xrac

First, thanks for sharing this story. Situations like this help everyone.

 

Something does not sound right with this guy. To dispute a $1.00 difference for the analysis charge is a little strange. To start a ridiculous dialogue after the diagnosis is done in that manner, and to suggest that the problem is a fuse is also quite strange. Plus $170.00 sounds like a very fair price.

 

I think your service manager did the right thing. He sounds like a man that can think quickly on his feet and make decisions that are based on what is best, in the long term, for the business. This is a rare quality and if I were you I would support him on this (Please tell him I said that). As far as not charging anything, I agree too. In the big scheme of life, it means nothing.

 

You can’t be everything to everybody. If you try you will end up pleasing no one.

 

Great story!

 

I’m glad to see you get your share of “questionable” people coming thru your door too.

I thought you would enjoy the story. Yes, we get our share of characters too but we have whittled it down from what it once was. Cheap oil changes bring all of the bottom feeders with junk cars out. Yes! I did support him in this decision. This guy just had the look and feel that he wasn't worth the hassle. My Service Manager got a chuckle out of what you wrote and I am inviting him to join the forum. He will be an owner in the future if I have anything to do with it.

AutoShopowner.com uses this form of ads thru google. I have someone who works with me on this. I could find out more info if you like.

That would be nice!

Joe, we had an experience this week that you will find interesting. We had a man (60ish) stop in with a problem on his Explorer. The blower motor blowed constantly and would not shutoff unless the vechicle was turned off. My service manager spent a good 10-15 minutes looking at the vehicle, discussing the problem with him, and booked him an appointment for two days later. He came in and our diagnosis was a bad blower controller. There are many similar fixes reported on Identifix.

When my service manager began talking to the customer the first thing the customer did was dispute the diagnostic charge telling him that it was $1.00 more than he had told. My service manager than outlined the problem and the needed repair which with parts, labor, and diagnosis was about $170.00 and asked the customer if he wanted to fix it. The customer immediately began to say well let's talk about this and are your sure and going back through all his symptoms. There was somethings you could read into the man's tone and demeanor: that he was affluent, he didn't like to spend money, he didn't trust us, he thought the repair was too much, and he thought he only needed something like a fuse. Whatever it was my Army Ranger Service Manager didn't like it. My service manager immediately made the decision that this guy would be more trouble than he was worth and that we would wind up spending a lot more time with him then we would ever be paid for. My service manager said to the man that if this is the case I think that your should take it to Ford. I am not charging anything for today and have a good day. The man offer to pay the diagnosis but my service manager declined and sent the man on his way. What do you think?

As a footnote I will say that my service manager is very good with people, very patient as a general rule, and very informed in describing repairs. He is a ASE Master Tech. At the time we had a shop full of cars and people.

I received a coupon for $100 of Google adword advertising. Has anyone used any of Goggle's paid advertising and is it cost effective in your opinion?

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The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts is a clear message that the people are not happy with the current democratic administration. I think the next few months will be very interesting.

When people voted for the current administration they voted for a grab bag. Nobody knew what was in the bag especially because he was the media's golden boy and they keep everything quiet. When they voted the discontent voters hoped for a nice prize instead they got booby trapped. Almost like bait and switch advertising in our business. Now they are reacting with open eyes. Obama campaigned in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts unsuccessfully. His campaigning for Democrats in the fall will be about as welcome as Bush was campaigning for Republicans at the end of his term.

Grew up a Bills fan and then moved to TN in 1996 and became a Titan's fan when they came to TN. Love watching football. Was very glad to see the Vikings kill the Cowboys (my most hated team).

I agree with you on the Cowboys and I like the Titans as well. I would hate to be the Chargers Place Kicker.

We have 2 facilities on the same property, a total of 10 bays. One building has six bays. In this building we do all major repairs: engines, transmissions, diagnostic work, etc. In the new 4-bay facility we have 3 quick maintenance bays and an alignment bay. In the new building we do LOF's, state inspections, tires, brake work and all other maintenance work. We are large enough and can cater to most walk-ins.

 

One of the reasons for expanding was to increase car counts. My marketing strategy is a bit different than what we were taught years ago. We once concentrated on high ARO. I like to create opportunity through high car counts. I do track ARO, but want high traffic. If you want to build a business, you need to increase market share. One of the easiest ways to do that is to make your shop convenient for the consumer.

 

4 years ago, I scheduled my work by appointment only. I had the 6 bays at the time and we did about 80 cars per week. In 2007 we started a new program: "JUST SAY YES", where we tried to accommodate the customer on their time. We increase car counts to 120 per week and sales followed.

 

We jumped to 180-200 the very first week we opened the new building, largely in part due to this strategy.

How did you accomodate the extra cars when you had just your six bay facility? We have seven bays!

If you’re reading this article that means that you are still in business and have weathered the economic storms of 2009. While we are not out of the woods yet, things are definitely looking better than a year ago. 2010 will continue to bring us challenges and obstacles, but we all know that whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger.

 

Independent shop owners across this nation have proven their resolve and refused to participate in the recent recession. When thousands of dealers shut their doors and unemployment tipped 10%, automotive shops found a way to survive. I am not saying it was easy. I have heard from many frustrated shop owners this past year that questioned whether they should go on. Some did give up, but most did not. The fight goes on and 2010 will once again test your resilience.

 

Many of your customers are still out of work and many small local businesses and local contractors are suffering. Both business and personal bankruptcy is still rising. These issues will no doubt continue to impact your day to day operations. We have already seen taxes go up in many areas and who knows what the health care calamity will bring us. The government will continue to spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave, which will have deep, long lasting affects on our economy for generations. The housing market had a few up ticks in 2009, but is still a long way from a recovery. Too many years of unrealistic growth combined with too much subprime mortgage lending nearly killed a once-touted safe haven for your money…real estate. Also, let’s not forget the war on terror, the global warming issue, the green movement, the volatile stock market or emerging Chinese dominance.

 

Ok… I got the bad news out of the way. Now, here’s the good news. When the dust settles, who do you think will be there as a shining star? You will. Because the success and survival of your business rests totally on the person you look at each day in the mirror….You! You have no bail out. You rely on your own resources to make things work. You are tested each day and somehow get things done. That makes you strong. We are all sitting on a gold mine of opportunity. It may be hard to see, but it’s real. However, it’s an opportunity, not a gift. You will need to prepare for it and act swiftly. Those of us that plan now will reap the benefits later.

 

There has never been a better time in history for the automotive service and repair industry. The motoring public is confused. They have lost faith in the American car companies. The government bail out to GM and Chrysler has made them look weak in the eyes of the consumer. Ford stands alone, not accepting a bail out. This may prove to be their silver lining. New car sales in 2009 were dismal for most car companies, including Toyota and Honda. Empty new car dealerships sent consumers scrambling for alternatives.

 

We need to take advantage of what is happening in the economy and use it to our benefit. We need to show strength. Our day-to-day attitude must be positive toward customers and with our employees. Take a look at your operation, everything from the exterior facility appearance, waiting room, bathrooms, shop appearance, uniforms and everything else about your business. Make sure that your shop looks top-notch. I know it’s hard, but spend the money and make improvements to your operation. This will help boost your image and help increase confidence from your customers and the potential customers in you market area.

 

Review your advertising and marketing strategy. Be consistent with your advertising. While others are pulling back on advertising, you need to keep forging ahead and stay in the consumer’s eye. Provide the very best in customer service. This is an area where you must not fail in. People will judge you more on how they are treated at the front counter than what brand of parts you install or what type of equipment you use. Trust me on this one. Customer service will make or break your business. Listen to your customer, they will tell you in which direction you will need to go. Your success in the coming years will be directly related to the level of customer service you provide. Make sure you have the right people at the front counter and answering the phone.

 

Lastly, work on your leadership skills. As the business owner, you are the company’s leader. This puts you in a tough position where hard choices and decisions will have to be made. Make those decisions with the best of your abilities and don’t second guess yourself. You can’t be right all the time and being too fearful of making a mistake can cause indecisiveness, which will hold you back from achieving your goals. The good thing about making a mistake is the knowledge you gain from it. Be supportive of the people who work for you. Encourage them to be the best they can be. Promote the good things they do, rather than focusing only on what goes wrong. People want to be appreciated and recognized for the work they do. Remember, happy employees boost morale, which increases productivity and creates happy customers.

Being in business is not easy, if it were, everyone would be in it. Being an auto shop owner in today’s economy is extremely difficult, but this career was our choice. The reward for being in business is making your enterprise your personal success story. Don’t worry about the size of someone else’s business. It’s not about building an empire like Disney World or McDonalds; it’s more about you and building your empire. That is the true measure of an entrepreneur.

 

Good luck and prosper in 2010!

Joe, this is a great article! Good job! I am curious as to how you have your customer area set up. Do you have any pictures. We need to remodel.

Thanx xrac, for the life of me I could not find a link to the story.

Here is a little more about AAA:

http://www.poststar.com/business/local/art...1cc4c03286.html

Joe i wonted to know were you got your flush machines.From BG.?

Randy, my name isn't Joe but we got our BG flushing machine through BG. There should be a BG rep in your area that will call on you if you contact them.

Since you are a Jets fan I hope the Jets win. Do you root for the Giants any? I have never been a New York fan except for the old time Yankees (Mantle and Maris) and the Knicks (Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe). The reason I say I would pick San Diego is it just seems that San Diego is really hot. They may actually win the whole thing.

How about those Jets! Congratulations Joe! I guess you know I have to root against you next week! Go Colts and Peyton!

Jets fans are used to suffering. My son who lives in L.A. is actually going to the game.

 

As a Jet fan my favorite expression is..."There's always next year". We will see...

Since you are a Jets fan I hope the Jets win. Do you root for the Giants any? I have never been a New York fan except for the old time Yankees (Mantle and Maris) and the Knicks (Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe). The reason I say I would pick San Diego is it just seems that San Diego is really hot. They may actually win the whole thing.

I have 2 advisors for 6 techs and one foreman. Like you, I do jump in where needed. I also have a women in a separate office who takes care of the books and answers the phone. In a busy week we can write 200 plus cars. Answering the phone can be an issue too.

 

Right now in the winter, the service staff is adequate, but I don't think it will be adequate when we get into our busy season starting in March. I think I will test the waters and hire another person in service. Someone who can handle walk-ins, the phone, follow up on part orders, etc.

 

I don’t want my techs near a phone or getting involved with pricing or talking to customers. You are right, that’s old school. I still go to management seminars where they tell you that the service writer should have the tech talk to the customer. Are you kidding?

Joe you are running more than double the volume that we run. Our typical car count is probably about 80-90 cars per week on a six day week. Joe how many bays do you run with both facilities and do you operate a quick lube.

I have been to many seminars and read countless articles about the "perfect number" of service advisor per tech. I know that a shop with not enough service personnel will hurt productivity. The waiting time for techs to get approvals is critical to the shop's bottom line. Plus, the effectiveness of how well a service advisor can sell is also critical.

 

I would like to know what other shop owners feel is a "perfect" number, or is there such a thing?

Joe, I have no idea as to what this ratio should be. We have operated with up to five techs with one advisor. Sometimes that can be too much. Our advisor prices and sells all job and orders all parts. Ofcourse I share that responsibility with him as needed and I fill those shoes on his day off. The original franchise model was for techs to price and sell their jobs. Ofcourse that was the old muffler/brake model. Not a very efficient or effective way of doing it in my opinion.

This is totally non-auto related, but I do love football. I am big Jet's fan and have been since the days of Joe Namath (giving away my age, right?). Anyway, would like hear from other football fans out there; predications, thoughts?

My team (Green Bay) has went down as well as my second choice Arizona(I like Curt Warner). Of the remaining teams I will root for Indianapolis since I am in Indiana although I like the NFC better. Joe, I too am old enough to remember Joe Namath. You have suffered a long time. Maybe this will be your year. If I were betting I would probably pick San Diego.

Is it me or so people in general appear more angry than usual? Is it due to the end of the holidays, or the winter, or the economy or all the other bad news they hear?

 

Maybe, I'm too sensitive, but more people than usual who I talk to these days, are very negative and in bad moods. What have you seen?

Joe, I really haven't noiced anything. Maybe it is your area of the country.

You words are sad, but quite true. I know too many shop owners that fit your description. I need to be honest; I too was headed in that same direction. I had to reach near failure total burn-out before I woke up. It took me years to turn my life around. I wasted a lot of years.

 

I was a great tech but a very poor businessman. For the past 15 years I have been working on my business and made great strides. I am not special. I just could not go on killing myself and sacrificing my life and family.

 

Today, I manage the business and look for ways to keep growing. One of my goals through AutoShopOwner.com is to share this knowledge that I gave gained. I firmly believe that in order to become a complete human being and continue to grow, you need to help others.

The guy who works out of the back alley garage just surviving hurts himself and our business. If this forum can be a tool to raise the quality of our businesses and lives it will serve a great purpose.

Great point..."does the shop run you?"

 

Understanding breakeven is vital to a shop's success. Set your goals higher than breakeven. I set my sales goals based on breakeven plus a return on investment. The profit above breakeven is what really counts.

Too many shop owners have nothing more than a job and not a very good job because they don't charge enough. They work a lot of hours and sacrifice themselves and their families but wind up with little to show for it. They have no retirement plan, they have no buisness asset they can sell or pass on, their bodies are broken down, their equipment is worn out, their location is terrible, someone else owns the property, etc. They have never understood return on investment, opportunity cost, gross profit margins verus net profit, etc. The shops my dad use to take his cars to all closed when the owner died or retired. Not a one survived. They worked all of their lives and then got to the end of their life and find that they had nothing.

There is some good wisdom in this:

First, I love that Army Ranger you have. Coming from a military family, that's great!

I love my Ranger friend too. He is not really an employee but a friend and absolutely the best. He looks out for our shop, for me, for our guys, and for our customers. I salute him.

.....Your story is more bizarre than mine. How dumb can people be? If you don't like the price, go somewhere else. Why make it a point or a mission to go out of way to hurt someone?......

Bizarre is the word. Someone looks at your car, doesn't charge you anything, wishes you a good day, and then you complain. People like this who worry about spending money on repairs are always driving cars that are either junk or rapidly becoming junk.

I did think of offering him something, but his nasty attitude really turned me off.

 

I am a business man, but I am a "man" first. Don't some things transcend business? If you have an issue, why can't we discuss it like gentlemen?

 

Maybe your right, the problem is with him.

Joe, I know what you mean. If someone comes in talking really nasty to me they are going to be lucky to get anything out of me. My service manager was an Army Ranger and if your get him stirred up he is likely to toss them out on their head and he is capable of doing it. It is funny that the people who set me off he can handle and vice versa. There are not too many people who set us both off at the same time. This may be a customer you just need to turn loose and not worry with.

The only complaint we received at Car-x Chicago in 2009 was from an older woman that we told had a bad catalytic converter and that a direct fit replacement was $300-$400 or so. She called and complained because she said she could buy a converter at AutoZone for $75. Yes mam! Let's see someone cut and bend and fit and weld that universal converter onto her car. Let's see how long that takes. We have a bender. We bend pipe and we do custom exhaust but this was not one we would try to do. Now here is the really funny part. We looked at the woman's car for free. She was never charged anything. She has never spent $1.00 at our shop and she called Chicago and complained because of the price! How does that figure?????????????????

A customer accused me the other day of being too high priced on a brake job. He actually called back to complain. This customer has only been here twice.

 

The funny thing is that we did the job in a timely manner (he waited for the job), the service advisor explained in detail exactly what needs to be done, we informed him at his last visit that he would need brakes soon and the price for the job was fully explained before we started and was itemized in detail.

 

I got the phone call when he called back, but no amount of reasoning would make him happy. I said to him, “So you not questioning the quality of the job, the quality of the parts, the fact we did it right away for you and that all the charges were explained in detail before we started?”

 

He just kept on saying we were too high. At this point I thanked him for his business and said hope to see you soon….although I don’t think I will ever see hi again.

 

I would you have handled this?

Sounds like buyers remores. Someone must have told him they could do it cheaper or someone told him he paid too much. I think you handled it correctly. The only thing that maybe you could have done otherwise was to offer him a special discount on a future service or something like a free oil change. We use a free oil change sometimes if there is a complain or problem. This seems to divert some of this. However, this customer looks like the problem not you.

Follow up:

 

I also got back a refund from the insurance broker for $768.00.

 

I am going to make a point to look at everything that passes my desk and ask questions.

 

Everyone should do the same. Don't assume anything.

Good for you! You are right. Don't take anything for granted. On the subject of insurance I would suggest that those of you who deal with O'Reilly check out their Certified Auto Repair program. It costs $50 per month or nothing if you buy a minimum of $2,500 parts monthly. It offers a nationwide warranty on all of your repairs that cost the shop nothing and they will pay to have a repair done over without batting an eye up to the cost of the original repair. The program also has a shop insurance program. We are currently insured with them (the Ohio Casualty/Liberty Mutual family). It saved me money over our previous carrier which was Universal Underwriters (now Zurich). If interested email me and I will email you a contact number on the insurance. I really like the agent I deal with.

Wow, that's interesting. CARQUEST in my area is king. They have the best service. Some of the prices are high, but people accuse me of being high price too.

CarQuest closed their store closest to us. Now they only have one store in this market and I do not know if they will survive. NAPA is not strong either. The strongest stores here are O'Reilly and the local warehouse group I spoke of. CarQuest use to be our first call but now I rarely call them.

Ok, I know that this isn't exactly the correct way to do this but what would be the best way to pay a part time employee. I can't afford to get ripped on the taxes and the rest of the "requirements" do pay help. Is there any way you guys have found to make this easy and painless.

I do not think I would want to discuss how to be less than forth right on taxes on a public forum if I were you. You either have the choice of treating them as employees or contract labor. Unfortunately, in almost all situations people who work for us are employees. The tax situation is a little bit of a hassle but it is not really all of the bad. It is better to be legit than to get into difficulty with the IRS.