Losing money on diagnosing electronic faults?

This article is a true description of an AECS technical help desk call.

Problem presented to the Helpdesk

“Hi Herbert, we are running a workshop here for many years already. We are good at what we do but shy away from getting into electronic faults. We will have a crack at it, but it’s just too expensive to get into most of them.

“You end up writing so many hours off. I used to say we much rather stick to the moneymaking jobs like servicing and mechanical repairs.

“However, the amount of work we are passing on is ever-increasing. It starts to worry me. If we go into this field, how do I protect myself against some of those horror stories you hear, and were you sometimes write about?”

Repeat

This question or remarks like this come up incredibly often. Also comments like “We don’t go into electronics, too difficult, it will last my time, only a few years to go and then I’ll sell the business”

It never stops to amaze me, it is almost as if vehicles are split into two, a mechanical part and an electronic part, well one does not go without the other!

When you work on cars for a living you need to master both sides. Problem solving on cars cannot be successful without in-depth knowledge of both the electronic and the mechanical side.

Only mechanical work earns the money

I agree that the mechanical side of your work needs to make money, but there is a lot more money to be made on the electronics side.

For starters, the mechanical components are built better than ever before, so failure rates of mechanical components are far less frequent than they used to be.

Look at your work load and look at the enormous increase in the number of vehicles on the road. Servicing is also on the decline, as service intervals are increasing, some are up to one oil change every 40,000km (MB Sprinter). The interval is so large, your customer completely forgets about your existence.

So are you really keen to pass on the work that enters your workshop, or are you going to make a living out of it? When you make a decent living out of it, your business is also a saleable asset for when you decide to get out of it.

Which young energetic bloke wants to work in, let alone buy, a crusty old rundown shed with no future prospects? These young guys look for inspiration, just like you do.

Fixing cars is a deserving art

Almost all customers coming into your workshop with problem cars feel uneasy. They all think that you are going to use up their funds, at a moment that extra costs were not planned for.

You are fighting for the “grudge dollar”.

People who say they trust that you are careful with their funds just, say so and don’t really mean what they say. It sound depressing, but you have to make money out of this with a smile on your face and in the end create a smile on your customer’s face.

Diagnostics

How do you get there? Always cut a fault-finding job in two halves; Diagnostics. Repairing the fault. For diagnostics you CANNOT quote! This is the number one area where money gets lost.

The repair is easy to quote and sell. Imagine this: how does your customer feel when they come in with their problem and ask “How much will it be?” and you simply answer “I dunno!”.

Customer

During the AED training seminar we spend a bit of time on this, to assist in making diagnostic time profitable and as sellable as the repair. Below is a small piece of a role play we do. Put your customer into a socio-economic category. Keep it simple, one out of three: Beneficiary. Busy professional. Wealthy. Give your customer a feeling of control over their spending. Suggest

that you will call them after you have spent whatever you think the person of each category feels comfortable with, let’s say $250 chunks.

Let the customer adjust that limit. After you have reached that limit, call them with a brief report on what you have done to try to find the problem, and what you intend to do next.

Promise to call them after you have reached that same limit again. Do not go beyond that limit as everything beyond that ‘set point’ is at your own risk.

Building

Have a dedicated diagnostic bay, preferably with white outside and inside walls with something like a red scope trace on the side of its doors. It needs to have a clean clinic feel and look. The diagnostic bay serves as a pre-sale; the customer already knows it’s going to be expensive when their car gets pushed inside.

Technician

The attention span of most males does not exceed 20 minutes. Diagnostics needs a person’s full attention. Have a simple job on standby for the diagnostician, so he can take a “brain break”.

Only take on diagnostic work for the diagnostician’s prime time (for example from 8 till 11 in the morning). Do not push the diagnostician, it won’t speed anything up. It makes him (or her) just feel inadequate. Someone with low self-esteem can’t perform high-value jobs efficiently.

Equipment

Have quality equipment, keep it updated and plugged in and switched on, so it’s ready to be used, BEFORE the job is started!

So what do you charge?

I do not believe in tool charges, it will hold a diagnostician back from using the gear at will!

Diagnostic time is normally charged at 1.5 times the normal shop charges. This will automatically take care of charge-out rate differences due to location and market variations, and makes it easy to budget for.

Second stage of the job:

Once the fault has been diagnosed, within the customer’s financial limit, the customer can be called with a quote for the final repair. Sometimes it’s easier to repair “while you are there” if it is only a small repair. I would do the repair, but still call the customer with a retrospective quote for that repair. It does not matter that the car stays a day longer, do not undermine your credibility!

Where do you “pull the pin” and pass the job on?

Where do you “pull the pin” and stop diagnosing, when for example it all gets way too expensive, or you get the feeling that you or the diagnostician can’t find the fault? If the customer is happy for you to work through it, up to each set point, carry on. If you “don’t see what is in front of you”, and feel totally out of depth, take corrective measures, identify and rectify this situation. Think for example: - Have I kept the training of my

technicians up to scratch? - Do they have all the equipment

necessary? - Is the equipment adequate? - Are they scared of using half of the

equipment you have for them? - Do they get proper assistance and training from their equipment supplier? Review this every year, as it all catches up with you really quickly!

Why pay money AND lose workshop time to go to training?

So why would you as a workshop owner take time off and have to pay for training on top of the lost productivity? Or worse still, why would you give your guys time off and bear the costs of training? We often go to training ourselves as that is only way to keep the knowledge up, which we deliver to you.

I am well aware of the commitment our customers make, and every time I feel that it is very special that there are lots of people out there who make that kind of effort and attend the AECS seminars throughout the country.

All we can do in return is to make absolutely sure that the training is more valuable than the work time lost. That it is laden with top quality content, and packed with energy. The training has to be of direct benefit to the person attending, and their customers.

Conclusion

Prepare for diagnostic cases with appropriate training, a backup team and real equipment. Make money out of each case with a smile on your (and your customer’s) face.