In business we’re always looking for the latest and the greatest, the newest thing to come along. Why? In hopes that it will create the change needed to take our business to the next level. Always in search of that magic pill or the magic bean, we forget that the basic business concepts we learned when starting our businesses still have to be maintained, audited and adjusted as needed when needed. We forget that our employees still need supervision, still need direction and most of all need our encouragement and guidance.
- What has to be done?
- Whose responsibility is it?
- When does it have to be completed?
- How much will it cost?
- How much can I charge?
- Who will make sure it is done?
If we take these six questions and apply them to each process, task or operation that we work with in the collision repair industry, we can get a much better picture of how we are doing.
Customer Service
We know the customer is coming into the store and they are greeted, but how effective is the greeting and does it “sell” the store? Does the greeting communicate what you the owner want communicated to your customer? Is the customer getting the message that you want their business? The message is a collaboration of what you want, what the customer needs and what your employee is promising and delivering. Your employees are your first point of contact with your customer. How are they doing? Is that message getting delivered?
When getting back to the basics are you observing their behavior? Do you listen to calls to see how they are presenting your store to the customer and how the customer is responding? Do you ask your customers how the service was? Do you complete performance reviews with your employees? If you don’t provide feedback and they are doing something improperly or not to your standard, you’ve lost the opportunity to take corrective action and improve the process.
Estimating and Repair Planning
How often are you checking estimating or repair plan quality? Do you listen to discussions between your estimator/blue printer and the customer, insurance adjuster and other employees? These conversations will tell you all about the task performer and their ability to communicate. This includes technical and non-technical information as well as the negotiating processes. Reviewing estimates and repair plans weekly will help identify unintentional mistakes being made which are costly to the shop. The other employees are affected as well, especially when the missed items include labor that is unidentified.
The frequency at which this occurs is almost always directly tied to the frequency of the estimate reviews. The less frequent the reviews, the more frequent the errors. The review process is a basic process of comparing the vehicle to what has been written to repair it. The negotiation process is a bit different. Preparation wins negotiations. If an adjuster or insurance supervisor is coming in for a review, make sure that you are checking your estimator’s documentation to be sure that it is complete. Do you review the information that is provided to a negotiation opponent before a negotiation takes place? Before taking a position of “what is meant by this” — calibration — a meeting of the minds must take place. All the employees that will have negotiations with people who aren’t store employees must be unified in their decisions, which is a key success factor in keeping negotiations from going off track. If one employee finds information that is critical to decisions being made within the estimating or blue printing processes, it should be shared so that all employees have the benefit of that knowledge.
A united front makes things consistent and repeatable. Why is this important? If the information is used successfully, and a pattern of successes is shared, the chance of the information being challenged is reduced. Therefore, the ability to improve estimating accuracy is maintained.
Going back to the first paragraph of this article and asking and auditing for the answers to those six questions is essential in making sure that we never overlook those things that are required to keep our focus on the vehicle. But most importantly, we have a customer who entrusts their vehicle to us. They are asking us to restore their vehicle back to its pre-loss condition. The profitability, quality and longevity of the repair is our business. We are the experts. The repair has to be done correctly. We have a responsibility to validate that it is done and done in accordance with specifications that are provided to maintain the overall integrity of the vehicle. Information gathering has now become a routine part of this process. Helping negotiation “opponents” that are less technically skilled and that are questioning our repair methodology by providing them documentation is now an important part of our work.
Validation of these processes and procedures including the identification and communication of what is required to be done for every repair step is critical for the shop owner. The audit process will help to ensure that this is done on a consistent basis.
Get back to basics and make sure that:
- The customer is serviced properly.
- Your employees identify everything that is required to put the vehicle back to the condition it was in prior to the loss.
- No one compromises on any steps that need to be performed.
- You review all the process steps including procedures and quality.
- You and your employees make sure that we are returning customer’s vehicles to them with only high-quality repairs
- You create a simple audit tool
A sample audit tool these can be as simple or as complex as necessary to ensure a complete repair is validated.
