It’s no secret that today’s economically challenged times have put the spotlight on the one area still generating cash for dealerships—the service drive. People are holding on to their cars longer and spending money on keeping their current car in shape.

The service drive can be a goldmine for dealerships that use the service opportunity to interact with their customer. Service people get the opportunity to up sell the customer with additional value add services or present additional service opportunities through education. When done right, salespeople can get the opportunity to interact with a customer and build on the relationship.

Unfortunately, many dealerships have been physically constructed in a way that has created a natural separation between sales in service. Just walk into any typical dealership and you will see the salespeople with no clear line of sight visibility to the service drive. The unintended result is that the salespeople don’t have a simple way to interact with the service customer unless they loiter around in the service line. While some CRM products provide service appointment time to staff, how many times does the service customer arrive at their exact appointment time?

Interestingly enough, RFID can provide a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between sales and service. How is this done? Using an RFID tag with a unique serialized number, the tag is associated with a VIN which in turn is associated with a specific customer. When RFID customer identification technology is implemented in the service drive, the technology can provide the exact time the customer pulls into the service lane. Tie that event with targeted internal messaging and now you have created a brand new touch point in the drive. No more loitering salespeople or situations when the customer comes and goes without sales having a chance to interact.

Let’s look at a real world example of this technology in play. You are a salesperson at your store and with your CRM system know that Mr. Jones has a 10am appointment for an oil change. At 10:23am you receive an alert on your Blackberry telling you that Mr. Jones has just pulled in and that his lease is going to expire in four months. You walk out into the lane, greet Mr. Jones by name. You provide Mr. Jones with his lease update and at the same time show him a way to move into a new car that keeps him from going someplace else.

Speaking of touch points, how about we create a second one? If your store provides loaners to customers, you can also have RFID tags on your loaner fleet. During the loaner checkout process, you temporarily associate that customer to the loaner. Now when that loaner returns, we know once again the exact arrival time of the customer and provide sales one more chance to go and interact with that customer.

RFID can be a great technology that provides sales with a fantastic opportunity to interact with that service customer and knock down the walls between service and sales.

George A. Cresto is the founder and president of MyDealerLot™.