[David Roman]

My hesitancy in pushing my current written and signed policy is that I feel it doesn’t have any bite to it. My lead technician does all of my difficult and sensitive work. My second technician only does the easier stuff. He doesn’t have the knowledge or skillset to do the harder work… And he’s slow (he doesn’t want to make mistakes).

I’m currently hiring for a third technician. I’m hoping that my threats of termination over attendance become more effective since I’ll actually have someone here capable of replacing my lead tech.

Or maybe it is all in my head…

[David Roman]

PM sent Ollie… 🙂

[David Roman]

Thanks Tom,

I appreciate the advice.

 

[David Roman]

This has been a massive problem for me. I went from a one man shop to having two technicians and a service advisor.

No one (except myself) gets to work on time. As I write this, it is 8:59AM. I’ll be lucky to see my first employee arrive before 9:15AM. The other two will trickle in over the next 30 minutes.

I’ve instituted a tardiness policy. I even gave out my first “incident” report noting the technician’s tardiness.

It hasn’t curtailed the problem.

I’ve been told that inconsistent corrective action is tantamount to not giving any at all.

So, is the solution giving corrective action over and over again? How many should I issue before I terminate their employment?

Should I have defined this in the policy I wrote?

[David Roman]

I used Main Street Hub for a year. As was mentioned earlier, the posts didn’t match our customer base. It is definitely geared towards restaurants and that type of thing. Not really all that great for automotive service centers.

[David Roman]

Get a job description and list of responsibilities from the owner or manager (whoever gave you the position).

Work with them to add additional desired responsibilities.

Have a meeting with the entire staff to outline who will be reporting and your expectations. Remember, they must align with your superior. 

This should clear up any vaguity in your responsibilities. 

[David Roman]

Wouldn’t that incentivize me to eliminate my bonus altogether? 

Also, is this only affecting clock hours or does this apply to flag hours as well?

[David Roman]

Maybe I’m way off base here, but…

I use a graduating bonus plan to pay for billing more than a tech’s weekly “average”. In other words, if the tech is averaging 35, and they bill 45. I would have paid them a “bonus” (which is a bump in their hourly pay) from 35-40 and from 40-45. 

The only thing I can see this affecting is if my total pay out is LESS than what hourly plus OT would have been. Of course, this is assuming the tech was clocked in a total of 45 hours.

If he accomplishes this in 40, then there is no issue. But even if he doesn’t, as long as the money is correct, what difference does it make? 

Or is the law requiring that I now label it as hours + OT rather than base + bonus? 

I hate it when the government gets involved in things… Can’t ever leave well enough alone.  

[David Roman]

Does anyone have any experience with Atlas? 

Greg Smith Equipment has Asymmetric Two Post Lifts made by Atlas for a steal. 

However, I recently had a lift vendor stop by and he swore up and down that they were junk. 

My last lift purchase was a Challenger and its a hunk of junk.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[David Roman]

My main concern on the P.E.D. use is the potential for increased comebacks. I will definitely implement a warranty work policy that will make it financially advantageous to do everything in their power to prevent the comeback. That should help with the P.E.D. use.

The uniforms have become an issue and I simply laid down the law. He has been better about using them, but I occasionally have to remind him what we talked about. He doesn’t see it as important, so he doesn’t put any focus on it. That’s a whole other issue we are working on with him. I definitely appreciate the suggestion to supply T-Shirts that are to be used when it gets excessively hot in the summer. 

Hopefully next summer I’ll have an evaporative cooling unit in the shop to keep the temperature down back there. It gets pretty bad during the dog days of summer here in Kansas.

[David Roman]

I’ve been using Uber when customers don’t have a way home and need to leave their vehicles with me. I’ve had a very good response from it.

I’m not sure about “Uber Central” or “Uber Rush” as we don’t have either one of those services in KC yet…

[David Roman]

Thank you to everyone for their input.

Jeff, I can really appreciate and relate to your comments, especially the pushback on doing inspections. I’ve been hesitant to implement them consistently for fear of the perception that I’m trying to “run up the bill”. However, time and time again I have run into problems with recently repaired vehicles that didn’t get a inspection. Namely, we fix something and never pay any attention to some other area of the car in need of repair. The neglected area causes a breakdown and the customer is left wondering why we didn’t notice it. Our professionalism and expertise comes into question when the only reply I can give them is, “we weren’t looking there”. After several of those episodes, I’ve decided that I need to do inspections consistently. 

Tom…

THANK YOU. You gave me EXACTLY the suggestions I was seeking. I don’t know why I never thought to simply use my average RO times to schedule vehicles. 

Genius.

I also think .2 is fair. I don’t want to short-change the tech, but I don’t want to have to charge every customer for a basic inspection. 0.2 seems like a good compromise and is labor I can often roll into the repair. 

Do you have people schedule their next appointment (3 months or 6 months down the road) when they pay their invoice? I’m curious how you have your service advisors “frame” it? 

Also, how do you turn a brake job into, “hey, let’s schedule your next oil change while you’re here”. Or, how do you go about it at your shop?

Thanks to everyone! 

[David Roman]

All of this sounds great until your boisterous customer says… “Where’s my free oil change?”

[David Roman]

The issue is one of cost. In order to generate measurable results, you have to spend A LOT of money. Remember that you’re attempting to outbid huge companies such as Firestone, Goodyear, Midas, and Meineke for keywords. 

So, if you’re able to spend thousands, you’ll get good results. If you can’t consistently spend thousands, you’re wasting your money. 

The better approach is improving your organic search results. That is done through content marketing targeted towards specific keywords. 

That way, your shop turns up when someone searches “Brake Repair <Your City>” right under all of the ads. The only issue, of course, is that this takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.