We’ve been hearing about collision repair shops slowing since at least May, with rising car insurance costs and a reluctance of car owners to file a claim being blamed for some of the cooling business climate.
Although at FenderBender we’ve always had the mission to help owners, operators, and managers work smarter and grow their collision repair businesses, that’s now even more critical. Not all changes need to be drastic. In this month, Greg Lobsiger, owner of Loren’s Body Shop in Bluffton, Indiana, shows the impact of adding just one more labor hour to each estimate can add up to $35,425 and $141,700 for four. Check out his common sense list of a dozen tools to add additional labor hours.
Sheryl Driggers, speaker and coach with Collision Advice and FenderBender editorial advisory board member, shows how customer service index surveys can be used to help coach staff so that exceptional customer experiences are the norm and turn customers into brand evangelists who refer friends and family, which is essential to business growth.
Similarly, veteran industry consultant Steve Trapp continues his series on building a sales culture, this month by focusing on leveraging customer relations to drive business, and as Steve does, he quantifies the results of such efforts by illustrating the lifetime value of a customer. (Would you believe by combining his or her business with that of referrals, it’s currently $180,000?)
With a rise in natural disaster casualty payouts, insurers are also refusing to cover common procedures, the subject of this month’s column by Tiffany Menefee, president of Pronto Body Shop in El Paso, Texas. Menefee, who is also a licensed insurance adjuster, says what the industry has pushed for to be standard operating procedures and paid for by insurers are increasingly being denied. It’s operations such as denib-and-polish, priming and blocking, and test welds, to name a few, that are being tested at the shop level.
“This shift leaves shop owners grappling with the consequences, resulting in widespread frustration and uncertainty. Collision shops find themselves in a position where they must advocate more vigorously for the services they provide or, in some cases, pass increased costs on to customers,” she notes in the column.
To get yet more perspective on the issue, I also followed up with her for an interview on our CollisionCast, which will be live by the time at the time of this issue’s publication. In that talk, she pushes for collision repair associations and other activists to partner with the personal injury attorney industry, which can help get legislation passed that is mutually beneficial to both industries with better funding and lobbying power than is available in a collision repair association.
These are just a few examples of strategy FenderBender offers to help your business. If you have advice you’d like to share with your fellow shop owners, please drop me a line. Sharing your success story could be part of a “rising tide (that) lifts all boats.”
