Service Advisor or Parts Advisor as a career

[markseven]

Stay in healthcare? Become a RN if you don't like the X-ray tech job description?

[Farbin Kaiber]

^excellent explanation. Did it for many years. Like he said, you are the face of the repair in the consumers eyes, and you'll always either end up the great guy to the customer, and bad guy to the techs, or bad guy to the customers, and great guy to the techs. It's a balancing act to try and stay an ok guy to both sides.

[Julien]

tl/dr

parts advisor: gets shit on by techs & service advisors
service advisor: " " " by customers and management.


both excellent careers if you like getting shat on and working ridiculous hours

[QUKBMER]

I have been a Service Advisor/Service Manger for some 27 years now. Started out in 1988 and have been doing it since then. My dad did the same thing for 28 years (retired in 1997)and my sister has been doing it for 26 years now. I tried parts dept and didn't like it. I have been working for my current boss since 1994 and we service BMW,BENZ,VW,Audi,Porsche and other euro makes and i enjoy it.

[slammin.e28]

I went to tech school. Decided, like you, I didn't want my hobby turned into work.

I did parts for 3 years at an indie shop. Not bad. Felt as though my potential wasn't being reached. Now I do service advising at a different indie shop. Same makes of cars. I hate people, but enjoy my job a lot. Coming from slinging parts to what I do now worked really well. I was already familiar with common fail points on VW, Audi, Volvo, BMW, and MB, as well as P-cars. Thus, I don't look like a dumbass trying to explain stuff to customers. I make more money now. Always can advance. I've been at my current job since Feburary 2014 and already got a hefty raise and basically run the place when the owner goes on vacay.

One hint, you're not here to help people. Your there to sell work. Can't advise people on how to fix their cars. Just what is wrong, how much, when it'll be done.

Only sucky part is if someone isn't happy, it gets directed at me. So far nothing terrible has happened, but we're a pretty tight shop that doesn't fuck shit up.

[MrNguyen]

Hi guys looking to switch up my careers and was wondering which one will suit me better Service advisor or Parts advisor. I have been working on, selling cars and parts all my life (BMW, Toyota, Honda, etc) but decided not to go into the field of tech since I didn't want to turn my love and hobby into a job so I went into X-ray. I noticed that I still end up helping people with cars here and there, giving them suggestions on repairs and parts no matter where I am and I like giving advice on things like that. Thing is only documented proof of my work in cars is high school tech class and brief time working for Strauss Auto before college. So now I feel I want to get into a field I love and have a passion for cars and helping people. Any information and opinions are greatly appreciated. So I guess my questions are:


1. How do I get into that position
2. What does each job require
3. Difference in pay (average)
4. Advancement opportunities
5. Pros & Cons