During February, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Women in Autocare Conference. One of the panels I attended focused on how independent shops can stay competitive. Though they covered many discussion points, I’m going to focus on three …
1. Education on new technology
While for those of us in the industry, technology like ADAS is familiar, for those outside it, i.e. your customers, they may have no idea what that means. To build trust with your customers, it is up to you to help bridge the gap in their knowledge.
“You may not know everything that's on your vehicle,” explains Liz Perkins, co-owner of L1 Auto Group, “and so it's my job, and my responsibility as a shop owner and a technician to explain what you have on your vehicle, and how that's going to affect repair costs.”
2. Training
Similar to the education that needs to be provided to your customers, you must also educate yourself on what’s new. Staying up-to-date on training can give you an edge over competitors.
As opposed to attending larger, less hands-on training events, Cyndi DeFrancisco, owner/director of operations for the European Auto Garage, notes that they’re finding smaller training courses for their techs to attend.
“We've decided to pivot and now we're looking for smaller, hands-on classes,” she says. “We just sent our guys down to one here in Atlanta, put on by AC Delco. It was hands-on. It was nine people … [The techs] came back and they were raving; they really felt like they learned something.”
3. OEM vs. aftermarket parts
Every shop wants to ensure that when doing a repair, the vehicle gets repaired properly the first time. To help prevent comebacks, techs must make decisions on what type of parts they use for repairs. They don’t want to break their customers’ trust by doing a “bad job” aka using a bad part, but sometimes doing a “good job” means using more expensive parts, which could make customers feel like they’re getting a bad deal.
With a clientele base of mostly domestic vehicles, Judy Walker, owner of Zimmerman’s Automotive Tire Pros, notes that she can use aftermarket parts for some things but requires OE parts for others.
“More or less, we let [the techs] call it,” she says. “In other words, if they don't like a certain aftermarket part because they think that it has a bad history, the last thing they want to do is have to do [the repair] again. And so, they will say, ‘I want the original carbon manufacturer on this one.’ And so that's how we handle it.”
