As a service manager, you’ll understand more than most that time is money. An hour you don’t have a service bay occupied is an hour lost.
Meeting your automotive workshop KPIs is primarily about your efficiency, productivity, and profit margins. And ultimately, these factors will be determined by the efficiency of your team, the quality of your processes and your attention to detail.
The following 3 areas are important elements to maximising your ability to achieve your automotive workshop KPIs.
1. Service Staff
Your productivity will rely on the quality of your technicians and how efficient they are. There is a shortage of skilled technicians in Australia, which you’ll probably be feeling if you run a large service centre. But there is hope.
As there is a consistency of training within vehicle brands across the world, you are not restricted to hiring locally. This means technicians coming to Australia from overseas will come equally qualified as locals with the same relevant dealership training. This significantly improves your staffing options.
To really nail your KPIs in an industry that needs reliability and commitment you need loyal staff with an excellent work ethic that want to help you towards your goal (and won’t leave at the drop of a hat for a better offer).
With great working conditions and wages in Australia, it is an appealing long term option for internationally trained technicians. Recent changes to 457 visas have caused upset in many industries, but 'motor mechanics' are on the medium term occupation list allowing them to apply for a visa for up to 4 years, which provides a potential gateway to permanent residency.
When you hire internationally ask about your candidate’s motivations to work overseas and only deal with a recruitment specialist that is able to give you a guarantee that your new recruit will stay with you for a reasonable amount of time.
Having a permanent and motivated workforce will mean you can book up those service bays in the comfort you’ll have a reliable staff to do the work.
2. Expense Management & Billing
Your workshop needs to keep its costs as low as possible to maximise profits. And expense management has a lot to do with time management. No job can be completed without a time investment. Hours that can be billed are the meat of your success.
Have systems and processes in place to make things quick, easy and standardised. If you have a defined efficient way of doing things it will ensure both efficiency and consistency of results. Your staff will work using the same processes and with everything they need at their fingertips. This will minimise job time and increase the turnover of work.
Make sure you build in appropriate labour costs to all work orders. Without building in the labour cost the profit you make on the cost of a part, for example, will not offset the labour costs of ordering, installing, and delivering that part. So ensure your processes include adequate billing of labour otherwise your investment in labour is not working hard enough for you.
Then, there is the matter of stock control. It is logically more profitable to under order than over order, as extra stock can always be brought in, but old stock can’t always be sold. This is especially pertinent in an industry that evolves constantly. Stock that gathers dust is a loss, and a workshop is better off ordering a missing part in.
To assist in this process, having an adequate system for tracking your order history will give you the data to pre-order based on probable demand.
3. Customer Retention
You can achieve this in a few ways. Staying connected, excellent service, and good marketing.
Just because a customer has come once, doesn’t mean they’ll come again. But if your workshop is filled with skilled and highly trained technicians who return vehicles to the owners in top condition and within the specified timeframe, you’ll get return business.
Help your customers understand their vehicle and the sorts of checks and maintenance they should be doing for both scheduled services and preventative maintenance. Keep a personalised log on every customer and vehicle so you can keep up to date with the services they have had and remind them of any non-essential maintenance item they should keep an eye on.
And if you follow this up with an active marketing campaign that doesn’t take up valuable hours of your day, you’ll retain even more customers. You can achieve this by setting up an automated system that sends reminders and updates on that customer’s own vehicle, keeping them informed on deals and specials, and their upcoming service dates. Not to mention, this keeps you in the customer’s mind whenever their car needs maintenance.
With great service staff, expense management and attention to customer retention you'll have a great strategy to help you keep your service bays full and nail your automotive workshop KPIs!
