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We tend to spend way too much time on the oddball customer who wants to prove something or start a fight. Think about all the great customers you had last week that had confidence in you processes and abilities and believed in the value you are marketing. They came and went and they will tell people they got great service at your shop. I know we have to deal with the grouches with an axe to grind, but concentrate on the good guys who appreciate what you and your staff do.

Exactly right!

I met a shop owner in Northern Virginia, a very affluent suburb of Washington DC whose rent for a 5-bay service station is 12.000 a month.

Raising our labor rate is the first thing most of think of to improve cash flow, and it is important to get it right, but The real reward is in taking home more of what you are bringing in. That is done to a large degree by increasing margins and shop productivity. Very few of us have the skills and talent to be experts at sales, advertising, shop management, human resources, logistics, purchasing, contract administration, safety, accounting and a thousand other hats we are expected wear. You need help, I need help and for us, ATI has provided that help. I'm sure other services provide the same type of support but ATI is the one we chose seven years ago. initially, their re-engineering program kept us from going under and when we completed it, I thought I had it all whipped and decided I could put the money to better use. My numbers were mediocre, but I was out of danger. Less than a year later, I went back, realizing I still had a lot to learn. I now consider it a necessary component of my daily business life. The coaching is invaluable. The goals for performance are tough but, as we have proven, achievable. I was going to say I would gladly compare my numbers to any similar shop, but we actually do that on a daily basis in our ATI 20 group. Bottom line, don't go it alone. Get some help somewhere.

We believe that ALL employees should end up on a pay plan that rewards them for meeting and exceeding performance goals, whatever those goals may be. We spent months with our ATI coach working on technician pay matrices that 1. increase pay scale for obtaining additional professional certifications 2. Reward production (hourly pay for the week increases as they achieve production thresholds) 3. Insure that we are paying time and a half for overtime 4. Tell us when we can let a tech work OT and preserve our labor margins If you have a tech who has turned 20 labor hours by Friday and he ends up working 45 hours, your labor margins are probably taking a beating. If your techs are not on an incentive plan, what motivates them to pull that last car in at 4:30 in the afternoon and do a through courtesy check on it? Because they're nice guys? Because they really like you? I want them to do it because we ALL materially benefit from it. Why did it take us so long? First, it's a difficult concept to absorb, it takes a while to actually develop the individual pay matrices, we're not "strongarm" managers (we're wimps), and we were taking people off of pay plans they were comfortable with and moving them to a challenging new pay plan that rewards them for performance.

Long story. We kind of stumbled on our guy. Resistance was initially high among our staff, but they have come to accept him as a part of the team.

Now you have touched on the mystery of shop management. Having the right labor mix for the work you can reasonably expect to bring in is probably the biggest challenge we all face. Assuming you are paying your techs on some kind of incentive plan based on hours earned, you probably feel pressure to feed them as many hours as possible, so you hesitate to bring in additional techs and water down the available hours. If you are short on labor, overtime can destroy your labor margins if not carefully managed. Let's say your successful in increasing car count and your SWs are selling work, when is the right time to bring in another tech? And will you be able to find a great tech? Techs leave, and the ones you hire after great deliberation turn our to be, well, not great. You don't ever solve this one - you attempt to manage it on a continuing basis.

Tall order, but here goes. Phone call: SW greets customer and gets customer's name and phone number UP FRONT and refers to customer by name (Mr. or Ms. So and so - not first name).No estimates are given over the phone. The goal is to get the customer in the shop. We won't install customer-provided parts. Walk-ins: Greet customer and get info on customer's needs. Do vehicle walk-around with customer. Visually inspect car, get mileage, develop relationship. Tech does thorough digital visual inspection and discusses with SW. SW estimates all findings then presents findings to customer addressing customer's original concerns first, then safety-related findings, then optional services. Do the work, Set a follow on appointment. What I can't convey here is the personalities involved. I have female SWs and assistants at both shops who are magic with customers. They work daily with an on-site sales trainer who is helping them hone their presentation skills.

You didn't say what level techs these are. I have two A techs who consistently pull 45-55 hours per week each, but if the second tech is a general service guy doing oil changes and other loss-leader work, it will be difficult for him/her to earn the hours.

Love this forum. Just the kind of info I needed. Got a model number?

We are very fortunate in Virginia to have an organization that lobbies for our industry in the state capitol. The Virginia Automotive Association is celebrating its 50th anniversary, having started out as primarily tire-oriented organization then evolving into a group that represents all independent auto service shops. In addition to lobbying, they have great deals with selected service providers for uniforms, credit card processing, insurance. We have about 250 members state-wide and we have a great convention each year at very nice places. Last year it was at the Homestead and this coming Spring it will be held in Colonial Williamsburg. Scheduled speakers include Dave Crawford, CEO of The Hybrid Shop and Chubby from ATI. If you own a shop in Virginia, you should join. If you are from another state, you are welcome to join us at our convention or one of our quarterly board meetings. We would like to hear about activities of similar organizations in other states. Check out vaauto.org

Update. We went full bore with digital inspections and Workflow this week and it has gone surprisingly smoothly. I take resistance to change as inevitable, but we haven't seen it. The writers and techs seem to welcome the new technology and the resulting reports. We have an on-site trainer who works with our sales staff part time. Doesn't know cars, just knows sales techniques and he is blown away with the inspection report as a sales tool. Writers are emailing reports to customers. It's early, but we're off to a good start. One tech was successfully doing DVIs on a Samsung Nexus 4, kind of a minimal tablet. A handicap with the ipad mini (and all tablets ?) is the lack of a flash for photos. It's pretty dark under a car and, while the tablet has excellent low light capability, the shutter speed slows down making it difficult to get a sharp picture. Other techs help by holding a flashlight on the offending part while the picture is taken.

The good techs are all working, but they may be looking for a new situation. Cultivate the tool trucks and other suppliers like BG and outside sales folks from your parts suppliers. Craigslist has worked well for us, but you'll get a lot of losers, too. Question - are you willing to help relocate somebody from 500 miles away? Might be a small investment to get a top notch tech. Advertise in Craigslist in other cities. We have used a service called Clearfit. They pre-screen candidates.

Things are moving along now. They finished doing the magic that allows AV to talk to ROW, so now as our writer enters new tickets in ROW they automatically appear on the tech's tablet. While we were waiting, the techs began doing some practice Digital Vehicle Inspections and, in general, it seems that they and the writers are enthusiastic and looking forward to integrating this into our daily routine. I was skeptical about customer interest in photos of their tie rod ends etc. but I'm becoming a believer. Biggest pain has been configuring the iPad minis. It's not an AutoVitals issue, it's just the complexity of our techno-world. I set up the first ones using my personal info such as email address,etc. but then I found that techs could get into my email, google+ etc. So I ended up resetting the pad back to factory specs. Then I created a new gmail account for each pad. This was complicated by the fact that we use a google apps domain and account for our office system. It's a grand-fathered free account that apparently won't let me add google play as a service. Well, you have to get to play to get the AV app for android devices. So I just created plain old gmail accounts for each pad and used that as my Apple ID and password on the minis. I mentioned in an earlier post that the AV app was not compatible with Apple IOS 8, but that has been resolved. Our support guy at AV pointed me at refurbished minis on the apple site for $219. They look and act like new. Writers got into the workflow screen and are already tailoring stuff to their preferences. We have sat through a couple webinars that are very informative. Now that we have some hands-on, we will probably get the writers and techs to sit through them again to squeeze a little more juice out of them. I think next week we will go full bore.

I'm a classic British car fanatic who drives a 1969 Morris Minor 6cwt utility van on a daily basis. It took me a while to warm up to the new-fangled idea of hybrid cars, but now that I have some training and service experience under my belt, I have developed an admiration for the technology, especially as applied in the Toyota Prius. As most of you know there are a myriad of applications of so-called hybrid technology, some as simple as using the generator as a motor to supply a little more zip and perform auto-stop. Toyota, in my opinion, got it right in the Prius. It's an amazing integration of gas and electric power to make it go and make it stop, all of it so transparent to the driver that they decided to show a little movie of what's powering what as you drive down the road. Fascinating stuff. But the crowning glory to me is the transmission. it's usually advertised as a CVT and, if you're like most techs, you cringe a little when you hear that. Special fluids, start clutches, metal belts, shuddering as you accelerate and the near certainty of limited life make you think seriously about the value of this supposed innovation. But the Prius CVT is a completely different animal that uses a principle that can be a little hard to grasp. It's a planetary gear that is in constant mesh with no slip/friction components involved. What prompted me to post this is a neat website I found that describes the operation of the tranny in detail. It's at http://eahart.com/prius/psd/ and it even has a little widget that let's you "shift the gears" and see the results. It's no wonder that, since they improved the traction battery starting with the Gen2 in 2004, these little guys are just about bulletproof and it's not unusual to find them humming happily along at 250,000 plus.

Very impressive!

I'm sorry, but our Advance/CarQuest quality and customer support experience over eleven years in this business has been sub par. I can only speak about our area, but the overall support ranging from counter people to national programs has been very weak. Years ago we forbid our SWs from buying starters and alternators from them because the failure rates were atrocious. We became NAPA Autocare and, yes, they have product product problems too, but the warranty is bullet-proof and the customer support is as well. I can only speak for the Richmond VA distribution center and the folks that take care of us out of there. Also, our local stores are privately owned and the store owners are dedicated to making NAPA a lot more than just a place you buy parts. We expect a lot from our suppliers in terms of delivery time, quality of support, and programs that make us look like we are aligned with a national entity and NAPA has consistently delivered.

Maybe in the Eurocar world, but not in my soccer-mom commuter car world. It's all about good will. The courtesy check gives the SW a tool to establish a relationship with the customer. If properly presented, it lets them know you have their best interests at heart. We typically perform free CCs on 80% of our car count. On check engine lights, we scan for free, give the customer a quick briefing on the implications i.e. safe to drive, might damage cat, and we turn the light off if appropriate. ANYTHING beyond that, the diagnostic clock is ticking, usually in half hour increments. My experience is that folks are really alienated when you tell them you are going to charge them to just hook up your scanner.

I bet the car is owned by a finance company. If you wait, they might come looking for it and it will be easier to recover some of you bill from them. See if you can find out if there is a lien on the car and contact the finance company. If there is a GPS on the car, they will come find you. Make sure you have an invoice for the amount you hope to recover. The signature on the work request is paramount. In VA, that's the first thing the judge wants to see. We got burned a couple of times before we made that part of our process.

You're in a great school town. Cater to the students and earn their parents' trust. Parents love knowing there is a shop they can trust when their kids are off at school. When you work on the kids' cars, get their parents' contact info if possible so you can establish a relationship. I waited until I was on the brink of disaster before I got professional coaching. Don't make that same mistake. Everybody needs a coach. The only banner program I'm familiar with is NAPA Autocare. They offer a mind boggling array of marketing tools, special programs, etc. They will also subsidize dressing up your shop in their motif. You have to qualify to join and it's not free, but we have been very happy with it. They also sponsor business development groups that are a great tool for information sharing. There 13 autocares within 25 miles of Harrisonburg, but it doesn't look like they have formed a BDG. Good luck!

We switched to Kukui last Spring. So far we are very pleased. Firstlandingautocare.com. For our hybrid work my Grandson used Wordpress and a free template to develop hybrid757.com. He also did our used car lot. Problem is, he's sixteen and carrying a huge workload in school. Maybe I should talk him into quitting school

We use Autel as well. Makes you wonder if this is just the tip of the iceberg. Are other manufacturers going to come forward?

I had not heard of that one. We will be attending the NAPA Autocare expo in Vegas next spring.

You never know what you've got until they settle in and you get to know them. We hired a self-professed "super tech" who turned out to be a nightmare. He had the biggest toolbox I have ever seen! Whiner, troublemaker. Fortunately, he talked our female Service Writer into going drinking at lunch time. Goodbye! Turned out he had gotten a cashier pregnant at the last place he worked. We were getting his stuff back for rework long after he left. In general, we have been very fortunate in our hiring, but he stands out as a bad example. Be slow to hire, quick to fire.

Our experience with warranty companies has been much better than insurance. Insurance companies try to find used parts and bring them to your shop. Couple that with limiting your labor, and your margins are shot. Warranty companies seem to have a better grasp on the realities of our business. They squeeze a little bit but generally don't want to alienate you.