Avoiding the Technician Drought

There is a “Technician Drought” that has been plaguing the car industry for decades, pretty severely for the past 5 years or so. Finding and keeping excellent quality techs has been as elusive as a rainstorm in the middle of the desert. Like a real drought, this ailment causes the rationing of your most precious resources; the people who actually produce the work you charge your customers for! As a result, productivity, profitability, retail growth, customer and employee satisfaction categorically suffer.

So how do we proactively prepare and posture ourselves to make the best of this situation and compensate for the lack of ready-trained technicians in the marketplace today?

The constants I see that dealers can affect when considering how to attract and retain top quality techs are three-fold.

1. Constantly recruiting and doing a great job at putting our best foot forward when searching for and enticing tech staff to our dealership to begin with.

2. “Building” our own technicians from entry level quick service candidates, tech school graduates or attendees and current employees wanting to move into being a mechanic.

3. Tech retention strategies that will hopefully preempt a tech from searching elsewhere because of discontent.

The First Impressions

First of all this is a category that we should always be interviewing for and have our search engines bringing us candidates. Do not let your guard down. You never know when you are going to need another tech, in fact you probably need at least 2 right now! Position your dealership and department as a superior work environment with an employee focused management approach.

Dealerships have to step up and cater to technicians needs and desires to attract and retain a top-quality team. Of course, monetary gains are not the only focus a tech has when considering an employer. Sure cash is king, but let’s face it there are a multitude of reasons that make being a technician rewarding….or the opposite. Here is just a short list of the issues a dealership may want to consider in their efforts to attract Techs:

• An accommodating but authoritive Service Manager they like!!! (Yes they have to LIKE you!)

• Liberal sign-on bonuses after probationary period

• Climate controlled and/or comfortable work environment

• Generous vacation considerations. Example; 2 weeks paid vacation after 2 years of service

• Weekly pay checks and spiff incentive programs

• Medical, dental and vision insurance available

• Car discounts for employees and family

• Tuition reimbursement program for qualified technical institutes

• Medical, dental and vision insurance availability

• 401K retirement plan with matching contribution

• Supplemental life insurance availability

• Short term and long term disability available

• Paid training / technician guild program

• Employee and customer referral program

• Wellness program (Gym membership, etc.)

Building the Machine to Build the Machine

The most successful shops at retaining and growing technicians from scratch have mentoring programs that are a win, win, win situation.

• The Mentor wins – He is compensated for trainee production on an ongoing based on the productivity of the trainee. This gives him “skin in the game”

• The Mentee wins – Obviously an effectively trained apprentice evolves into a highly desired well paid tech in the best scenarios.

• The Dealership wins – Profitability and customer satisfaction soar with a stable and ever improving workforce.

There is another aspect that makes a big difference overall in the quality of production coverage you can provide. Lack of specialization. The strategy of employing well rounded techs and training apprentice and journeymen techs alike in EVERY aspect of just about EVERY specialty. A greater percentage of your technical staff being able to “clean a ticket” is a productivity “super-food”….Imagine all operations on a repair order being able to be accommodated by the first person that pulls the car into the shop.

Cheaper to Keep ‘Em

In reality, retaining top talent is an even more pressing use than recruiting and growing technicians. The same types of programs you are attracting new hires with should lavish seasoned techs with the “what’s-in-it-for-me” that goes beyond a paycheck.

Consider your techs and what makes them respond positively.

• Embellish your tech incentive and spiff programs, plus run quarterly or bi-annual contests.

• Hold regular meetings and take employee surveys to listen to their input and make appropriate changes to their suggestions.

• Allow senior staff special scheduling considerations and rewards for a job well done.

• Create a “Brag Board” where accomplishments, anniversaries and special milestones can be displayed for peers to see.

Often what people really want is recognition for excellence. By keeping your focus on your top achiever’s accomplishments, you both give them a jolt of motivation and at the same time align your up and coming staff with a prime role model and path to excellence.

In any arena, business or sport, top performers are identified through constant, ongoing performance evaluations. If you can’t evaluate their performance, then how can you identify their status as a top performer?

Service Advisors and Technicians are no different, in the fast-paced world of the Service Drive, lack of performance tracking can definitely impact everyone’s bottom line, and quick!

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a business metric used to gauge aspects that are crucial to the accomplishment of an organization. KPIs differ per the business goals that are specific to each enterprise. KPIs are applied in business to identify business trends and advise on the best strategic actions.

KPIs are a set of standards to compare actual results against. For Advisors AND Managers, it’s kind of like a “Service Drive Success Gauge”… Ultimately, KPIs help the Service Manager, and the Technicians and Advisors themselves, assess progress towards their shared goals.

So what should we measure and how high should the target be?

Tech and Advisor KPI’s need to be a stretch but still attainable. It is critical that an advisor or Tech can see at any given time, how they are scoring compared to the established standard KPI. Most KPIs are measured on a month by month, month-to-date basis and show what end of the month value the Tech and Advisor is going to attain if they keep the same pace as currently reported. Here are the main Customer Pay metrics for improving Service Department Retail performance.

Service Advisors Retail Performance KPI’s

Repair Orders Written by Advisor and the Department as a whole

The number of Repair orders your advisors write is a data metric that is very revealing for the department as a whole and for your individual Advisors.

Customer Pay Labor per Repair Order

Customer pay labor per repair order is a metric that is likely to be a bit specific to your carline, demographics of your location and a few other factors. Train and counsel Advisors in sales strategies and estimating skills accordingly to improve this metric.

Customer Pay Parts per Repair Order

This metric is also variable according to a few different elements. As a rule, the Parts to Labor ratio should be anywhere from 1:1 up to 1:1.6 in some cases. While it is true the parts follow the labor, there are actions you can take to improve this number and sell parts heavy jobs.

Commodities Sales Per Repair Order as a percentage of repair Orders written.

Tires, brakes, filters and flushes and other commodities as compared to the number of customer pay repair orders written

• To troubleshoot observe if your Advisors are asking for the additional business at Write Up and also when presenting additional service needs
• Equip Advisors and Techs with information on how, what, when and the benefits the customer will receive if the services are performed.
• Make sure your techs are on the same page and recommending based on condition as well as mileage interval.

Multi-point vehicle check-up inspections and postponed services coding results; (how many MPIs and condition codes booked vs. customers waited on)

MultiPoints are related to retail success, the better job we do the more success follows. The bigger picture is, are we leaving money on the table by not inspecting certain cars? Are we really doing an excellent job of offering all legitimate needs to customers and keeping them abreast of the health of their vehicle? This is actually a legal and ethical issue as well, you don’t want a customer to leave your store not knowing of a potential safety concern your thorough inspection would have thwarted.

• Review Repair Orders Daily, coach and counsel individuals as needed. This is such a critical issue consider it being a mandatory and non-negotiable issue.

Use dealership historical data as well as industry and group benchmarks established to establish these targets. Managers should supply their team with up-to-date metrics, in conspicuous places with regular updates. Results should be posted in areas of the dealership that are easily noticed by Advisors. E-mail distribution of KPI performance is another way to keep everyone informed.

The visibility of your metrics scoreboard will strengthen accountability and spawn competitive ambitions amongst your crew. Make sure you include both comments of praise and action items in areas that need attention.

Remember Process = Profit…Yours!