Richard Zaagman
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t have much direct experience with Yelp, however, I have heard very little good coming from other shop owners that do have Yelp experience. Yelp is important, however I choose to spend as little as possible with them.
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We start with .75 but that is just the basics and we almost always upsell for further testing and confirmation purposes. We have found that asking for more up front can often cause customer dissatisfaction. Customer’s don’t understand or accept the fact that we have to charge for diagnosis but that doesn’t change the fact we have to charge for this, so quite frankly, we play the game. .75 initial testing. Once that step is done, we call the customer with what we know and tell them further testing is needed to confirm our suspicions and then we’ll often charge another .5 to 1.25. We also will often add .5 to the repair which also helps cover our diagnostic costs.
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We charge 3% of parts and 6% of labor to cover shop supplies and environmental. We cap it at $50.00. We seldom if ever hear any complaints on this.
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We’ve used Bolt On for quite a while now for the lube sticker program primarily. Seems to work pretty well although we do have to call them for support from time to time. Printer fails to work once in a while. Also anytime you add a work station or change a computer on your network, they have to set up the program on that computer. Not a huge deal, it’s just one more thing I have to make sure gets done.
They do have many other programs that seem to work pretty well. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from using any of their programs.
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Advisor Fix 8
Elite 8
RLO 5
WorldPac 7
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PACE, YES system. 7. Not bad, but we often have issues with system locking up, strange things happening that we need to call support about. Support is pretty responsive. On line parts ordering is very poor, at least our experience has been. ROW seems to have the on line parts ordering thing pretty well perfected, at least from what I hear.
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__6___ Activant
__5___ NAPA
__8___ WorldPa
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We have some turn over, but certainly not every few months. If you are loosing techs that are NOT that good? I’d look at your business culture and practices. We work hard at keeping customers but treat our employees poorly or expect them to work in poor conditions.
If you are not attracting techs that are worth keeping, the same applies only even more important. I’m not saying you give them the world, but your business needs to be profitable enough to pay them a good wage equivalent to your area.
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I have techs that drive old, cheap cars that are not worth maintaining, so I understand why they don’t do preventative maintenance, neither would I if I drove junk, but I choose not to. I enjoy driving and owning nice vehicles, so I do the maintenance necessary to keep them going to 300,000 miles or longer. Sold my Volvo a few years ago, bought it new. Drove it over 18 years, brought my twins home from the hospital in it, taught them how to driver in it. Transmission and engine, never taken out or apart while I owned it. Had just under 300k on it when I sold it. Needed nothing when I sold it, just got sick of it after 18 years.
My S/As drive cars that are nicer. One performs all the maintenance, the other not so much. I think he’s just not wanting to spend his time or money and is willing to take a chance. He believes in in enough to sell it though.
I don’t currently have S/As who have issues selling maintenance but I have been there before, those S/As no longer work here.
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__9____ Advertising, marketing
__7___ Customers – finding new ones
__1___ Employee management
__4___ Employee training
__2___ Getting things done
__3___ Hiring
__6___ Servicing cars quickly and efficiently
__5___ Shop – keeping it clean and organized
__10___ Vehicle technology -
Thank you.
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Hello, folks… Calvin here, Dick’s partner in crime. He asked me to
post this update, which is an e-mail I *just* sent him. Cheers, CW“Following
an almost 40 minute conversation with Christopher at Google (3rd person
I spoke to on the same call), he was able to restore the review
response function.That’s the good news.
The not so great
news is he couldn’t recover all our previous responses. At initial
glance, it seems he could only retrieve those I left 12 months to 2
years ago. If the review/response is greater than 2 years old, I have
to go back and manually enter a response.I asked if there was
any way Google could assure us the response capacity would not disappear
again in the near/distant future, and regretfully I was told there’s no
such promise.Regardless, this is progress. Checking into things further, so as to confirm how much repair/restoration is still necessary.”
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Thanks for the dialogue. This has been helpful.
To answer the question posed earlier of follow-up phone calls, our experience has been they aren’t received as warmly as might have been suggested. We know this is, in part, because customers are already receiving follow-up correspondence electronically, so it seems somewhat redundant (to them) to field another “touch.” That said, we’ve been mostly happy with our after-the-sale process.
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Thank you for the feedback.
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Thanks for the feedback. We’ve used Demandforce for a couple years now and have mostly been pleased with the results. Not necessarily considering CL as a replacement, but more likely to augment our marketing efforts with DF.
Sounds as though, unless I’ve missed something, none of you are currently utilizing CL’s New Customer Acquisition program. That’s specifically what we may add in the near future, and I was curious to see if anyone had results to report.
Again, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
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who greets the customer first when
they walk in?
>>WHOEVER IS FIRST AVAILABLE
Who answers the phone first?
>>WHOEVER IS FIRST AVAILABLE, IF IT RINGS MORE THAT 3 TIMES, THEN ONE OF THE NON S/AS WILL BACK UP THE S/AS AND GET THE PHONE. THERE ARE 6 PEOPLE IN OUR OFFICE, SO SOMEONE WILL GET THE PHONE.
Is it always the same or does it vary in some way?
>>>VARIES BECAUSE IT’S ALWAYS WHO IS AVAILABLE.
Do you have a specific system, and if so, what is it?
>>>WHOEVER IS AVAILABLE…
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We ended up replacing the rack and the customer paid for the rack at a minimal profit and he paid my cost of labor. One thing the customer didn’t realize is the steering boot was open when the vehicle came into the shop. Initially he had the impression that we damanged the boot, which wasn’t the case. I showed him the location of the rack and the tie rod end that we replaced and explained that when a boot is open, water, dirt, salt etc are going to be constantly filling the wheel well and there is no doubt will eventually damage the rack. Once he realized the boot had been open for a while, he backed off a bit. The fact that the leak started after we replace the tie rod end was still hard to ignore, at least by the customer. We wanted to keep the customer, so we shared the cost as described. Have yet to see the customer return and he does need a timing belt, so the jury is still out as to whether we accomplished our goal of keeping him as a customer.
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Sounds all to familiar. I’m guilty for for keeping techs way too long. I cleaned house over the past 2 years. I have lots of new techs now and a much better life. Still have trouble getting techs to work over time though which is frustrating. I find my techs are much less motivated by money and customer expectation than I am.
Techs lying about their drivers license is grounds for dismissal.
Comebacks should be monitored and if any tech cannot perform at least at a satisfactory level, their either need training or you have to let them go. I think the key here though is monitoring performance and having periodic performance reviews where these things are discussed, goals and expectations are set and reviewed.
This all takes time, major time, and is why shop owners shouldn’t be techs. If you’re working as a tech, these problems will probably never go away. IMHO.
