These three tips will help you improve your shop’s efficiency.

Our efficiency tips for mechanical repair shops address the topics of billable hours, expanding brand coverage, and exploring remote support services.

Tip #1 – Add More Billable Hours Each Week

If you want your shop to earn more profit, you have to add more billable hours each week. That means completing more jobs.

To add more billable hours, you need to look at the efficiency of each technician and the productivity of your shop as a whole. Take note of everything you think you can do to complete jobs more rapidly while maintaining accurate repairs, no matter how small.

 Once you evaluate your technicians and your shop, you should have an idea of where each automotive technician can add more billable hours. Start small with an attainable goal and work on hitting it each week.  

Tip #2 – Expand Your Vehicle Brand Coverage

Consider expanding the car brands you can work on. While your shop might focus on repairing certain brands you feel comfortable with, you’re leaving money on the table if you aren’t exploring ways to expand your vehicle brand coverage.

Your competitors are considering how to service more automotive brands at their shops. They are looking to hire a new technician who is an expert on brands they don’t have the ability to repair, or they are looking at new technology they can use to expand their brand capabilities.

Don’t be the only shop that isn’t actively trying to expand its brand coverage.

Tip #3 – Consider Using Expert Technical and Remote Support Services to Help You Fix Complex Problems

Each year, automobile manufacturers add computer technology to their cars. It may help the car operate more efficiently, but it makes it harder for technicians to repair them.

When you’ve never worked on an automobile manufacturer’s proprietary computer modules, you can have much difficulty with them when trying to complete repairs. It’s common for this issue to cause problems when repairing automobiles.

If you aren’t familiar with the automobile manufacturer’s technology, you can get stuck on repairs and not be able to complete a job. To deal with situations where you don’t have the knowledge or support in-house to get unstuck on repairs, you should consider using expert technical and remote support services to help you fix complex problems.

If you do some research, you will find that there are companies that support automotive shops with second-to-none unlimited expert technical and remote support. When it comes to crucial information that you are missing when attempting to complete repairs, a service like this can help you solve problems on cars you may not have been able to fix.

What Questions Should You be Asking When Evaluating Your Shop?

You know the basics of technician productivity. You know how to crunch the different numbers to calculate a technician’s performance against your productivity goals.

After analyzing the performance indicators of labor rate and hours billed, you need to ask questions that help you identify the WHY in what is holding back the
numbers.

Are you hiring the right people? The culture of a repair shop includes not only knowledge but also confidence in fellow technicians.

Working in an environment with a group of brand specialists is optimal for achieving the highest level of accuracy in repair, but difficult to attain because there is a nationwide shortage of automotive technicians.

What Else?

Examples of additional questions you should be asking when looking for ways to increase the productivity of your technicians are:

• Are you providing your technicians with diagnostic tools that increase productivity and keep jobs in-house?
• Do you have a good system in place for customer approvals?
• Are you tracking the right KPIs?

Conclusion

Your shop has the potential to increase its efficiency and earn more profit. If you follow these three tips and apply them to your shop, you will have an outline you can use to realize your shop’s full potential.

If you want to see big improvements in all three areas at once, join our automotive repair email list, and we will provide you with information that will help you achieve your goals. We’ve been solving these problems for our customers for over 20 years.