2020 Motor Age Roundtable: Adapting for the future

Brin Kline: We’ve already had to be creative and make adjustments with how we’re doing business. With marketing, we’ve shifted the messaging from predominantly competence to talking about how we’re keeping our team and our clients safe. We’ve gotten creative with how to do business remotely. Some of the shops that haven’t adopted modern technology are going to struggle.

Scott Brown: There’s a lot of dynamics here. If you start thinking about people working remotely, they’re not driving that much. But the other end of the spectrum is that people aren’t spending their normal spend on things like Disneyland and going to movies. So those people who are still working and maintaining their regular income likely have more spending cash. For us, we use that as an opportunity to approach our customers that have had a lot of deferred maintenance. If I look at the last five years, there has been a ton of maintenance that has been put off. Every time a customer comes in, we’re looking at that ticket closely; it’s presenting a lot of opportunity. We are busier than ever right now. It’s pretty cool to look back and think, “Wow, that didn’t really affect us all that much.”

It’s definitely an opportunity for us to change the way we deal with people. We have a lot of elderly customers who do not want to risk anything. We can leverage technology to still work with them safely. We interact with them on their terms, whether online or via the phone. That’s what consumers are expecting everywhere, so we have to deliver.

Brandon Steckler

Brandon Steckler: I know quite a few technicians that are on the OEM side of the service industry at dealerships. Many of them have exhausted the vacation pay that they’ve had racked up over their tenure and were forced to seek out other means of earning an income. Some of them were on the fence about leaving the dealership to seek employment elsewhere either at another dealership or with a different manufacturer. Some have branched out to the independent repair shops and are doing quite well.

Brin: I have heard that as well. Most of the shop owners that I’ve spoken to locally and on the national level have been doing well. But I heard that the dealerships were more negatively affected, at least in the beginning. In terms of dealership techs looking for jobs elsewhere, it opens up opportunities for independent shop owners to recruit them and put a great team together.

Terica Buckner

Terica Buckner: The aftermarket independent shops have been busy this summer. I would’ve expected the dealership repair centers to be busy, too. I wonder if they let go of their technicians too soon, so they’re going to be hurting in the future when things pick back up.

What would you say is the biggest challenging facing your business in the next 1-5 years? How are you addressing it?

Scott: If we look at the behavior of the economy, everybody is purchasing more and more from Amazon—even service parts. it’s going to be tough to maintain a margin on parts, especially if customers are scrutinizing the cost of parts and are comparing. I think the way that we provide service needs to mirror the way a professional contractor delivers service. They don’t usually itemize their ticket; they’re delivering a service or a product for your home or what have you. That’s going to be one of the challenges. You’re going to need to look at the way that you conduct business.

Brin: In terms of pricing structures and local laws, in Florida we have to itemize parts vs labor. The shift does need to move toward the total solution as opposed to breaking it up in that way for the reasons Scott mentioned. In some areas that may not be possible, though.

The parts are the things that people can most compare. They don’t know anything about how to fix a car or what it takes. That falls on us to make sure we’re educating people. We are still always going to have more of a challenge on parts than labor. For those who are not able to focus on the total solution on their invoices, they may have to look at shifting the profit dollars to labor and less on parts. We’ve started to do that slowly at our location. The current model has been around for so long, so it’s hard to get people to change that mindset.

The other challenge that has always been around for shops is the changing technology in vehicles. Our shop is pretty proactive with training, but we’re still concerned about whether we’ll be service ready for every vehicle that comes into our bays. We’re probably going to look at narrowing our focus in order to be most prepared. Looking forward with vehicles advancing as rapidly as they are, most shops would benefit from specializing or focusing on specific brands.

Terica: One of our biggest challenges this year is going to be hiring another service advisor. The perfect service advisor has so many different skills that they need. It can be very difficult to find the right person. The last one we hired knew nothing about cars but had great customer service skills. We’ve been teaching her about cars, and she’s learned a lot and has learned fast. She’s doing very well. It speaks to reaching out to people who are or were in the hospitality segment and then teaching them about the service industry and vehicles. Since many people have been laid off from their hospitality jobs due to the pandemic, it provides an opportunity for our industry to reach out to those people.

How should the industry be working together to solve the technician shortage?

Scott: My professional experience has been that this has not been a rewarding career for the majority of the marketplace. A lot of techs start to work at a shop at flat rate, and they’re working in an environment with poor conditions that is not conducive to good performance. They have to supply their own tools and sometimes even their own uniforms. That’s what has driven the talent out of the marketplace. And it’s continuing to happen today. If we look back over the past ten years, a lot of the tech trade schools have been a mining field for other industries—alternative energy, telecommunications, etc. They go through those institutions and start recruiting. When they can address a student and say, “Hey, you don’t have to pay for your own tools. All you have to do is show up to work and bring your lunch. We’ll provide you with a salary, paid vacation, and your training will be part of your workday,” that’s very appealing. In our industry, typically we have to work all day and then go to training at night. That’s another big downer. It’s really frustrating. I’m in my 38^th year in this industry and I’m fighting every day to try to raise the bar.

Terica: I completely agree. We need to get rid of the flat rate system, go to hourly and take care of employees—and their families. Most of these college programs are two years, so you get high school kids going into two-year programs. Then you put them in the shop at flat rate and they’re expected to know everything. It’s setting them up for failure. You get sub-par technicians because they’re on flat rate and working really hard. They don’t have time to learn more and do training.

One of the best solutions would be to partner more with local college programs and have an apprenticeship program even once the student graduates. There’s so much to learn about all the different kinds of vehicles and all the different problems, so you can’t expect students to immediately be able to diagnose vehicles—especially today’s cars—given the little information they learned in the short course on that topics.

Growing your own technicians is really important. In our last apprenticeship through our local community college we paid for all of their schooling. We also have a tool bonus program, so we helped them get their tools. Then they came to work for us. If you find the right candidate, that setup can really work, but that’s not the normal process for the industry. It’s hard for people who have a love of cars and working on them to pursue a career the way it’s set up right now.

Brin: Getting involved with tech programs is a must. Every company needs to have a PR person to represent the shop and get involved with the community—not only community colleges and tech schools but middle schools and high schools. Don’t just focus on the tech side of the industry. Even if your local schools don’t have an automotive program, you can focus on career days at primary schools and connect with the science teachers, because automotive repair is STEM. You can demonstrate how exciting and cool vehicle technology is and how rewarding it can be.

Scott: Growing your own employees is really where it’s at. I’ve had guys work for me that had 20+ years of experience, but unfortunately, a lot of the experience was not correct. A lot of them had their own ways of doing things, and a lot of it did not align with what I felt should be done and in fact it wasn’t the right thing. It’s hard to break technicians from that.

Brandon: On the topic of education, perhaps we should be focusing more on teaching technicians how to learn. It’s so important to learn the basics and know what you need to research in order to tackle the diagnostics of the vehicle. I don’t think that’s always being taught to new techs and students at trade schools. They’re learning about specific systems or specific makes. I graduated from a GM ASEP program. Of course, the focus was on GM vehicles and familiarizing yourself on a particular car or system. But it didn’t help me much in the independent aftermarket, because I saw a lot more than just GM vehicles. If I had learned how to teach myself, where to go, what channels to follow to get the information I need, I would’ve been a lot more successful early on in my career.

Scott: I agree with that. What I would love to see schools start to teach is teaching the technician to think like an engineer. They’re probably going to need some level of mechanical engineering, maybe electrical engineering, to understand what they need to do to make a system work and to monitor its performance. A lot of times you don’t find that in service information. OEMs do not disclose a lot in service information anymore. If we start teaching the engineering side of things, how to think like an engineer, our industry and our techs will be well off for success.

Terica: I also want to point out the little things—we have different types of beverages and a freezer full of popsicles in the summer. The techs love that. It can be little changes to just say “thank you—have a cold drink.” Once a week we have a barbeque lunch that we make here for the team. It cultivates that “work family” life. We show that it’s a caring environment, that’s it’s not just “do your work and go home and do it faster.” Higher benefit packages and tool money are great, but it’s also the little things that can add up and make a big difference to the employees.

Brin: One more thing on the tech shortage is the importance of being encouraging. I’ve always been an advocate for women in the industry. Generally, they’re more encouraging and supportive than the men in the industry. I think we as men often feel like we have to be super important and intelligent and prove ourselves. We’re generally not as open to ideas that come from other people. I think it’s also important to not bash and belittle the competition. And not be quick to criticize techs who might’ve gotten something wrong. Especially on social media and in Facebook groups—they can be really powerful and helpful networks, but it can also be toxic. Instead of putting other people down and spreading negativity, focus on being encouraging—that only helps to advance fellow technicians and our industry.