5 Star Auto Spa

I totally agree with mmotley on this one. I would sit down to talk to him about the concerns but if he did not respect the rules of the shop, I would terminate that individual.......

Wow I wish we had the volume/business to NOT take in walk in customers. A LARGE portion of our current customers are walk in non appointment customers, especially for services such as oil changes. I do think that it gets a bit hairy at times when we get a lot of walk in's while there are already current customer vehicles in for repair. In our area at least, it seems as though the general motoring public have been trained to expect oil changes as a waiting type of service.....

I was thinking the same thing as Mario in terms of how much technicians would have to be making if the service advisor is making that much, especially for a 2 technician shop. I guess if the sales numbers justify the salary than its not an issue......

50K salary for the CSA? Is he/she working 40 hours/5 days a week? If working 40 hours/5 days a week that breaks down to $24/hour before commission. We aren't able to afford quite that high of a salary/pay rate for our CSA. Our CSÁ's start out at $12/hour + 5% commission on parts and labor sold over the base sale. It typically comes out at around $16/hour at our current volume.

I love the when customers drop their vehicles off and come back after we've called them to let them know its finished. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen very often for "quick" services such as oil changes, inspections, etc. at our facility. For those of you that have been successful in educating your customers on dropping their vehicles off, do all of those customers have two vehicles/someone to always drop them off? A lot of our customers only have 1 vehicle and without getting someone to help them drop off their vehicle and take them back home/to work, it would be difficult for them to drop off their vehicle without waiting for the service. For major repairs, I would say that a lot of the general public has been trained properly in terms of duration of time it takes to get the job done properly and for us anyways, it seems easier for these types of customers to drop of their vehicles. For all of you that do appointments, does that mean you do not take walk in's for quick services (oil changes, inspections, etc.)?

Took your advice M-SPEC and haven been having my lead technician "show" him how we would like our 24 point vehicle inspection performed. He seems to be getting better at it......

Recently hired a new tech. He's been with us for about 3 weeks now. Been having weekly meetings with him on things that we would like him to improve upon. Have noticed that the majority of oil changes that he has done with vehicles that have anywhere from 100K to 250K miles don't have a single technician recommendation. I thought it was just one instance initially but have noticed that its been MOST of the vehicles he has serviced for oil changes. With vehicles with that many miles on them, I would expect that there would be at least 1 if not numerous recommendations. We do have a check list that all technicians perform when doing oil changes and he has been marking "checked ok" on all of the checklist items for these vehicles. I approached him about this and he seemed to get really defensive. I obviously don't want him to ever fabricate any issues but I just can't believe that out of 10 vehicles with that high mileage there are simply no recommendations. We pay our technicians hourly here at our shop and I'm starting to think that because of this, for this technician anyways, he isn't very self motivated to perform the 24 point inspection very thoroughly. I have scheduled a meeting for the lead technician to go over how a 24 point vehicle inspection should be done with this technician on Thursday. Any thoughts on how I could help this tech or is it a personality thing that cannot be changed?

We used to do the low cost oil change but like a lot of other people that have responded, we got a lot of the wrong type of customers. Our car counts did increase, but a lot of those customers were only looking for the cheapest oil change around and were not interested in any recommendations, even SAFETY related! I do agree that you do need the vehicle at the shop to even attempt to do an upsell but from our personal experience in the "cheap discounted oil change", it was not very successful.

For us, higher ARO is definitely the harder of the two. When we advertise cheap oil changes through marketing (Valpak, Internet, etc.), our car counts increase but our ARO doesn't. Its been somewhat difficult for us to break out of the "quick lube" shadow and for customers to think of us as a full service repair shop.

We do not typically charge any labor for air filter or cabin filter. We do make exceptions for some cabin filters that are more difficult to install. For marker/parking/tag light bulbs we have been charging $5 for labor but after reading this post I think I might increase it. What do you all charge for labor for headlights? Do you go by estimated labor or do you have a general price for most vehicles?

I am interested in what you all are paying for the AutonetTV as well? Also, do you think having it played in your lobby has made a difference in term so educating your customers about maintenance services? Does it seem like it has been worth the cost?

It looks like the Napa menu board you were referring to is the made by the same company I had referenced above, truDigital Signage. I thought about doing what you are in the process of doing also, just purchasing a display and trying to create my own content. I don't think I would have any issues using Adobe Illustrator to make a pdf for the menu but the videos that are in the link I posted above, I would have no idea on how to make. Do you remember how much you were quoted for the Napa Menu Board AlfredAuto?

Does anyone currently use a digital menu board to display a list of their services at your repair shop? We are in the process of updating our menu board and were thinking about going to a digital display. I looked online and found these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hE9jScfTz4 It's a company called truDigital Signage and the content that they have available in terms of videos that can display on the menu board looks pretty impressive. I was wondering if anyone is currently using these guys or a service similar to these guys for their digital menu board and if it has made a difference in terms of increased exposure/sales to customers?

All Data Mange here. Not great but does the basics of what you would need from a shop management software. I do think there is A LOT of room for improvement though......

We've had some luck with Indeed.com. If you type automotive technician jobs in your specific city with zip code in Google search, the first website that comes up is Indeed. It is a pay site so you will have to pay but we have gotten a pretty good turn out based on our ads that run on that site.

We stopped accepting customer supplied parts this past year around July. Thankfully for us it wasn't a big issue as we do not get barely any customers who attempt to bring their own parts.

$36/hr is way above the average in our market as well. I would think even in the city, $36 would be on the high end of the spectrum? People tend to be creatures of habit though and I would assume everyone, no matter how much they make, will feel as though they deserve an increase in pay as the months/years go on. We were lucky in the fact that our top tech actually started much lower than what he actually deserves in terms of knowledge and productivity. We were obviously quick to raise his hourly rate once we saw him work and have since outright paid for his health insurance as well. We now give him yearly bonuses based on his production. This way helps us by now raising his hourly rate but rewarding him for his past production.

We have the same problems here in finding good technicians. I think this is a problem that is felt at most shops around the country. We post our ads on Indeed and Craigslist. Like another person has stated, we do get a lot of individuals who are not qualified through Craigslist, but it does seem to be a site that a lot of people look at for potential jobs, technicians included.

We pay our techs 3% of parts and labor for any recommendations that are made and sold by CSA over the base sale to try and encourage more thorough inspections. We pay our techs hourly here at our shop and not flat rate. I do think is has helped to encourage certain technicians to perform a more thorough inspection for the individuals that needed motivation.

I am trying to get an idea of what others are paying for their shop management software and their vehicle repair information. Here is what I am currently paying: Vehicle Repair Information Subscription - $206 Shop Management Software - $75 Also, for all of the shops that are doing a lot of oil changes, do you use a separate program for your quick lube techs to find out needed car information for oil changes such as oil filter, quarts of oil, type of oil, tire pressure, etc.? We have noticed that we can usually find that information in our regular vehicle repair information subscription but it requires our lube techs to burrow down so many layers within the software that it is not very quick for them. Any ideas or recommendations on what other shops are doing to alleviate this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Has anyone tired All Data Manage Online? I am doing a demo tomorrow but would be interested to hear if there are any other shop owners that have used or are using it now.

What metrics are you all using to evaluate your service advisors? Are you able to obtain these metrics from software within a report? If so, what software are you using to obtain this information? Trying to figure out the easiest way to obtain the necessary metrics used to correctly evaluate an automotive service advisor.

5% caps at $30

We have that happen time to time here at our shop. We include the following text in the services comments for these people: Customer declined manufacturers recommended oil.

Do you think being a AAA approved auto repair business brought you additional business that you would not have had not being AAA approved?