Technicians without the right tools?

[Chas]

You haven't seen how my wife drives, have you?

 



 8-)

[Dr. Spa™ Ret.]

How is that possible?

I'm Dr. Spa, the "other" is Dr._Spa

Maybe I should change to;

Dr. Spa™

[Im not Dr. Spa]

You haven't seen how my wife drives, have you?

 



 8-)

 

Thanks for the response. It sounds like you really have your gameplan down. When you say you have the troubleshooting down before you leave the warehouse, are you going through a standardized set of questions with the customer?

Is this a conversation your technicians have with the customer to prepare for the visit? If so, bravo. I think it's key to get as much information as possible before spending any money (parts, gas, etc.)
If not, good old experience really does help when it comes to knowing what common field issues you will be faced with, but I still think the more work done on the phone the better.

I really like the idea of advertising on the vehicles, especially service vehicles that are on the streets all day, even if it's just a simple magnet. I think it comforts the customer as well to see a professional vehicle show up, rather then an unmarked white dodge van (dirtied to a yellow hue and limo tinted windows, you know the one)

I'm also curious, what types of tools do you require your techs to carry, if any?

Now that we've heard from what sounds like a seasoned pro, i'm curious to know what the "newer" players are doing out there. If you are doing things differently, what are they? And why are you doing them?

[Bonibelle]

Just because you are talking about advertising, I will add this:

When we bought our tub, my dealer gave each of us a tee shirt with his business information and a cute picture of a bear jumping into a hot tub. Hubby and I wore them to a baseball game one day and a friend asked about the shirts and if we had a tub. It gave us an opportunity to talk about how we loved our tub and how wonderful our dealer has been. They ended up buying a tub and they got it from our dealer...so it pays to advertise on trucks, on bodies...where ever...and shirts have to be a pretty inexpensive method...

[Zep]

Hey Chas speaking of advertising do spa dealers ever place a little
emblem on spas like car dealers do on the back of cars?

[stuart]

Well I wrote the article so I guess I should chime in here...

I disagree that we should not air this on our forum here, talking about the profitability of a service organization just as important as allowing customers to challenge price on the spas through this forum daily.

We are in business to make money; if customers don't realize that then we're all in trouble!

I wrote the article to get the point across that it is very costly to service centers and manufactures when dealers allow techs to go out unprepared. I've done it myself and writing the article was a great lesson to me.

More importantly I wanted to get the point out that you cannot do your job correctly without proper tools (like an amp meter). It's amazing how many techs depend on "parts swapping" as a means of troubleshooting. This just deflates customer’s confidence and raises costs all up the ladder from the dealer to the vendors the manufacture uses.

I personally don't fear educating a customer to ask questions like "so what kind of amps were we getting out of my heater?"  In a struggling economy lets train our customers to weed out the mediocre techs and pay fair wage for the top dogs.

We are not cheap but we do a good job...

I often refer to the engineer that built Henry Fords first factory;

One day they had a power failure at the factory and know one could figure out how to get the power on, he called his friend Edison who came over and flipped a few switches and turned a few levers and power came on... the next day ford got a bill for $10,000 from Edison. Ford sent Edison a note saying “You’re bill seemed a bit extravagant just to flip a few switches...”

Edison sent a note back saying he agreed and that he revised the bill to read, "time spent flipping a few switches and turning a few levers $50… Knowing what switches to flip and which levers to turn $9950."

We should be paid well not just to change parts but also to know which parts to change!