lmcca

On 7/12/2020 at 8:07 PM, xrac said:

I am looking at this one and considering changing. It seems to be system of choice with many of the Facebook group.

 

https://www.tekmetric.com/?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=90611462&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8EaPf_z-A-CkXytJQzHfTLZ5wmNd6PaLNR4j_KZro3OdDI2kp_ir2SGiUS-JmxrMnaaJHC-8m-KJrtG-Bzdn76tEtFww&utm_content=90611462&utm_source=hs_email

we have tekmetric and the really bad part is they use MOTOR for the labor guide and it is absolutely horrible.  Labor times are really low compared to mitchell and missing info on vehicles and some vehicles it has no labor information whatsoever. We use XLPARTS mainly which offers mitchell labor guide lookup while you search for parts.  Aside from that we really like the program.

they keep trying to get us, they call every few months and everytime they do i say, "i would absolutely like to advertise with yelp" and they go, really? thats great and i say, as soon as you stop blocking my customers good reviews.  The hiding of reviews doesnt work very good, i understand why they do it do the system does not work. For that reason, i'm out.

we have two and there is no need to assign techs to them or find a solution, it generally works out easily enough when customers walk up to the counter. We rarely see an imbalance. Plus, one is the service manager so he can delegate if needed.  We also have a parts guy but he only handles parts as they come in, if it is a wrong part, part inventory, part returns and tracking. We also have a body shop so he handles those parts as well.  He does not write up tickets, the service writers do.

10 minutes ago, Marksas said:

I have tried career builder, indeed, craigslist, facebook and a few others. Craigslist and facebook are the best for leads. We are active with our facebook page so that helps and we do buy some advertising on Facebook. One of the things we were doing is as soon as we got a response from someone (mostly Craigslist) we would request they go to our website to fill out an online application. Rarely would someone do this. Since we don't hire a great deal of people, I really don't have much experience even though I have been in business over 15 years. I noticed my local Chick-fil-A was having open interviews one day so I called up the owner who is a friend and prefaced my question with "No is an acceptable answer". I then asked him if I could sit through an interview for some tips. He said he would do one better, he would come down, pick me up, provide me with lunch, give me a back end tour, and sit through as many interviews that I wanted. He then said he needed to make an appointment for service so I one upped him and told him bring your vehicle, drop it off and we will go in mine while they service yours. 

Anyway they don't require an application for an interview. he has 2 other staff people pre interview to weed out a number of the applicants and then he gets the ones that are pre-screened. He begins by telling them the process of the interview.

1. Introduces himself and me to the applicant.

2. Talks about himself and his background as the owner operator.

3. Talks about he organization

4. His style of management.

5. He then tells them to take about 5 minutes to tell him their story and asks them if its ok if he makes some notes on his phone while they talk. And lets them know he is not texting or answering emails but merely making notes about the interview. He also tells them that he or I might interrupt their story to ask them a few questions.  

6. If he feels compelled he then tells the that he has a position he thinks would be a great fit and tells them about the position. He makes them an offered with the stipulation that they must fill out an online application and screening and if that is ok then they have a job. He asks them if they can go online that day to complete the application process. If they can't do it that day he then asks if they can complete the next day. They all agree. If they don't complete the online part when they said they would then they don't hire them. 

After viewing the operations I could pretty much place each of the interview candidates in various positions and it was actually uplifting because he had some great young people.  

One of the other things he does is to put a couple of napkins on the floor by the table to see if anyone picks them up. 

A couple of things i learned is that they make it a very informal process and get the applicant comfortable. They build some excitement about the organization by telling their story so that the applicants want to come there.  I have changed our process and don't even mention the application now. We go ahead and schedule an interview. We get them to commit to a time and if they are late we will talk to them for a bit to find out what happened and give them a 5 minute shop tour but not much after that. If they're late for an interview then my experience is they lack discipline and are also late for work.  Once we give them a tour we tell them about our organization and vision. We try and get them excited and want to come work with us. We ask them to tell their story, ask them about their hopes and dreams. If we aren't really hiring we let them know we take our time in the hiring process and we are slow to hire. We have also shared our growth plans with them so sometimes is a matter of obtaining potential hires to have in the stable. Once we complete the initial interview we direct them to our website and tell them that our application is a little lengthy but we want to know as much about them as we can because we have an exceptional team and don't want to damage that by a bad hire.  We also do 2-3 interviews. The manager, the lead tech, and myself occasionally.  

A couple of points.

Make sure your shop and your office is clean and well lite. nobody really can get excited about working in a messy dungeon.

Treat everyone of them with respect. We also tell the applicants that they can also talk to any of the employees if they like. 

We treat all the parts delivery guys and all of our vendors with the highest regard. We offer delivery guys cold bottled water and sodas and create good repore with them as they can be advocates for your business. Our last great hire was a service writer referred to us by a major vendor.  One of the last top techs we hired came to us from a combination of parts house and tool truck recommendations. Guy was new to the area and talked to parts houses and tool truck guys and asked if they were looking for a job where are three places they would go. We were at the top of the list. I thought that was a smart and unique way for someone to find a place to work. This was an exceptional tech and we he came to us he was upfront and stated he would only be with us 2-3 yrs max as his wife was a DOD worker and would be transferred after this assignment so he wanted us to know that before hiring him. 

Even doing all this you will still make bad hires as we have also. We terminate those quickly. This hasn't always been the case as I am too nice and give 2nd, 3rd.... chances. My manager is much better at this than me. I have improved greatly over the years because this is extremely costly to morale and culture. 

Anyway I hope this helps and always be looking and interviewing. 

 

 

 

wow, nice tips, very good. 

7 hours ago, Andre R said:

I have had a lot of success using word of mouth through the tool trucks, my vendors and the parts delivery drivers . Another way I had heard was to go to the new car dealers and hand your business cards out to the techs. If you go to ally of training seminars you could try there also.

yikes, stay out of peoples shops man

Autozone, Carquest (which is now Advance) do the same thing, Oreileys loans tools i believe but dont do the check engine scan anymore that im aware of. Point is, they are all doing it.  I know allot of you wont like me for this but we allow people to bring their own parts, to a point, as i would rather get something out of it rather than nothing out of it and as Joe pointed out, the labor is where the money is made.

In your case Joe, we tell the customer up front there is a 1/2 hour front end inspection charge if during the course of an alignment we find loose or worn out parts and they decline the repairs here.  Then when they come back we get the alignment charge as well. This way we arent doing free front end checks for the do it themselfers. (kinda of the topic but wasnt sure if you did this or not).

so you dont want to help us figure that out?  not sure what you are here for, but thanks........i guess..

if you are not going to provide this invaluable way of finding a tech, WHY would you post it in the first place? 

OP, i have had the same issues as you, in the end craigslist has been the best in finding us a candidate.  The general service guys are easier to get and look at craigslist. The tech also go there but it does seem to be more difficult to find them.  I post to CL and indeed.

I also keep all past applications and resumes and go thru those and make phone calls, got one by doing that.  

Just wish we could get the magical search terms to find the golden hidden tech resumes.........

were you on monster? Indeed? needtechs?

lol, fake news.

ok, but how?  what were the search terms?  what websites?  i mean, resumes have to sit on a server somewhere so im wondering where you are seeing them?

Where did you find this guy you hired?

we have been using cradlepoint for several years, in fact, just got our second one. We have a collision center that is cloud based on most of what they do and i guess the service side for repair information etc as well.  I got it because we switched from t 1 lines to cable, with the unreliability of cable i had to have a back up.  It has saved us many times, the longest was about 4 days without cable, ouch, but people never noticed any speed difference as its 4g and its really fast.

With the t-1's and other newer technology the down time is slight, in fact most phone companies have a 99 percent up time but its nice to have a backup to not slow you down etc.

11 hours ago, jfuhrmad said:

I actually had to go out online and find resumes and start calling guys.

so where did you find the resumes?

we signed up for the trial a few days ago, it is neat but the problem we are running into is there are several phone numbers for us, meaning, in marketing companies use their own numbers to track and monitor the phone calls. So, if you look on our website, it is not the real phone number to our shop. i figure there is 3 maybe 4 different numbers that will actual ring here. Textbox can tie all the numbers together but they will charge you for each line they do that. So in our case, we would be charged 4 times in order to get all the lines covered.

now, do we need to have all the lines covered? I guess not but it will raise problems for when people say, i texted you but got no response etc.

whats a book?

jesus, its hard enough to get them to work efficiently enough when they are on flag. What a nightmare to have them hourly. Do yourself a huge favor, go flag, use hourly general service guys for cleaning and get your techs thinking about the cars that come into the bay that makes you money rather than a cleaning list.

We have 3 techs, flag hour.

2 general service techs, lof, si, keep shop clean etc. they are hourly.

no

My research showed VOIP phone systems are totally unreliable in service (lots of latency). The cell phone idea scares me, $250 per month for 3 lines sounds reasonable and definitely don't give up the old phone number.

what the heck? This was the case back in 2004 but, sorry, this is completely wrong. In fact, it is becoming harder and harder to find analog lines, VOIP IS the go to technology.

yeah, i agree, dont feel guilty but at the same time explain the extra costs involved so that may help them understand, rent, insurance etc. They should understand. However, you may still lose some because they came to you (most likely) because of the 35 an hour, they may not be able to afford the rest. If that does happen, it isnt your fault, your growing, thats a good thing, you wont grow at 35 an hour for anyone in that building.

Let's throw this out for discussion. I own two Goodyear tire stores. For the last 15 years we have been open on Saturday from 8 till noon. We are closed on Sunday. We have a manager/service writer and a "B" level oil changer and tire tech. Most Saturdays we do 2 oil changes, a few tire repairs, maybe a tire or two. About once a month a set of tires. One or two people who only come in on Saturday but could come in during the week. Almost never make payroll let alone expenses. Looking into closing on Saturday, at least for the winter months. We are located in a downtown location and don't see much traffic on the weekends.

What do you do and what do you think about my situation?

Richard

We were EXACTLY this except no tires, during the week we get killed with cars and on Saturday, 9 to 2 for us it was dead. One or two cars and thats it. I put it to the owner as far as costs etc and he said no, we will stay open on Saturdays. Then 3 months later, guess he started to realize, we closed it for saturdays. Been closed on weekends for several years now and its great for employees and us and the customers are used to it now and not many objected. Some places get creamed on the weekends, some dont.

close it up, your peoples morale will go up some too.

hmm, i think i would pick a different place for empathy, thought this was for business. I keep forgetting how sensitive people have become, i weep for the people of this country, been so wrong over the years. Ill say a prayer for you both and hope your feelings are better tomorrow.

LMCCA is the guy who was out of line with the OP (Original Poster)... OP is you

so, since i said the same thing as mspec but said it first, im the one out of line, lol. Im not out of line, he had a procedure in place, he chose to go outside of that, it bit him and he is mad because a customer took him on it. Big deal, if this bothers you guys so much you should stop airing this kind of stuff. I tell it like it is, like several others on here. Cry to someone else.

You're out of line with this comment. He lead with what he thought was right, the customer admitted he would have approved it, and all your comment proves is that you're as big a tool as the deadbeat customer this guy tried to help.

so your saying that he posted so that we would come here and give him a pat on the back and cheer him up with joy joy feelings? I guess they should add in the post that, its not about OUR opinions when posting that its about saying what he wants to hear.

A customer took advantage of the situation, shocker. Seems to me he brought this on himself with a terrible question to ask the customer, if he is so upset about the guys answer then he should not be asking those questions to begin with. There is nothing he can do to change that situation. He can leave it peaceful with the customer and see him again and again for service or he can get in a pissing match with him and never get another penny out of it.

Another thing, i would have NEVER asked that customer that question, because if that situation happened to me and the service guy asked me that question and i gave that answer, i would never go back to that facility as i would think he would try and screw me the next time i came in.

So again, i think it was a bad call to ask that question and again, you made a bad choice, get past it and move on with a learning experience.

i got your point, the customer saw an oppurtunity to save some money and took it. Doesnt mean he is right about doing it but you gave him that option and he decided to save a buck.

no offense, but after 37 years you should know not to do that unless it is a customer that you have that kind of relationship with. You and your manager messed up, suck it up and move on, the customer is right, you shouldn't assume anything.