Repair Shop Advice

If you have recently had a tech or two leave your shop what reason did they give you? Was it pay? Even if the pay was a nice bump over what you were paying them, do you think that is the real reason they left?

As you’ve probably observed many times, when humans make a big decision there are often two stories – the truth, and then the story they tell you to make you feel better about it or to avoid a discussion about the truth. And most often, we are willing to believe the story because it makes us feel better and helps us avoid having to make hard changes.

In this case, if we believe the tech left because of the 20% pay increase it helps us avoid having to deal with the work environment or cultural issues we don’t want to face. We don’t have to address the sniping amongst employees or the way we don’t thank them for their work or that we don’t try to connect with them as a human or offer any flexibility in their work schedule.

We couldn’t pay them 20% more so they left. They just wanted more money. Right? Or is that the story we are telling ourselves to avoid having to face the truth?

Was It Really the Money?

The highly respected workplace research firm Gallup recently conducted an analysis that found that engaged employees need a 31% pay increase to even consider taking a job somewhere else. 31%!

The same analysis showed that employees who are not engaged, and even actively disengaged, want a 22% pay increase to change jobs.

Now the story is starting to become clearer. Our tech left for 20% more and if you compare that to the Gallup research that says actively disengaged employees want 22% more, it’s time to take a hard look at what life at the shop looks like and feels like for our employees.

Auto Repair Technicians Want the Same Things as All Employees

Sure, if you ask anybody if they’d like more money, nearly 100% of people will say yes. But in most cases if an employee is directly asking you for more money it’s to compensate for “poor management and a poor employee experience” as it says in the Gallup article.

What they are really saying is that you are going to have to pay them more money if you expect them to work long hours or put up with the people they work with or put up with the conditions of the shop. Or put in a not so gentle way, “these things suck about working here, if you want me to stay you are going to have to pay me more to put up with them.”

Unfortunately, once somebody has gotten to that point it’s a no-win situation. The exception is if you can find a way to fix the real problem. Gallup says the best predictors of employee retention are:

• Overall job satisfaction
• Organizational commitment
• Work environment
• Level of stress
• Workgroup cohesion

If you don’t fix those things, your employee is likely to keep asking for more money until they realize that it doesn’t truly compensate for the stress and damage the job causes and then they will leave.

It’s also important to know that increasing base pay for an employee has been shown to have an insignificant effect on performance. If you want to increase performance focus on fixing the five elements in the list above.

Now Is a Good Time to Change

The end of the year is a time for many people to look back and then look forward. If your look back includes the loss of a number of good employees I encourage you to take a hard look at the work environment and culture of your shop.

• Do you show employees your appreciation in small and big ways?
• Do they know the shop is committed to their wellbeing and that you care about them and their families?
• Do you or does their manager work to personally connect with each employee?
• Does everybody treat each other well in the shop?
• Is there a team atmosphere that helps lift somebody up when they need it?

Those are just some of the things that you should be considering. For more information check out:

Webinar – Recruiting and Keeping Talented Technicians (This is a recording of a live webinar from four years ago but it’s still just as relevant today)

Podcast – What Do Technicians Think Is The Most Important Aspect Of A Job With Jay Goninen from WrenchWay

Blog – Technicians Answer: What’s the Most Important Aspect of a Job?

Blog – Setting New Employees Up for Success

Change is never easy. But it’s only going to get harder to recruit technicians. Gain an advantage by making sure you’ve got a work environment and culture that helps you keep the good people you have. They can often be your best source for new employees.

We have spoken to a lot of auto repair shop owners and managers who have told us that they don’t like to bother their customers by asking for reviews. Is that feeling justified? Do consumers really dislike being asked for reviews?

The great news is that the fine folks at Moz have helped us get a lot more insight into what consumers think about being asked for reviews as part of their Impact of Local Business Reviews on Consumer Behavior Report. We covered in detail their findings about how consumers evaluate reviews and particularly how that affects repair shop owners in the blog last month.

This month we are going to highlight the results of some of the questions they asked 1,300 consumers in September about being asked to leave reviews.

Before we look at some of those questions, here’s an important word of warning. You should not be rewarding people for giving you reviews. This is unethical at best and could qualify as illegal.

They did ask the question in the survey and 40% of the consumers said they had businesses offer money, discounts, or gifts in exchange for writing a review. Please don’t do this or try to manipulate your reviews in any way. If consumers find out that you have even one “fake” review it will completely destroy your credibility.

Now, onto the questions…

Has a local business asked you directly for a review in the past 5 years?

61% of the consumers said that they had received at least one direct request for a review during the past five years. That means that 39% of consumers were not asked one single time by a local business for a review over the previous five years. That all adds up to a lot of missed opportunities.

If you have been asking your customers consistently for reviews than you likely have a leg up on your competitors. If you haven’t been asking for reviews you can start today and still likely be ahead of most of your competitors.

When asked by a business to leave a review, how often do you do so?

This chart shows why it’s worth your time and effort to ask for reviews. More than 50% of consumers will always or usually leave a review when asked to do so. An additional 34% will sometimes leave a review when asked to do so. The quick summary – when you ask your customers for a review, most of them will leave one for your shop.

How do you prefer to be asked for local business reviews?

Notably, this is a select all that apply. As you can see email is the preferred way, with in-person right behind it. Text comes in third at 29%.

This is one of those things where the better you know your customer, the better you can modify your approach to fit their preference. If you’ve been communicating with a customer the whole time via text then there is a high likelihood that they are going to be good with a text request for a review. The good news is that our Integrated Reviews portal allows you to request a review via email and/or text.

Why do you write local business reviews?

This is a really important question to highlight. As mentioned in the intro paragraph of this blog, many repair shop owners tell us they don’t like to ask for reviews because they don’t like to bother customers. However, as seen in the answer to this question, 73% of consumers said they write local business reviews “To let others know my experience.” It is important to them to guide others to good businesses and away from bad businesses.

If you have delivered great service to a customer and you ask them for a review, you are helping them fulfill their mission to let others know of a good quality business that they can trust. Consumers are not just writing a good review for you, they are writing a good review to help all the other vehicle owners in their community identify a great shop to take their vehicle to.

So if you’ve hesitated in the past or been resistant to ask your happy customers for reviews, I hope that seeing the results of that survey question will encourage you to start asking more consistently.

Our Integrated Reviews platform helps our customers get more online reviews. To learn how we can help do that for your auto repair shop, call us at 855-294-6397 or schedule a meeting with us at a time that’s convenient for you!