#TheProblem

One of the most repeated phrases I hear when I ask service managers or workshop owners about their biggest challenges often sounds something like this;

“... and It is so hard to find "Good Technicians." 

Which is really no surprise to anyone reading this, is it? Worse though, is that this is STILL an ongoing issue, and has been for a long while. (This was an issue when I started my apprenticeship 30+ years ago!)

Which begs the question why? Surely, with all the knowledge and resources that have been devoted to resolving this issue, surely we ought have a solution by now, right?

But we don't. Still Don't.  So why not? What is keeping issue from being resolved? 

Well you can be sure that it is not just 'one thing'.  It is driven by a range of things, and there are dozens of articles written by stacks of people who discuss all those elements in detail, and I don't want to go over that ground again here.

However, there is a part of the challenge to "finding good tech...

We all recognise that friction is the enemy of efficiency and performance. Put simply, friction makes everything harder. What we don’t always appreciate is how friction actually operates in our businesses and service departments specifically. To help us get greater clarity on how friction works against us, here are the 5 characteristics of friction as they typically operate in a service department.

#1 – Friction is Normal.

I know that is not what we like to here, but it’s true. Friction is simply a part of life. In business, in machinery, in electronics, in ‘systems’, in pretty much everything, there is a form of resistance that works against the efforts of ‘creation’.

Whatever form that ‘creation’ takes – be it growth, profit, performance, motion, speed, heat, insight etc. – whatever form, there will be resistance or ‘friction’. The fact that friction will always be present isn’t so much the key issue. Not being aware that there will always be friction and minimising it effectively...

Welcome to the Part Three of the ‘3 Strategies to Boost Workshop Success in a Challenging Business Environment’. In part one part one we spoke about retention as the first strategy.  In part two part two we looked at how training alone is not enough anymore. So here is the final strategy to help you boost your workshop success.

3. Have Everyone Measuring What Matters, Intelligently!

This may sound a bit odd, but there are four key points here to consider here – what to measure, who measures, why you’re measuring, and how things get measured. So, let look at these:

1. What to Measure?

In order to measure what matters you need to firstly have a target or ‘key performance indicator/s’. These (usually more than one) must be something that are a true and real measure of success. As the adage goes, ‘what gets measured, gets managed’. Measuring the right things matters a lot!

Secondly you need to know what produces or causes those KPI’s to increase or decrease – the critical driver/s – a...

Welcome to part two of the ‘3 Strategies to Boost Workshop Success in a Challenging Business Environment’.

In part one we spoke about retention as the first strategy. You can find that article here.  So, on to the second strategy.

2. Don’t Just Train Your People

Hands up who has never been to a training course? The reason I see no hands when I ask this question is that everyone has been to some sort of training at some time in their life. And THAT is awesome! But training alone is not enough anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, training is still very important and very necessary – I personally have delivered face to face training to over 11,000 people in my career so far. But please, take some insight from someone who knows training; training alone can’t meet the needs of a modern, highly skilled and highly technical workplace, and here’s why:

There are three key areas that make for a good technician, or service advisor, or manager etc. – Attitude, Ability, and Experience. Training direc...

As a Dealer Principal or General Manager, how would you feel if the Service Manager told you they had just lost $35,000 and would need to spend an additional $10,000 to fix the issue?

Not too happy, right?

Now imagine how you would feel if the Service Manager called to tell you it had happened again 3 months later?

And then again 7 months after that?

The scary part about these numbers is that they are the real costs every time a Technician leaves your Service Department. Lose one Technician, lose $35,000. Lose two Technicians, that’s $90,000 lost. You had 3 Technicians leave? – Well, that number is even too painful to type.

Because a Technician actually does the work that makes the money in a Service Department, when they leave, the harsh reality is the Service Department will suffer about $45,000 loss (typically) to their Gross Profit, and a further $10,000 will need to be spent in finding a new (and suitable) Technician and get them up to speed.

I appreciate that this might sou...

To say that cars today are not what they used to be is a huge understatement.

What once was a largely mechanical assembly with a few electrical circuits, is now a highly complex electronic network that controls all the mechanical functions including all the new and sensitive technology.  This technology is awesome when it works but should something go wrong, finding the cause of the issue can be really perplexing.

The difficulty of diagnosing all this ‘fancy’ technology can very quickly be compounded if your dealership does any of the following.  These 7 practices actually put up barriers that make what is already a demanding task almost impossible.

They almost guarantee diagnostic failure, costing you time and money, hurting your workshop capacity and almost certainly upsetting customers.  And that doesn’t even count expensive rework.

We have found that each of these items will make diagnosis at least 15% harder, longer and more costly.  Check out this list and see how you fare.

Perhaps the one thing that every service manager or workshop owner seems to agree on is, running a workshop successfully isn’t getting any easier. The challenges of staying profitable, meeting targets, keeping customers happy, (or less angry) and especially finding good staff seems to be getting harder by the day.

If keeping your workshop running successfully feels like you’re trying to push water up hill with a toothpick (yes, it is possible, just really difficult), then I would like to offer three strategies that – in our experience – most workshops don’t do, or unfortunately don’t do very well.

I would also like to point that those workshops we do see doing these three things well are actually being successful with fewer problems and less stress.  So here they are:

1. Retention, Retention, Retention!

I can’t say this enough. If there was one strategy and only one strategy you put into place to improve the success of your workshop, make it a retention strategy. I wish I had a dol...