Selling the value of your door rate

Should consumers pay more to rent the expertise of your best diagnostician? I think so, and that expert in turn should be paid more, creating an incentive to upgrade skills.

The service aftermarket has a serious image problem. The simple fact is auto repair consistently ranks near the bottom of consumer trust surveys, and has been there for years.

A lot of Canadians think that we’re ripping them off, and have been doing so for years. You know and I know that nobody’s getting rich spinning wrenches in this country. So why is the consumer’s negative perception so stubbornly persistent? In my opinion, we’ve done it to ourselves and the major factor is the way we bill our customer base. Bob Greenwood and other experts advocate tiered labour rates, and they’re absolutely right. My wife expects to pay more (too much if you ask me) to get her hair cut by a senior hairdresser and less for a less experienced stylist. Should consumers pay more to rent the expertise of your best diagnostician? I think so, and that expert in turn should be paid more, creating an incentive to upgrade skills. My hope is consumers can see this logic too, especially if service writers point out that a fast and accurate diagnosis saves money in the overall bill.

That’s great, but what about your door rate? If you’re where you need to be, and most of the industry in this country isn’t, the door rate should be in the triple digits by now. I know, the market won’t support $105-an-hour, but why do consumers perceive it as a rip-off? I believe it’s because motorists ignore overhead and equipment costs and think that, like the hairdresser, they’re paying lawyer rates directly to the tech wrenching their car. Modern equipment doesn’t help. I’m old enough to remember “Allen Tune” and “Bear Alignment,” where specialty bays were glass-walled and contained racks of scopes and giant gauges that made them look like Mission Control at NASA. Not only were consumers impressed, it screamed “quality” and “efficiency,” as well as being obviously expensive. Even the techs used to wear white lab coats like doctors, enhancing the image. Those once big, bulky diagnostic systems of yesteryear are now integrated diagnostic systems today and can cost as much as a small house (or, if you’re in Toronto, a ratty one-bedroom condo); yet those diagnostic systems look like your customer’s $800 laptop computer.

There are alignment racks available today that are totally non-contact. They’re super-efficient and profitable. But if they’re not promoted and marketed correctly, the consumer will see it as a hundred bucks to park their car on four bathroom scales for a few minutes. Part of the problem can be laid at the feet of the equipment manufacturers. If your tool costs a hundred-grand, give the shop enough flash to show the consumer something. Some owners are taking the issue into their own hands by piping diagnostic dyno readouts onto monitors in the customer waiting area. Why isn’t this kind of thing standard equipment?

The other part of the problem is shop management. Rarely do service businesses properly promote new capability or major equipment installations. Ever paint the bay when you installed a new rack? Ever consider adding a $200 closed circuit TV camera pointed down from the ceiling over your emission dyno with the monitor in the waiting room? There are lots of ways to push back against the rip-off perception, but at the very least, make sure that your customers know that the guy with the wrench isn’t pocketing their $85 for an hour’s work.