St. Onge Recreation
Multi-line powersports & marine dealer · Barrie, Central Ontario
St. Onge Recreation runs five different powersports and marine departments under one roof — is service still booked department-by-department over the phone, or could a single online booking board save your writers the daily juggling?
Why they need it
St. Onge has grown since 1991 into one of the region's broadest dealers — snowmobiles, ATVs/SSVs, motorcycles, dirt bikes, personal watercraft, boats, trailers and outboards — spanning separate Sales, Service, Parts, Finance, Dirt Bike Shop and Boat Shop departments, yet there is no online way to book service for any of them. A unified booking-and-dispatch portal would let a customer pick the right department (boat vs. sled vs. ATV) and see real bay availability instead of calling around, while service writers get one shared dispatch board across all product lines instead of siloed phone lines and paper tickets per shop. Parts staff would also gain visibility into what's queued, improving reorder timing. For a 30+ year multiline dealer this scale of complexity, a self-service booking system would likely recover meaningful service revenue currently lost to phone-tag and missed appointments.
Tech gaps
No online service scheduling despite running Sales, Service, Parts, Finance plus separate Dirt Bike and Boat shop departments; no unified customer portal; no published business email
Current tech
Dealer website with a trade-in valuation ("Value Your Trade") tool and a third-party online parts finder (onlinemicrofiche.com), Facebook, Instagram and eBay store
Selling a customer portal
PlaybookA login for their customers to book, see status, and pay, so the phone stops ringing for updates.
- Ask how many 'where is my job at' calls the office takes a week.
- Portals pay back on admin hours saved, not on new sales. Frame it as staff time.
- Start with status and booking. Payments and documents are phase two.
Objections (3)
- “We already have a website.”
- A website tells people about you. A portal does the work for you. It sits behind a login on the site you already have.
- “Our customers won't log in.”
- They already do it for their bank and their dentist. We text them a link; no password on the first visit.
- “Too expensive.”
- What does one admin hour cost you? Most portals replace 10 to 15 hours a week of status calls.