Who’s going to fix your car tomorrow?
In her first article for Aftermarket, Rebecca Pullan from Carmaster in Harrogate she gives her perspective on the impact of tech companies on our sector
Published: 29 June, 2020
Disruptors. These exist because technological advances often create a new, more direct route towards an end goal. They are often so innovative that they appear, almost as if by magic, like a Doctor Who-style door to an alternative universe. Unbelievable things that appear in your everyday workplace. Just ask any estate agent or travel agent. They are not fiction.
Naturally, for the end user they also offer ease, convenience or financial benefit. The best of these so-called ‘disruptors’ offer all three. Hello Uber...But beware. No business is immune while we have entrepreneurs from outside the sector who think they understand what we need to be doing.
Disruption
In my opinion, Who Can Fix My Car.com cannot be defined as a disruptor. The definition is too good for it. There is no doubt that the motor trade is Dickensian in a lot of ways but is this the revolution that it needs? I don’t think so. Let’s look at a few parts of the jigsaw.
In order to bid for work on Who Can Fix My Car, you must pay an initial membership fee (cost one). This is the first cost that you will encounter in the process. And who is the most likely to win? You guessed it. The cheapest. A good quality, value for money, modern thinking workshop will never win. The word win is a verb, showing success. You won’t find any here, at either end.
This competition does not benefit the customer. Instead, while they may initially feel the financial benefit, work is often of poorer quality and can lead to further problems down the line. There is no profit left for the investment in the specialist equipment required to maintain modern cars or the staff needed to operate it. When margins are eroded like this, it’s really no surprise that so many talented colleagues are leaving our industry. The overall result of this is a skills shortage and an inability to provide a decent service to the customer. By ‘winning’ the work you must also pay the fee (cost two).
Confusion
Servicing fees are often in excess of £12+VAT. Despite this, many workshops are offering to complete a service for under £100. And yes, that does include VAT. Which begs the question, what is the customer actually getting for their money? Excuse my little diversion.
What does the customer get for this money? What does a service mean? Anyone? Even the main dealers are confused by this. Our local dealership will call during your ‘service’ to ask if you want the ‘brake service’ at additional cost! Hmm. This confusion leaves plenty of space for even more derogation of the classic service. Perhaps we could just wash it and top up the oil?
Wrong?
A final note from me: Say you do win the job and you’re a great garage; you’re taking a view. Say I’m wrong (this is most extraordinary, as my husband will agree). Now what happens?
You have a new happy customer whom you have wooed with your very best and probably at rock bottom prices. You might have even made a loss. Later, they need those pads and discs, you remember, the ones you advised? Do they call you? Nah. They start the whole process again.
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- Wow or WOAH factor?
Do you work in a quality business? Or a quantity business? Is it possible to have a garage business that has both? How do we define quality for that matter? You see everyone’s perception of quality is different, which makes it difficult to work towards a particular grade of quality.
If you examine the excellence and quality movements in detail as I have in the last 15 years or so, you will see that what the really offer is to turn back the clock, applying the standards of bygone days to today’s profit-based material age. The premise is that if you get back to product or service supremacy through quality you cannot fail. Sadly, it is an entirely false premise.
Customer satisfaction is no longer enough. Satisfied customers are not loyal customers. They shop around – they may like you, but not enough to resist the temptations of your competitors. Truly loyal customers can’t imagine doing business with anyone else. They become advocates for your garage.
Companies who have such customers have managed to create a customer experience that is consistent, intentional, differentiated, and valuable. To do this they use all aspects of the business, marketing, operations, and the most important factor the human element.
Superior service
You could have a quality product or service but if not matched with a superior WOW factor service experience you have no hope in succeeding. Let me give you an example, Curry’s sell quality products, yet the service in most cases and what I have experienced is really lacking. These stores are huge, selling hundreds of lines yet hardly anyone works in them, and if you do find someone to assist you they have very little product knowledge.
Now, take off your business hat and ask yourself, as a consumer, how many genuine quality businesses do you know? If you can think of one, perhaps even two or three, where you are constantly and consistently super-impressed, not just with what they do but how they do it, you are doing well. You have seen the WOW factor at work. You may even have glimpsed a miracle. My guess is that you will be thinking of a business that puts its relationship-building substantially in front of making the next sale.
These are the kind of businesses that share one of my philosophies about customers: that it’s far better to concentrate on what you do for customers than what you do to customers. Despite all the new technology, and the mind-blowing rise of call centres which in my view do very little in increasing the customer experience and other magic customer service-enhancing devices, companies still frequently fail their customers.
The reason is not so often that the computer system has gone down, although that happens frequently enough!) it is mostly because the culture, philosophy and ideals do not exist. When this happens, it’s a people issue.
People power
For those involved in selling, and that’s what we do in our garage businesses, this is a mammoth task. Selling has, it seems, been quantity-driven since time began; but, in the last 20 years, it has become quantity-obsessed. This obsession has, in my view, led to practices and standards in our garage sector that can barely be justified. There is no mitigation. We are all to blame. We have all seen the £99 service, MOT, three-course meal and the kitchen sink deal. Someone please explain to me how anyone can charge so little and offer a quality WOW Factor experience?
Given the choice – and they will be – no customer in their right mind would want to deal with a person driven by quantity objectives. Customers already know that, so often, quantity objectives work against quality objectives. Look at the classic high-commission businesses and the reputation they have: double-glazing or perhaps even office equipment. There are many more, including, sadly in our garage sector.
What next?
Find where you and your business are, and remember it well. If you do nothing to give your customers the WOW Factor, the future has some difficult and frightening times ahead, times of uncertainty and high risk.
Far be it for me to put the fear of God into you about the future, but that’s exactly what I think might need to happen. I, and many others before me, have pointed to change being the cause of this fear. Not just change itself, but its rate and frequency and scope. In such circumstances you must look to make yourself and your business stronger, more resilient. I have two suggestions for this.
The first lies in your business process, I witness so many garages lack of processes that do not consider the customer journey and the impact it has on them.
The second lies in the quality objectives you need to create that are understood and breathed by everyone in your business. For one aspect of the quantity/quality discussion we have not considered is this; quantity only builds immediate sales; quality builds friends. Friends, in the long term, build greater quantity, which yields the miracles that create the WOW factor.
Lastly, just before I end this article, Id like to point something out. It may seem obvious, but don’t look for a switch. There isn’t one. You can’t turn a miracle on. There is nothing anyone can flick to change your environment from quantity driven to customer driven. It is truly a pendulum. The only thing you need to know about this pendulum is that its relentless: It was for me running my last garage business it was actually unstoppable.
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- No self control?
Having witnessed the growth of passive driver assist systems and the intent to move towards fully autonomous vehicle control, my topic this month is to raise both thought and debate towards the implications. My first intention is to separate assistance from autonomy.
I fully support assistance as it provides a safer environment for the driver to concentrate on vehicle control. Many of these systems have been available for a very long time, including possibly the very first, power steering and power windows.
ABS to power steering
Anti-lock braking systems (ABS) are, I think, an excellent example where drivers may be misled as to the safety improvements. However, the laws of physics still apply, and the co-efficient of friction and kinetic energy will always dictate the retardation distance and vector. Obvious enhancements to ABS work as a fully integrated system, including dynamic chassis stability.
Early variants simply monitored the wheel speed sensor frequency, reducing the engine throttle angle to reduce torque through the driving wheels when a significant differential existed. Recent additions now include variable geometry anti-roll bar and adjustable rate shock absorber damping with self- levelling.
Evolving in parallel with these systems, and this is where there is an arguable transition from passive to active or automatous control, is the steering system. The introduction of power steering does have great advantages in reducing driver fatigue and improving mechanical response to steering wheel input. The next evolution was variable rate steering assist, whereby the assistance is proportional to steering angle and road speed. with the evolution of brushless motors and highly accurate position sensor technology, steering systems now offer corrective suggestion to the driver via a subtle torsion bar within the upper steering column. Should the driver resist this small force the system will disengage leaving the driver fully in control.
I am choosing to ignore for the moment fully autonomous steering control as it embodies a whole array of additional control input requirements. This allows me to focus on some of the more peripheral driver support systems which I do fully endorse. Matrix vehicle lighting control is possibly one of the best safety improvements. This enables full beam lighting always, yet avoiding oncoming vehicle light stray. Smart cruise control is also especially useful on motorways in uniform traffic conditions.
Compliance
The next group of driver assist starts to cross the boundaries of assistance, this is due to the introduction of long- range transmitters and receptors, lane divergence, and vehicle proximity awareness. This technology does of course lend itself to other previously mentioned systems.
There should be a very sobering pause at this point. To maintain system integrity and accuracy from the above systems a little thought should be given to the almost non- existent function called calibration.it is critical. If you fully consider the implications of everyday servicing and repairs that affect these systems, compliance is the responsibility of the repairer. This means you.
This is the point where I cannot avoid the transition towards full driverless autonomous control. Due to several critical considerations, technical compliance, political compliance, legal compliance, and public acceptance, it is to be rolled out in five steps over several years. Ford recently suggested it could be implemented by 2021, with level zero full human control, to level five where the human has no input responsibility.
What of the globe’s biggest commerce giant’s? Intel has just purchased an Israeli autonomy tech company for $15 billion. Google has spent a modest $30m, and Facebook is in it too. All hellbent on convincing us of the benefits in total vehicle automation. Given their past and current dishonesty, self-interest, and responsibility avoidance you can bet it all going to be a financial beartrap.
However, my personal feelings are more complex. Humans has evolved over many thousands of years by overcoming and controlling a multitude of challenges. It has enabled our brain and cognitive functions to develop to incredible levels. Imagine then, being trapped in an autonomous container with absolutely no functional requirement. What will you do by way of brain stimulation or choices. I accept traffic jams are worst than toothache, but driving is a socially shared experience. Think of the simple activities that release endorphins, such as cycling and walking. Why? because of the brain stimulation and cognitive responses, a form of achievement.
If you must have total autonomy for your travel requirements, then public transport is available now. My acid test for the techno maniacs out there is, given that the technology is currently available and has been proven over several years, would you choose to fly in an aircraft with no pilot? Remember that even in autopilot there are teams of humans constantly monitoring the flight path and technical systems.
Credibility
I’m not ignorant of the accident statistics that give credibility to automation, if that was the true motivation, then smoking and alcohol would be banned tomorrow as they kill and maim an awful lot more.
It has been suggested that our home environment would be improved as our car could drop us off and then park its self in a less congested place, so if you live in central London your car could end up in a South Downs village. On a more sinister note, if an autonomous vehicle faced with an inevitable collision from a oncoming car, would it mount the pavement and choose the mother with a pram as the better survivable outcome for its occupants?
The very best qualities of life always come back to interaction, be it with other people, pets or machines, what next? When do machines decide we are the redundant component? Disagree, or debate, but don’t accuse me of not embracing technology, I have spent my life trying to master it.
