mspecperformance

That is horrible!

Did the customer have a problem with the price? I am unsure of where the problem arose. Is it just the tech thinking hes doing something wrong?

 

We personally mark all parts up via our matrix. Since air filters are in the lower price range we generally leave the matrix as is with the higher %. We also charge for labor, usually .2 - .3. 99% of the time I do not allow my techs to do anything unless they are getting paid for it. If its by chance we decide to perform a air filter swap courtesy for a good client (no charge) we will always at least make sure we are making some money on the part. We are for profit businesses and businesses exist to make money. Doesn't mean we can't help people, we most certainly should however we have to make a profit to continue to provide exceptional service and be in existence for our clients. Profit is not a dirty word.

 

You may or may not want to treat your fleet accounts a bit differently. I don't do fleet work so my experience is limited however from all the questions I've ever asked, you should set terms in the beginning (payment terms, labor rate, parts pricing etc). Make sure everything is agreed upon before hand and that you are still profitable. If you are working with a stand up commercial account that appreciates your relationship and work I don't see it being an issue.

We use a BMW OE tool which is a pressure pot. I believe there is another pressure pot sold by German Tool Truck (google him).

labor + non-labor payroll shouldnt exceed 30-35%

If you are paying hourly that means that your payroll is a fixed cost and if it a high percentage of your gross sale then you need to increase sales.

 

Rule of thumb is to not go over 30-35% total payroll from your total sales. If you are at 22% your not in bad shape. Would have to know more about your numbers.

Do you pay salary? Commission or flat rate? Do you have a lot of office people? How many people and what are their roles in your company?

I really have no clue what KPI's to chase. Absolutely clueless however, this is what I've done shooting from the hip and so far it's been working.

 

MARGINS

• Advisor get's paid on part margins, inspections and diagnostic sales.
  • The retail price is pre-established by a 52% margin from napa prolink's pricing to us (they're the highest priced aftermarket vendor in our area).
  • We then call the other local vendors to ask them for there best price on product X and shop around amongst local vendors to beat it and we get dramatic price drops from online (sometimes finding the products for an additional 20-30% cheaper) so if the advisor takes the extra time to source it, he can dramatically increase his pay without becoming out of this world overpriced.

We've been doing this for the past 3 yrs and haven't burned any relationships as that's the first question I'm asked after I'm told that takes way to much time (do the #'s, 20-30% is huge).

• Technicians get paid on hours (If the variance goes outside 10% of our estimating guide, we want to know why).

I don't know what else to really do.

CSI SCORE

• Not really even a legitimate one, if the client is ecstatic with our service, we ask them to get online and write a review on FB and Google. 4.8 avg minimum or I get ornery.
• Afraid of it becoming a leveraging system of clients over staff. Don't know how others have successfully approached that.

 

ARO

• Without a minimum requirement or a push, we've always approached it with this mentality: Would you rather see 30 cars to make $3,000 or would you rather see 3? Which one would be less frustrating?

CAR COUNT

• I've been afraid to chase this one as the immediate thought goes to "couponing" or something. Does anyone have any suggestions for this?

 

That probably sums up my KPI's because that's all I know. Any suggestions? (Please refrain from insults and negative insinuations, I'm being transparent hoping that I'm asking questions others have but are afraid to ask for fear of looking silly.)

 

 

Margins:

 

Parts profit margin and labor profit margin is good to track. Seems like you have the parts profit margin down. Ultimately a total profit margin combining parts and labor is what you want to to see to get your GROSS profit margin. Industry target standard is 60% combined.

 

For technician labor hours you want to track productivity and efficiency. Productivity is the amount of time they spend actually working during the hours they are in the building/clocked in for. For instance a person that is very diligent in an 8 hour day might spend 7.2 hours out of that work day working being productive opposed to another person only being productive 4 hours our of 8. We have to count bathroom and personal breaks but what you want is a high productivity % from your techs. Efficiency is how fast a tech can get their work done as per how much they are getting paid for the job. If you are paying salary then dividing the hours turned vs their day will produce the efficiency %. If they are flat rate then substitute their day with all the hours of their job that day. Both are good metrics to track but you will have to have your techs clock in and out of jobs to do so effectively.

 

 

CSI Score:

 

Best way to track CSI is to actually poll your customers. We don't to be transparent.

 

We do solicit for reviews regularly. It is kind of an art in the way you communicate with customers and the feeling you get from them. Due to the damage reviews can do to your online reputation you have to tread carefully. If we provided a great service and or they are a returning customer and they have not given us a review we tell them how much we appreciate their trust in us and we would be so grateful for a 5 star review so we can attract more great clients like themselves. This is why reviews arent the greatest way to get a true CSI score.

 

 

ARO:

 

A high ARO is a great way to indicate if your service advisers are selling additional needed services and if they are selling more hours. Speaking of hours, Hours per RO is another good way to track if your service advisers are doing their job well. What also coincides with ARO/HPRO is technician discovered work. If you want to have high tickets you have to have a lot of discovered work to sell. If you track what your tech's are discovering you can then calculate other metrics such as closing ratio.

 

 

Car Count:

 

Car count is a good measure of how well your marketing and CRM are performing. Of course more importantly is getting the right customers through the door however if your car count is constantly in a state of flux, that would be a good indication on focusing on your retention marketing as well as new customer marketing. We all battle with the highs and low to get it to smooth out as much as possible when it comes to car count.

galaxy note, upgraded from nexus 7's. Samsung Galaxy notes are top of the line android tablets and we love them.

We use bolt on, happy with their service.

Sorry, I just don't understand all of the angst going on in this thread. How they come up with estimates. They poll several shops in your zip code or immediate area (that's why they ask for the zip code). They find the lowest shop rate and the highest shop rate in that area. They take OEM list parts prices for the high end and available aftermarket parts list prices for the low end. Hens your high and low end. Theory is you should be in that price range cut and dry. If your too high on your quote there is not much to say, your going to have to sell the difference.. Too low, you may be leaving money on the table. It's no more perfect then the flat rate guides. It's just a tool for the customer to try and gauge if their getting a fair shake.

 

There is a huge fallacy in polling shops in your area. For example my area is some of the highest cost of living in the country however we have some of the lowest labor rates for independents. We also have some of the lowest competencies when it comes to technicians. The dealerships do charge appropriately for the cost of living as well as the training and competency their techs have. With that being said if we are to be "within range" of the shops around us we would have to lower our labor rate and pricing on parts which would not allow us to provide the level of service and afford to have my techs well trained. There is just such a huge variance in many factors such as cost of living, state of aftermarket industry per area, competency of shop owner/business/technicians.

 

RepairPal estimator tool creates a price focusing and makes our services commodities. No matter how you look at it our services will always be different and our methods and cost of doing business will be different. My techs and service advisors are highly trained and my facility is better equipped than all the independents in my immediate area and I know this for a fact. We also provide more value, more benefits and treat our customers completely different than other shops. For all those reasons I will not be racing to the bottom with inferior outfits.

Whether it is the worst thing or the best thing for the industry it is here. We are going to have to deal with these type of sites. Find a way to make it work for you and your business.

 

 

I don't believe that is necessarily true. I have not seen these sites/service gain much traction. I have only heard RepairPal spouted once in 10 years of operation.

Worse thing ever for the industry.

I figured I would share this and I don't believe it is covered enough in the shop owners circles and thats about leadership qualities and what it takes to lead.

 

In my shop I am trying to change the culture where all of my guys buy in. I preach team work and education. We invest a lot into our people and I am sure you guys do as well. Recently one of my Service Advisers just graduated Elite's Master Course which is a 6 month intensive service adviser / writer's course. The transformation I have seen from my guy is nothing short of amazing. It has been a group effort from management down to the technician in increasing our sales, adjusting our work flow policies and implementing all the crazy ideas I have. In passing his final exam I promised my service adviser I would take him out to an expensive steak dinner. After thinking long and hard about it I decided I was not doing the right thing. The other employees may see this as favoritism and as a "reward" which is not the intention of passing his course. Instead I made a decision to invite my whole staff to a dinner on us. In the invitation I took the time to acknowledge everyone for the good work they have been doing and that the reason why I wanted to invite everyone was not as a reward but as a celebration. We are a team and our successes and failures are shared as a group. I emphasis that everything they achieve in their professional and personal lives that make a positive impact are important to me and important to our company. Does it cost us money to invest in our team? Absolutely, this dinner alone is going to around $1000. Will it pay dividends in the future, for sure. It also feels really good to do for others.

 

I believe acknowledgement, appreciation and team building is sorely lacking in our industry. One of my goals is to make our company the best place to work in the industry. Take care of your employees and your employees will take care of your customers.

 

I am grateful for the amazing people I work with and I hope its an attitude that everyone strives to share.

 

SAAB, Sprinter/Freightliner; BMW it's Castrol, no?

 

 

I just cheked the net..mobil one is second to factory fill for BMW. Mobil Tri Syn was first on list for MB. Just wanted to be sure I hadnt lost my mind.

 

 

The Castrol that BMW uses has BMW's German certs (LL01-LL04). The Mobile 1 that is used in Mercedes is 0-W40 which has Mercedes certs. Its right on the bottle. Anything without say even Mobil 5W30 does not carry the correct certs.

 

Does it make a difference? Possibly. Certainly only over time. It is a quality and marketing position we take in using the 100% correct stuff in our client's vehicles.

We offer 3/36k for everything we do and charge accordingly. I believe people like simplicity with everything.

Yup its good stuff. My suppliers used to stock it years ago. I wouldn't hesitate on it based off brand. They have a lot of European OE certs which almost all domestic cheap crapo oil doesnt have.

To be a true owner you would have to delegate that duty to someone. I personally do not want to get into the habit of doing it myself. My goal is to make this business function so that if I wanted to step away and manage it from tahiti I can do so.

Its not a good situation all around. People that are unreasonable and for the lack of a better term have a "poor person's" mentality are always going to be hard to deal with. They will claim you were trying to rip them off and then blame you for some wrong doing if something happens to them. If you choose to hold their vehicle they will probably bitch and give you a bad review. The flip side is if they get into an accident you may have to deal with some litigation. Sucks all the way around.

 

 

Bosch is better suited for the Euro cars or HD application. Very popular supplier for these brands. It has cache if you will, to have that gold and red sign outside. Gives your shop more reason to standout, and be more professional, and competent in "appearance". But as MSpec said, Bosch is not recognized as an industry leader like say K&N or Remy for example. Also if you do research, you will find mixed reviews of their products. Their QA is not the greatest. I would argue that some of the lifetime parts from the retail chains will bring more value to a customer. Their braking products for example are terrible. Made in China most of it, and just too expensive for what it is.

 

Napa is not bad. Very, very popular with the general service industry, and their coverage, and range is the biggest of all the retail chains I would say. The also have products like shop management, and repair info. I believe Napa is in bed with Mitchell, and offer you special pricing on that subscription, I would also point you in the direction of Advance Auto. They purchased Carquest jointly with Worldpac. So technically, they are the biggest supplier now for the industry. The great thing about them is location, and delivery times. Pricing is competitive, and they also have great programs for shops too. Give them a look over if you can.

 

One thing I like about NAPA is their brand is much more recognized and there are incentives where they will compensate up to a certain amount to renovate your store front with Napa branding. It has been very enticing in regards of opening a different shop/general repair.

I think you are mistaken. There is no obligation for you to stock or purchase their parts. Of course my participating it is assumed you will be using some Bosch parts and there are small incentives for you to do such. Also you are under no obligation to purchase their equipment, they do however give you incentives to purchase their equipment (I believe it may be 10% off or they have a special site for their stuff). On a side note, I have a brand new Tire Machine and Balancer for sale if anyone is interested, literally brand new. No touch changer. Retail is 18k for the combo, willing to let go for a lot less. I would not purchase their aligner. Ever.

Why is it better for general repair to be a Napa facility versus Bosch Mspec?

 

 

NAPA has a lot more benefits to its auto care members than Bosch. I believe you do have to pay into NAPA however there is a much more synergistic relationship especially if you are using NAPA as your primary auto parts source. Bosch is nice considering that it is free but there are very few benefits to being apart of the program. We think that Bosch is a big brand name but the general public doesn't recognize it as a go to source for auto repair. I'll qualify that by saying NAPA really isnt either however there are a myriad of programs you can take advantage of through the Napa Auto Care program which is where you will win.

 

We are a Bosch shop and I would say we have tried leverage the brand to our benefit at around a 5 or 6 from a scale from 1-10. I don't believe it has really added any value to our shop in the marketing department and we have maybe gain 1-2 customers from the Bosch credit card program that already had the card from another shop in the network. This is after 3 years with Bosch and 2 years of offering their credit card.

Never heard of having to stock Bosch products. We have been a Bosch shop for 3 years. I think you might have your banner programs mixed up. It is a 100% free to use program. They don't ask anything from you other than to participate in some programs, none of which cost you any money.

Any one got any updates on this stuff. After getting off the Phone with RO Writer today, I'm going to do everything in my power to never give them a dime of my money again. I bought my program, and now I can't get upgrades any more because they've switched to a subscription based program at almost $300 a month.

 

wow I had no idea. That sucks. As far as I remember they have some $65 monthly charge for tech support which they make you pay for at least a year even if you don't use them.

The easiest way I handle this, is I tell the customer that I have a credit account for the parts, and I am billed at the end of the month. I then give them a list price list of the part, from the supplier I acquired it from. Regardless, you are not in the wrong. It is common practice to mark up parts, and common knowledge that we get a discount on the parts we purchase. Customers also know that they cannot attain said prices on these parts. I guess an argument can be made if you markup above list price, it can look a bit greedy, and unethical, but again, this commonly happens in our industry.

 

 

If you are using a proper parts matrix you may be over list price on parts. There is nothing unethical about that if the vehicle is being serviced at your facility, your experienced technician is performing a superior job and you are backing the work with a long and iron clad warranty. The nerve of someone to ask about what my price is LOL

Wow. That kid's story is just nuts.

 

We had a similar one.... Acura with 200k miles on it and nasty burnt transmission fluid was slipping going up hills. We typically either recommend the customer to go to a transmission shop for this or possibly drain and fill the trans as a last-ditch effort.

 

He elected to go to the trans shop, and we let him go for $0.

 

A few months later, he calls stating we tried to rip him off by "selling him a transmission when he didn't need one." Apparently, all he needed was a tune-up. He was calling from the lobby of another shop where the tune-up was taking place.

 

Turns out that didn't fix it at all. Still slipping

 

He then called up saying "all it needs is a trans fluid change. You ripped me off. I'm going online right now to tell everyone."

 

Have not heard back from him. Probably still slipping.

 

 

cant fix stupid. I wish I could herd all these retards into a fiery pit and be done with them but alas... we live in a civilized world ;P

 

But seriously, we have to be careful and protect ourselves from idiots. People these days have wayyyyyy to much power to ruin a business's reputation.