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Extended hours

Jeff
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mspecperformance Mentor

mspecperformance

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There is a method of thinking that says saying YES to every customer and offering extended hours is a road to success. Gary Gunn and his company the Turn Around Tour promote this heavily. Also Greg Sands of Mudlick Mail talks about this here:

 

http://www.ratchetandwrench.com/RatchetWrench/January-2015/The-Road-to-a-Better-2015/

 

 

I don't neccessarily subscribe to this way however it may work for you. I wish I had more advice for you. I don't know what it looks like in your market. If you are on a budget then certainly grassroots method of marketing is probably best. Set a quota for the amount of cards you want to hand out in your community a week and make sure you do it. Stuff like that. Also stay on top of and mine your Customer Database. This is probably the cheapest and most effective way to boost your sales in the immediate if you are not already doing so.

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Shopcat Community Regular

Shopcat

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Jeff,

I was wondering what changed about your business? For example did you loose car count, or ARO? Maybe you can get back on track without extended hours. Obviously extended hours costs more in the immediate, and maybe just masking another symptom of slow business. I like the idea of 8-5 M-F. Extended hours may cause your team and yourself to suffer burn out quickly. We all need a break. I suggest make it work without spreading your assets any thinner.

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  • 2 weeks later...
KMS Collaborator

KMS

Posted
Posted (edited)

I don't know your clientele, but it definitely sounds like your ARO is way low, or your customer count is low, or maybe both. You sound like you work a lot of hours already. It isn't always necessary to work extended hour. I would look to see if how I could get my ARO higher before I would work more hours. Great Quote:

 

It's not the time you put into your work, it's the work you put into your time!

 

Words I live by!

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ncautoshop Proficient

ncautoshop

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Thanks for the input folks. Car counts and aro are down. Really don't have any good answers. Will be spending more time going over the reports to see who is due, who hasnt returned etc. Like I said I am not hard to find and my reviews are stellar.

We hit a little rough patch through the last 2 months! It'll come back!

 

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

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shumsauto Explorer

shumsauto

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I have though about extended hours on many occasions but I think it could be risky move because it can train your customers to try to come on that day and not figure out how they can drop the car off.

Also most customers during extended hours would be waiters and that would get the ARO WAY down.

Also parts delivery is an issue because most parts stores close at 5:30 - 6 pm so you may be stuck with a customer that needs his car back TONIGHT and you can't get a 2 dollar part that you accidentally broke till tomorrow = unhappy customer.

And last - I believe if customers don't consider it important to make arrangements during regular business hours to leave the car and service it right with no rush, they will try to get you to hurry up, cut corners, "just pass the safety anyways because I need the car back RIGHT NOW" and just overall not quality customers that we are all looking for.

At my shop we have night drop and late pick up option if the customer pays over the phone. We have a lock box outside that the customer gets a code for after paying the bill and they can pick up any time. That solves pretty much all of our problems with customers that work late. Just my 2 cents 😄

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      Auto shop owners are always looking for ways to improve production levels. They focus their attention on their technicians and require certain expectations of performance in billable labor hours. While technicians must know what is expected of them, they have a limited amount of control over production levels. When all factors are considered, the only thing a well-trained technician has control over is his or her actual efficiency.
      As a review, technician efficiency is the amount of labor time it takes a technician to complete a job compared to the labor time being billed to the customer. Productivity is the time the technician is billing labor hours compared to the time the technician is physically at the shop. The reality is that a technician can be very efficient, but not productive if the technician has a lot of downtime waiting for parts, waiting too long between jobs, or poor workflow systems.
      But let’s go deeper into what affects production in the typical auto repair shop. As a business coach, one of the biggest reasons for low shop production is not charging the correct labor time. Labor for extensive jobs is often not being billed accurately. Rust, seized bolts, and wrong published labor times are just a few reasons for lost labor dollars.
      Another common problem is not understanding how to bill for jobs that require extensive diagnostic testing, and complicated procedures to arrive at the root cause for an onboard computer problem, electrical issue, or drivability issue. These jobs usually take time to analyze, using sophisticated tools, and by the shop’s top technician. Typically, these jobs are billed at a standard menu labor charge, instead of at a higher labor rate. This results in less billed labor hours than the actual labor time spent. The amount of lost labor hours here can cripple a shop’s overall profit.
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