customer and build confidence in prices that customers are being charged. A simple 3-tier oil change option allowed customers a taste of being in control of their service visit and allowed dealerships a low-pressure way to upsell a customer. This relies entirely on using cost-weighted pricing and works great where there is little variability in fluid capacities and tech time to complete the maintenance. The menu boards led directly to paper menus with mileage-based services. A great tool for dealerships in simplifying a 30,000-mile service. Where it always seems to get stuck is in the variables. It's hard to have a menu that has accurate pricing for 4 different types of transmission fluids and oil capacities while remaining simple enough for a customer to understand with little or no guidance. Effectively you would need thousands of paper menus for an advisor to accurately quote a service to a customer... before we even account for service history. We also run into the issue of speed, it is nearly impossible to stop and reprint menus every time a supplier changes parts pricing or we need to rapidly adjust a labor rate. Typically paper menus end up being outdated and part of the reason many dealerships can be slow to change their maintenance pricing. DIGITAL MENUS These reasons are why digital menus have taken over as the default way to sell maintenance services to customers. Digital menus allow advisors to accurately quote vehicle specific, mileage-based services edited to account for the customer's individual service history within seconds. Furthermore, digital menus allow for the blending of OEM-required services with dealer recommendations and seasonal services/promotions. This also helps us reduce the amount of vehicle-specific knowledge needed by our advisors as many new advisors are coming from fields outside of the automotive industry. Of course, like any other process or technology entering a service drive, it is not without its challenges. The common pushback I consistently receive to digital menus is regarding the process " taking too much time " , being Digital menus allow advisors to accurately quote vehicle specific, mileage-based services edited to account for the customer's individual service history within seconds. SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2023 || FIXED OPS MAGAZINE 25