Management skills

Management skills

25 Sep 2007

Reader Alan Bird explains why he thinks garages were caught out by the Which? investigation into servicing standards

Having worked for many years mainly in the after-sales sectors of the motor industry, both with franchises and independents, I would like to make the following observations regarding the results from the latest mystery shopping industry survey by Which? magazine (Aftermarket September 2007, page 04).

Managers in the after-sales service sector generally come from, not surprisingly, the technical side. They are very proud of their undeniably high technical skills and expertise.

Unfortunately many become resentful and defensive when questioned about customer care, finance, operational controls and marketing. Maybe this is a shortfall in basic industry training.

Most, if not all, mystery shopping or customer satisfaction surveys carried out over the years by various organisations have mainly covered the most basic service and maintenance checks.

They do not focus on the high tech diagnostics or repairs that do unquestionably need high technical skills and the need for expensive equipment to diagnose and rectify.

When such high tech repairs are undertaken, the outcomes are obvious and clear to all. That is, the fault has either been rectified or not as the case may be.

It is not so clear when routine maintenance checks or service work is being carried out.
Have all the necessary checks been completed and attended to as required? Customers have to take it for granted that they have.

Unfortunately, in many cases the management takes it for granted that their technicians have carried out the checks.
Managers and technicians can be reluctant to use service check sheets where they are required to initial each and every operation and to sign when the work has been completed.

These checklists are then given to the customer when the vehicle is handed over to confirm customer confidence.
Even airline pilots use checklists for every item when they do pre-flight checks.

Many workshops use incentive schemes. Such schemes themselves are not necessarily the problem though.
It is their implementation and management control. Where workshops achieve unrealistically high efficiency, these can only be achieved by taking shortcuts on work.

Once staff have hijacked the incentive scheme and management have lost control, it is extremely difficult to recover its effectiveness and it may be need to be scrapped.

It is no good for owners or managers who have been caught out by mystery shopping to complain about how complex modern vehicles are, the lack of skilled staff or any other excuses they can think of.

Likewise, it is no good them saying, in their outrage, that if customers want a good job done rates will have to rise to hundreds of pounds per hour.

In fact, the items they have been caught out on are for missing the most basic items, such as tyre pressure, fluid levels and lights.

Then the ‘fraud’ is compounded by carrying out other practices such as charging for screen fluid, wiper blades and so on when they are not needed.

Anyone provided with the most basic instructions, motivation, supervision and controls could carry out routine servicing.

It is with management and supervisors, not technicians, where the problem lies. Management need to take responsibility and to carry out a complete review of their operation and policies to ensure that the necessary checks and controls are in place.

These should include carrying out mystery shops on their own work and other procedures that affect customer care and retention.

These should not be carried out by the service department themselves but could be carried out by internal staff from another department where there are no vested or conflicting interests, or by an appointed external person.

True quality, either in manufacturing, repairs or maintenance can only be ‘built in’ by the processes and procedures that are in place and not by any subsequent rectification.
- Alan Bird,
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

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