Helping Ease the Pain of automotive repair

It’s a common story. A customer comes into your shop with some problem. Your service writer asks all the appropriate questions and your technician does the necessary diagnostic work to discover the nature of the problem. Then you call the customer with the price of the repair. The customer listens to what you have to say and tells you, “Wow. It will cost me that much? I better think about it.” You know when the customer tells you that, there is a very good chance they will not come back.

Many times, the customer will tell you their hesitation is about the cost of the repair. Whether the repair is $400 or $4,000 they will either back their car out of your shop or try to get you to lower your price.

It’s not hard to understand. With the economy slowing down, home budgets tightening because of increasing gasoline and food prices, people will try to save money any way they can. This means maintenance or repair work is put off as much as possible. For example, I have people come into my shop knowing that something is wrong with their transmission. Even when we confirm a problem and recommend the work needed to fix the issue, the customer often leaves the shop without the work getting done. They think, wrongly of course, the problem will go away, or that they can delay the work, even though we tell them in no uncertain terms that leaving the problem unchecked will likely cause it to get much worse and cost much more to fix later on.

We in the industry must find ways of helping the customer get the needed financing for that necessary repair or maintenance work. We have a program with our head office at Mister Transmission where a customer can fill out a credit application, and if qualified, get the funds needed to do that repair or maintenance work. Other companies supply financing services for the aftermarket and we as shop owners need to do a better job of pointing these out to people.

Related to this a tendency some of us in the industry have to undercut profits by being reluctant to charge what a repair actually costs in order to keep the work. Sometimes, when we work on a vehicle we discover the job will take longer than we think, or it turns out to be a lot more complicated because we discover another serious problem.

At other times, we charge too little for the work needed in order to keep the car in the bay. Some say this is a good business practice as it builds customer loyalty. But done too often, it soon cuts into the shop’s revenues and profits. We have to do a much better job of educating people about the need for expert service and quality repairs, and warranty protection; the real cost of repairing a vehicle today; of the education that goes into keeping a technician’s skills up-to-date; and how long it sometimes take to fix a problem that seems simple on the surface but is much more complicated.

An educated consumer is someone I, as a shop owner, and my technicians enjoy working with. They will know what we are talking about when we explain to them what the problem is with their vehicle and that to do a quality repair will take time and will cost a certain amount. They will never complain about the price we quote to them, and it will be a price that is both fair but one that is also reflective of the work that has to be done and the parts that have to be ordered. It is the ones who don’t have a clue who are surprised and ask “Why does it take half-a-day to fix that problem?”

If we do a better job at both educating our customers and offering ways for them to finance the repairs then we will have both a satisfied customer and a continually successful and profitable business.

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