Playbook, car dealership
Three departments, three timetables, one address
Publishing a single set of hours for a dealership is publishing a wrong answer for two thirds of the people who read it. The showroom usually runs longest and often opens on a Sunday, the workshop keeps earlier and shorter hours because a technician's day finishes before a salesperson's does, and the parts counter is a third pattern again. The person asking is never really asking about the building.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for opening hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- One site runs on at least three timetables at once, and they are not simply longer and shorter versions of each other. The workshop starts earlier than the showroom and finishes well before it, which is the opposite of what a customer extrapolates from a Sunday opening.
- The workshop's hours are really two separate windows: the period during which a car can be dropped off, and the last hour one can be collected. The second is the one that strands people, and it is almost never published.
- A customer asking whether the dealership is open is asking whether a specific thing can happen. Viewing a car, leaving a car, collecting a car and buying a part all have different answers on the same afternoon.
- The last bookable appointment is not the closing time, and the gap is often an hour or more, because a job booked in at closing has nobody left to do it and a car with the wheels off cannot be handed back.
How it arrives
- are you open on sunday
- what time does the service department open
- can i drop my car off before work
- what time do you close for collections
- are you open on the bank holiday
- is the parts counter open on saturday
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Hours listed per department rather than per site | Sales, service, parts, and anything else with its own counter and its own staff. Four short blocks. This is the single most useful thing on this page and most dealership sites carry one set of times in the footer instead. |
|---|---|
| The drop off and collection windows for the workshop | The earliest a car can be left, the latest it can be picked up, and what happens to a car still on site after that. The collection deadline is the one that ruins somebody's evening, so it is the one to state most plainly. |
| Holiday and seasonal closures with dates on them | Each closure written with its year, since an undated holiday note is worse than none: it will be read confidently and it will be a year out of date within months. |
| What can and cannot happen when only the showroom is open | Looking at a car, probably yes. Collecting one that has been in the workshop, often not, because the keys and the paperwork are behind a door that is locked. Saying so prevents the wasted Sunday drive. |
The reply
The departments keep different hours. The showroom is open on Sunday, the workshop is not, and the parts counter has its own times, all of which are listed on our opening hours page [1]. If you are bringing a car in, drop off starts earlier than the showroom opens and the last collection is well before we close, so it is worth checking those two windows rather than the general times [2]. Note that when only the showroom is open, a car that has been in for work usually cannot be released, because the keys are with service.
It leads with the fact that there are three timetables, since a customer who takes one set of hours away will use it for the wrong department. The drop off and collection windows are named separately from the department hours because they are what the question is actually about. The last sentence pre empts the Sunday collection attempt.
Where it stops
The trigger. The customer needs something to happen at a time the published hours do not cover, or asks whether a car can be left or collected outside the stated windows.
Anything outside the published hours has to be agreed with the department, and I cannot arrange it. Leave me your name, an email and what you need to do, and the right team will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give one set of hours for the site, since that answer is wrong for whichever department the customer actually needed.
- Never say a car can be dropped off or collected at a time outside the published windows, because a locked service door with a car behind it is not a problem that waits until morning.
- Never confirm that a particular car will be ready by a particular time, which is a workshop question about one job rather than an hours question.
- Never answer a bank holiday question from material with no year on it, as an old closure note is read with total confidence and sends somebody to a shut site.
Questions
- Is per department hours really worth the extra maintenance?
- It is the highest volume factual question on a dealership site and the version in most footers is wrong for two departments out of three. Four short blocks maintained once a year removes a category of call entirely.
- Can it tell somebody whether their car is ready for collection?
- No. It has no view of the workshop or any job, so it cannot say what state a car is in. It can give the collection window, which is the part people misjudge, and pass a message to service.
- What about the last appointment of the day?
- Publish it separately from the closing time. Customers assume they can book up to the minute you shut, and the gap between the last bookable slot and the door closing is a conversation the service desk has several times a week.
Keep reading
- Everything for a car dealershipStock moves daily and finance adverts are regulated, so this is mostly about what a dealership assistant must never claim to know.
- Handling opening hours in generalHolidays, seasonal variation, last orders and multiple sites. Keeping one source of truth so the assistant and your map listing agree.
- The front of a dealership is a display, not a car parkTwo entrances at one address. The spaces at the front are cars for sale, and service reception is round the side behind the workshop.
- Bought online or bought here, and why that decides everythingA car bought without seeing it sits under different rules from one driven off the forecourt, and neither of them is a change of mind policy.
- Money down on one specific car, and what it actually buysA reservation fee takes one registration off sale for a few days. Whether it comes back is on the form and is not settled in a chat window.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.