can be on edge, knows that such a mix of elements can produce at least two distinctly different scenarios:

Scenario one — Those summertime factors combine to form a combustible mixture of frustration, irritability and annoyance. And while those emotions may well describe the feelings experienced by your customers they also apply to your employees.

Scenario two — The same high pressure situation can result in satisfaction, enjoyment and appreciation as more customers than ever happily roll into (and out of) your bays at a record pace. And once again these descriptions apply equally to customers and employees alike.

Interestingly, both scenes can, and do, occur in the very same fast lube operation and sometimes on the very same day!

I suggest that the two different scenarios are typically the result of two factors: staff size and skill level. The purpose of this column is to help create the second scenario on a consistent daily basis, as summer conditions test the staffing and skill level coordination of center managers.

So, how can the results described in scenario two happen more frequently and hopefully even every day? Well, in a phrase, it all starts with staffing!

Staff Size
You have no doubt noted that there can be times when your customer volume never seems to increase above a certain average at given time blocks of the day. And some may conclude, “That’s just the way it is, and there’s nothing to be done.” But for those segments of the day it may also mean that an adjustment needs to take place when it comes to scheduling. However, there is one certainty: Just hoping for car counts to improve while continuing to do what you’ve always done will give you the same results you’re currently getting.

For example, if you’ve consistently seen 40 cars per day you are probably scheduling your staff based on doing a volume of 40 cars per day, and it’s a pretty reasonable likelihood that you’ll continue to service about 40 cars per day. Why? Because your schedule is perfectly designed to get the results it’s getting. Not much will change unless you make an adjustment.

The Most Beneficial Schedule Adjustment Opportunities
Whatever the reasons, customers are more available at certain times of the day than others. Obviously, you only have so much influence over when customers arrive, so focus on what you can control: staff management. Customers have a certain amount of time, at a given period, to have a particular service completed. And if you’re staffed for five cars an hour, but there is a demand to do eight cars, the result is stack lines.

Significant stack lines do one thing really well: create drive-by customers who are unwilling to stop. This in turn creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, which is one reason volumes stagnate at certain levels. The most likely opportunity to build car counts is during historically high volume hours when your customers have demonstrated that they have time. Said differently, if you have any cars waiting during your peak hours, adjust staffing and watch your car counts increase!

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