This morning I scheduled the annual service for my P85D at the Dania Beach SC. When I called the call went to voicemail so I left a message. Less than 30 minutes later the call was returned and I was offered a valet to pick up and return my car. I accepted then began to think about it.
I have never in my life been offered such convenience, not even for much more expensive products than my Tesla.
Also, everyone in South Florida knows how overwhelmed Dania Beach SC is. Using a valet lets them have less customers clogging the place, removes irritating I95 rush hour commuting, and altogether improves the already excellent customer service.
As Tesla grows the most common complaints seem to be about service delays. Valet service eradicates that issue. Overall, I suspect it lowers their costs by allowing more efficient internal scheduling. It is one more innovative way to scale.
The combination of service trucks (i.e. Rangers) and valet should allow the total percentage of SG&A dedicated to Service to slightly drop as fixed plant and equipment costs are spread over more units. They can also trend towards more industrial-area service center sites and increased shift work. After all, they'll retain SC's colocated with Sales, and some SC's near customer concentrations. Further expansions can be in more efficient areas, somewhat similarly to the present practices used for major collision repair and large vehicle service.
If this is part of the strategy we might expect improvements in warranty costs as well as SC support costs.
The numbers are available for some prognostications, although there's a fair amount of work to do it. I'm happy do some work, but only if the logic seems sound and it seems plausible that Tesla is actually deploying their strategy in order to increase efficiency as well as cope with near exponential growth.
Is that plausible?
I have never in my life been offered such convenience, not even for much more expensive products than my Tesla.
Also, everyone in South Florida knows how overwhelmed Dania Beach SC is. Using a valet lets them have less customers clogging the place, removes irritating I95 rush hour commuting, and altogether improves the already excellent customer service.
As Tesla grows the most common complaints seem to be about service delays. Valet service eradicates that issue. Overall, I suspect it lowers their costs by allowing more efficient internal scheduling. It is one more innovative way to scale.
The combination of service trucks (i.e. Rangers) and valet should allow the total percentage of SG&A dedicated to Service to slightly drop as fixed plant and equipment costs are spread over more units. They can also trend towards more industrial-area service center sites and increased shift work. After all, they'll retain SC's colocated with Sales, and some SC's near customer concentrations. Further expansions can be in more efficient areas, somewhat similarly to the present practices used for major collision repair and large vehicle service.
If this is part of the strategy we might expect improvements in warranty costs as well as SC support costs.
The numbers are available for some prognostications, although there's a fair amount of work to do it. I'm happy do some work, but only if the logic seems sound and it seems plausible that Tesla is actually deploying their strategy in order to increase efficiency as well as cope with near exponential growth.
Is that plausible?
