What are the general pain points for owning an auto repair shop?

[Laksh Ramesh]

I'm curious to ask this as I have been providing the service of locating the auto parts precisely with including the part number, but there seems to be no sales even when I am giving them a guarantee of getting them results within 2 weeks and a free trial. I needed to ask what are the general pain points and compare with my pain points of owning a auto repair shop which are-
1) Auto parts finding problem
2) Retaining Customers
3) Auto parts price ( expensive auto parts)/ Auto Parts Quality
4) Lack of Technicians
I would really like your opinions on this fellow fastlaners and Thank you !

 

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[Rörik]

I was a boat mechanic so maybe not the same thing, but the complaints I heard in the industry was primarily just centered around the fact that were no good workers. Either they knew nothing or they had a shit work ethic, usually it was both. I'd like to say I was an exception, but I did also leave the industry because of low pay so maybe I'm part of that problem.

Basically people who work hard and know their stuff are usually underpaid and tend to have employment already, which makes the good ones hard to poach.

Another pain point is the fact that almost all of the work is centered around a couple of times of the year where you suddenly need extra workers to and hours to handle it and then it goes down. This makes it so that if you want people ready for high season, you usually have to hire them fully and pay them on the low season, which breaks even or loses you what you gained to begin with. If you offer hourly salary, then you'll struggle to compete with the exact same businesses as yours who all have their high season at the same time.

The auto shops I've hard of that do really well have been nichely interested in some subculture that tends to have cars as their hobby. In Sweden we have "raggare" and "rockabilly" which are like people obsessed with american cars and american 50s culture. The auto repair shops that also do paint jobs and things that serve this demographics every car need tend to thrive at least in Sweden. While the everyday people get serviced literally the same and only when they absolute have to which tends to be all at the same time.

I'm by no means an expert so take my input with a grain of salt

 

[Stargazer]

I'm curious to ask this as I have been providing the service of locating the auto parts precisely with including the part number, but there seems to be no sales even when I am giving them a guarantee of getting them results within 2 weeks and a free trial.

Hi

What does this mean? If I take my car to a garage for some fix and the garage does not have all of the parts required they simply phone a company that deliver the parts within a couple of hours. They're called Motor Factors in the UK.

The garage want my car fixed and out of there asap to get onto the next job. They don't want my car sitting there for potentially two weeks and neither do I.

Can you clarify what you mean when you say you guarantee locating car parts within 2 weeks or did you mean 2 hours which is the norm.

Dan

 

[Laksh Ramesh]

Hi

What does this mean? If I take my car to a garage for some fix and the garage does not have all of the parts required they simply phone a company that deliver the parts within a couple of hours. They're called Motor Factors in the UK.

The garage want my car fixed and out of there asap to get onto the next job. They don't want my car sitting there for potentially two weeks and neither do I.

Can you clarify what you mean when you say you guarantee locating car parts within 2 weeks or did you mean 2 hours which is the norm.

Dan

Hi Dan hope you would be doing well,
I actually have a system/software for auto repair shops to look up if the part is available and it searches up the part if it is available or not, The systems part makes it easier for auto repair shops and they dont have to consider to call the institution when they can look up to their system and provide them within " 2 hours " ( my bad on writing it as 2 weeks).
Thank you !!
Laksh

 

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[Laksh Ramesh]

I was a boat mechanic so maybe not the same thing, but the complaints I heard in the industry was primarily just centered around the fact that were no good workers. Either they knew nothing or they had a shit work ethic, usually it was both. I'd like to say I was an exception, but I did also leave the industry because of low pay so maybe I'm part of that problem.

Basically people who work hard and know their stuff are usually underpaid and tend to have employment already, which makes the good ones hard to poach.

Another pain point is the fact that almost all of the work is centered around a couple of times of the year where you suddenly need extra workers to and hours to handle it and then it goes down. This makes it so that if you want people ready for high season, you usually have to hire them fully and pay them on the low season, which breaks even or loses you what you gained to begin with. If you offer hourly salary, then you'll struggle to compete with the exact same businesses as yours who all have their high season at the same time.

The auto shops I've hard of that do really well have been nichely interested in some subculture that tends to have cars as their hobby. In Sweden we have "raggare" and "rockabilly" which are like people obsessed with american cars and american 50s culture. The auto repair shops that also do paint jobs and things that serve this demographics every car need tend to thrive at least in Sweden. While the everyday people get serviced literally the same and only when they absolute have to which tends to be all at the same time.

I'm by no means an expert so take my input with a grain of salt

Oh I do really see, that finding employees and technicians in times of need is also a problem but I seem to banging my head against my wall to find a solution for it on how to provide them digitally/online to an auto repair shop.
You actually provided a great insight on the detail of the problem and thank you for putting it in context !

 

[Cano]

I'm curious to ask this as I have been providing the service of locating the auto parts precisely with including the part number, but there seems to be no sales even when I am giving them a guarantee of getting them results within 2 weeks and a free trial. I needed to ask what are the general pain points and compare with my pain points of owning a auto repair shop which are-
1) Auto parts finding problem
2) Retaining Customers
3) Auto parts price ( expensive auto parts)/ Auto Parts Quality
4) Lack of Technicians
I would really like your opinions on this fellow fastlaners and Thank you !

We own a tyre & car repair company in germany.

1. Finding autoparts isnt realy a problem these days, we are working with wholesalers (next day shipping) & local stores.
2. The price for the autoparts isnt bad when you work with the right wholesalers.
3. Retaining customers is also realy easy because we simply provide the best service in our location.
Other car repair companys are working for profit (high prices, bad service) we work to make the customer 100% satisfied.
(we are always very shocked when we look at the car of customers who come from another car dealership and car repair shop because 90% don't even do the job properly.)

so i would say the biggest pain points:
- finding good technicians without expensive marketing
- finding a good merchandise management system on the german market
(they all have horrible customer service, servers are crashing on normal days, its slow, i hate it haha)

its important to say that this is for the german market, not the us.

 

[Laksh Ramesh]

We own a tyre & car repair company in germany.

1. Finding autoparts isnt realy a problem these days, we are working with wholesalers (next day shipping) & local stores.
2. The price for the autoparts isnt bad when you work with the right wholesalers.
3. Retaining customers is also realy easy because we simply provide the best service in our location.
Other car repair companys are working for profit (high prices, bad service) we work to make the customer 100% satisfied.
(we are always very shocked when we look at the car of customers who come from another car dealership and car repair shop because 90% don't even do the job properly.)

so i would say the biggest pain points:
- finding good technicians without expensive marketing
- finding a good merchandise management system on the german market
(they all have horrible customer service, servers are crashing on normal days, its slow, i hate it haha)

its important to say that this is for the german market, not the us.

We actually have a CRM software to help following up with the customers and could bring up the leads, how do you think it would work with the auto repair garage? Could you also please provide an idea on how to provide qualified technicians online service for auto repair garages, and thank u for the insights provided regarding the pain points

 

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