Des Moines, IA (July 2020) -

Selected as one of three finalists for 2020 Service Lane MVP, master service advisor John McCollum has been recognized for the skills he brings to his role at Housby in Des Moines, Iowa, where he now serves as the liaison between customers and service technicians.

He’s always had a passion for extreme customer service, and his previous decades of experience in the restaurant industry have served him well.

“You learn a lot about customer service, how to keep people coming back, and how a business operates,” the 53-year-old says about his previous experience. “From budgeting to hiring to purchasing, you learn all the things that make a person well-rounded in the business world. You get a very good foundation of business knowledge.”

From restaurants to big rigs

Before he began explaining mechanics to fleet managers and owner-operators, John McCollum was a manager and then owner of a Midwest diner called Country Kitchen, and later bought a steakhouse franchise.

After leaving the restaurant business, McCollum landed in customer service for a Ford dealership in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was promoted to service advisor.

There, he says, he learned a lot about the mechanical side of being a service advisor — and he got to put his restaurant industry customer service skills to good use. In 2017, he was hired by Housby Mack where he says he was thrilled to learn about the Mack service advisor curriculum. In fact, in his first week at Housby he completed all of the service advisor eLearning.

“The classes were highly beneficial for any service advisor,” he says.

At Housby, McCollum focuses on breakdown repairs and says that the atmosphere is different than at the car dealership. “Technicians in the car world are often paid a flat rate and don’t have time to explain things to a service advisor. In the truck world, relationships with technicians are stronger. It’s much easier to get the information I need to relay to my customer,” he says.

Learning the ropes

The training — combined with McCollum’s ability to listen well, his attention to detail and his empathetic nature — helped McCollum earn the title of master service advisor. After just three years at Housby Mack, he won the 2019 Isuzu Service Walk Around Competition. He hoped to do the same for Mack at UPTIME 2020 in Dallas before it was rescheduled for later this fall due to COVID-19 concerns.

Handling customers with care

When McCollum ran a restaurant, he was the kind of manager and owner who cleared snowy paths for people to get safely in and out of their cars. As a service advisor, he exhibits that same level of caring, citing a time this winter when a truck driver traveling with his wife broke down in an empty lot across from Housby.

A busy four-lane highway separated couple and dealership, and when the driver called Housby and talked to McCollum, the driver said he would walk across the highway. McCollum insisted on hopping in a courtesy vehicle and picking up the couple, and then he arranged a tow for the truck. When the couple wanted to return to the truck to retrieve a few items, McCollum drove them. “I wouldn’t allow them to walk back and forth across the street,” he says. “It’s too dangerous.”

Once a technician repaired the truck and the customer went on his way, he called McCollum to let him know that he’d made it safely to his destination.

“I cannot stress enough how important it is to treat customers in a way that makes them feel you care,” McCollum says. “Everybody wants to feel like they are important, and in this business, they want to feel like I own their repair.

“One of the things that always stood out to me in the restaurant world is that you should never let a customer leave with anything but a positive feeling,” he says. “That’s the way I live every hour of every day. If I can be the guy who keeps someone on the road and gets him to his destination on time, there’s a lot of joy in that for me.”