Three Strategies for Service Technician Excellence
Service Excellence: Build and Maintain Technician Headcount
By Brett Coker
In our last newsletter we discussed how critical technician proficiency is. It improves flat rate hour throughput, service and parts departments profitability, technician earnings, and customer satisfaction/retention.
But flat-rate hours (FRHs) produced, which is the product we sell in the service department, are not only impacted by proficiency (tech productivity and efficiency) but also, obviously, by technician headcount.
You could have the most proficient technicians in the world, but each technician can only produce so many FRHs even at, say 125% proficiency.
The obvious need is to maximize technician headcount. And, that’s where we struggle mightily. Some industry data shows a shortage of 250,000 technicians nationwide causing franchise dealerships to compete against independents and mass merchandisers for skilled labor. On top of that, our existing technicians as a whole are aging and nearing retirement.
Build your service department around three key strategies:
1. Build Employee Loyalty: Your secret sauce can be developed through gifting, compensation, and maintaining personal connections with your technicians.
2. Always Be Recruiting: With service department labor shortages estimated in the industry at 250,000 technicians, you cannot afford to wait until you have a need.
3. Proficiency is king: find a balance between your young and developing technicians with your aging but incredibly wise and savvy experienced professionals.
Build Employee Loyalty
First, stop the defections and retain your existing technical staff. Make sure you compensate them fairly and offer generous benefits. Put financial handcuffs on them. Make them a part of the dealership family and treat them accordingly. Be creative and show appreciation (i.e. send their spouse a gift, something meaningful to them). Have a night out with your team and their families and attend a local event just for employees of your shop.
The general manager and service manager should spend time with technicians asking about their lives, their children, and their health. Sincere, attentive interest in your employees goes a long way. Service managers should have periodic, individual lunches with each technician. The time to find out you have an unhappy technician is not when they are rolling their toolbox out the back of the shop. Realize that a good technician is worth up to $400,000 in parts and labor gross profit per year.
When the above happens, your shop will be the one that other techs want to come work at. Technicians also talk to other techs, and you want them speaking very highly of your shop.
Always Be Recruiting
Whether it’s LinkedIn, Craig’s List, strong involvement with local tech schools, a recruiting company, paying your techs a recruitment bonus, or the Snap On tool guy, maximize those connections. Whatever works in your market, then do it.
Proficiency is King
We discussed proficiency (ADD LINK) in the last issue of Driving Profits. Make sure that you remove any roadblocks to tech productivity and efficiency.
As an industry, we need to stop having our techs retire at such a young age. When techs get in their 50’s and 60’s they start wearing out physically. When they are becoming their most experienced and knowledgeable, that’s when they move on to another career or the tech retirement home. Not necessarily because they want to, but because their bodies need a lighter workload.
Take advantage of their knowledge and experience and pair them up with younger techs who have the physical abilities but not the knowledge abilities yet. Keep them on the payroll and reward their well-earned skillset through less physical means.
Have someone else retrieve the vehicle, rack the vehicle, acquire the parts and supplies, and perform any inspections and minor services. Then, have the master tech perform the diagnosis and any complex, non-physical repairs. Let them update the RO with a complete and professional story.
The apprentice or C tech handles the physical and “menial” tasks while the mentoring tech handles the brain surgery. This relationship will also allow the for knowledge-sharing and establishing your next generation of shop masterminds.
The benefits will be a shop with an incredible wealth of knowledge, less comebacks, higher proficiency, more throughput, training of newer techs, and critical retention of experienced techs.
How is your shop functioning? Are you taking the time to sit and watch how it all works together? Who is doing what and can you adjust to the best practices above?
Questions?
Dealership Retail & Consulting
A Brady Ware consulting partner, Brett has over 40 years of retail dealership and consulting experience in all areas of dealership operations including fixed and variable operations.