Andre R

We've been starting to use a matrix on our labor times and it seems to be working although it's still a work in progress.

Yes. One writer works Monday through Friday, 42.5 hrs and the other writer works Tuesday through Saturday 42 hrs. We pay our people weekly and all incentives are payed weekly.

What I like about the way we do it is we can give raises on either side .

We approached this problem a little differently. Our shop sits within 1.5 miles of 12 different new car dealerships. They all pay between 8 and 10 percent of sales. They also have some customer satisfaction goals that they need to meet. We pay hourly with overtime and then a percent of sales. Right now both of our service writers are paid $20 per hour. They need to hit $15000 in sales per week to start the incentive. They get 1.25% at $15000 and it increases .25% at every increase of $2500 in sales and tops out at 2.5%. For holiday pay or vacation pay they just get their hourly pay. With this system the writers help each other out through the whole process .

We pay our techs hourly with overtime and a performance bonus on their flagged time when they hit a set time . We pay %70 of health insurance, payed dental insurance payed life insurance, payed uniforms, gloves 

6 holidays 1 week of vacation after the first year and 2 weeks after 3 years parts are at cost. Performance bonus is $2 per flagged hour at 35 hours,$4 at 40 hours, $6 at 45 hours and $8 at 50 hours and above. The SW is $15 per hour with overtime

and a percentage of sales that starts at %1.25 when we reach $15000 in sales for the week and escalates by %.25 at every increase of $2500. The % tops out at %2.50 and $30,000 of sales and above. All our equipment is 5 years old or newer with factory scanners and software. 

4 hours ago, bantar said:

Did you always have DVI?    I do have questions to better understand the value.  

1. Were you losing sales before implementing DVI and saw this come up afterwards?
2. If you were to stop DVI, would you lose sales?  
3. Are you paying more for your DVI system and how much?
4. Any other value worth mentioning?

The reports are indeed impressive, but in every case, I find it hard to convey reality with pictures.   Unless you are looking at something obvious.   I do see the value in the Professional Looking Report.    We don't provide the same format, but, in extreme case will have 2 pages of written notes.  Most are 1-2 paragraphs.   We explain our findings clearly with written words.  In some cases, I do show pictures when they are picking up the car, or we show the part, if it is of interest to the customer. 

Currently, with our sales success rates, I don't imagine a DVI system increasing our sales.   But, I'd use it for the reporting if it was part of my SMS.   I won't buy an overlay DVI package though.  I'd switch to a fully integrated system instead.

Bantar, Autoserve1 is the system that you are looking for. It integrates seamlessly with Protractor and and is actually owned by protractor. Our cost is $88.00 a month. 

  It works great and you can customize as many inspections as you want. The important thing for me was the inspections stay with the repair order in the history and can be accessed

as needed after the fact.

 We just changed over from RO Writer and their dvi system to Protractor and Auto Serve 1.

I've been using RO Writer since 1998 and I like Protractor better. 

A couple of suggestions; All the pos system sales people know where their limitations are and wont 

mention them. They will highlight all the good things and after you sign with them you will hit the limitations

or functions that they don't do.Make a list of everything that is a must have and really question them on these items.

As far as a DVI system review the ones that you like and make a list, then include your staff and use them to make the choice

of which one to go with .They will all let you use/test  them. If your staff doesn't like the you choose you will face a much harder time of 

implementing the new system and getting them to use it.

We have 3 techs all on hourly. One  at $22.00 one  at $28.00 and one at $35.00. The performance 

bonus starts at 35 flagged hours $2.00 at 35 thru 39 hours bumps to $4.00 at 40 hours $6.00 at 45 hours and $8 at 50 hours.

We have been using Heartland for about 8 years now, our charge has been a steady 2%.

For a service writer the question I always ask is" If I was writing a check to you for an amount that had to last you the rest of your

life, how much would it be for." What you are looking for is a realistic number for their age. I base it on 60k a year and a life span of 80 years old. Too high of a number 

usually means they're not really thinking of the question or too low a number usually means they don't have a good idea of what things cost so will have a hard time trying to 

sell that large or high dollar ticket.

For a tech my favorite question is "why do you do what you do." An answer of its what he/she knows and he needs to earn a living or anything along those lines usually means he/she

won't be invested in your company and will only look for whats in it for him/her. An answer of getting self satisfaction at getting a vehicle running correctly or finding that noise etc..., that person is invested in his/her

craft and is usually willing to go the extra mile for the customer, attend training,get certified.

A lot of good questions here but if it were me i'd tow the car in and replace the engine with a used one with about 200k miles or less.

I was having the same problem as the rest of you. My coach told me about a company called Hire the winners .com. They are pricey but they found an A tech and and service writer for me in about a month and a half.

I will be looking for another tech in about a month and will definitely use them. They sent me about 15 resumes for techs in the first 2 weeks. 

It absolutely does not! We signed up with them and it never worked.They did refund my money but wasted 2 months of my time . 

I've been trying to break into the fleet maintenance/repair business that is close by to my shop but haven't had any luck. My pricing is what seems to be the problem.

Any help would be appreciated. 

So true!!

The first thing I would do is check out the reputation of the dealer. If he is shady or unethical, like it or not your reputation will be tied to his.

Next, lose that mind set that there isn't much money in the area because everybody drives a 10 year old car. It takes a lot of money to drive a 10 year old car, especially in NY.

We have used them for over year now. Customers love the text part and I have been using the reminders for about a month , We also use some of their remade ads and they work well. The cost is $197 a month plus the points. I usually buy the 100,000 points for $950 and it lasts me about 3 to 4 months. You choose who you send too and what they get.

Great marketing tool.

We are at $109.75 here in Phoenix AZ

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.

Hi Bruno, based on the responses that we generate from our clients its a process . They get a direct mail piece with our phone number and our web site adress. They check us out on Yelp or Google and then if they like what they see they call.

At that point our service writer has to make the conversion. We do get new clients just making appointments through our web site without calling but that is about 12% of our new clients. So to answer your question, for my shop having a good person answering the phone generates the most new business.

Welcome

.3 for the oil change and .5 for the courtesy inspection that gets done on every car.

Be well sir, I'll keep you in my prayers.

Thank you for that XRAC, now my head hurts. I'm calling my senator to demand an investigation!!!

Hi Brian, if this problem is as bad as your saying, in my mind there is only one way to fix the relation ship with your customers . First make sure your counter  and tech problems are resolved other wise your wasting your time. Second, and this is the most important part either you or your GM must call each and every customer personally and apologize

for your shops failures . Next ask them what you need to do to make it right and then as long as it isn't something off the wall or completely out of line, do it. If a car wasn't fixed correctly, get it in and get it fixed at no charge. If a car was returned filthy and greasy, get it detailed. Your customers won't be expecting it and this will go a long way

towards building a lot of good will. You won't please them all but they will probably stop bad mouthin your shop and you can build the reputation back up.  Good luck.