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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- Electric Dreams
The inaugural World EV (Electric Vehicle) Day, held in September, was the first of its kind. Designed to take place as an annual event, the day aimed to encourage the acceleration towards pure-electric motoring. World EV Day was a great opportunity to celebrate how EVs are the cornerstone of the world’s transition to a sustainable energy circular economy – and the movement towards battery power in cars is certainly gathering momentum.
At the heart of the EV industry is the battery. Lithium ion batteries have finally given us a power source which can be used thousands of times in their first lives, then thousands more in their second lives, before being recycled to do it over and over again. Although there are still emissions from mineral extraction and manufacturing, there are no operational emissions. This means that EVs are helping us to breathe cleaner air in our cities and are helping us to live longer and healthier lives.
It’s estimated there are around 1.2 billion vehicles on the road in the world, and in the UK alone there are 38.4 million licensed vehicles on the road. The sooner we switch to electric vehicles and take traditional diesel or petrol cars out of use the better for the health of people and the planet.
Environmental implications
While celebrating the merits of the EV we must also continue to think about how we enable the rest of the new circular economy to ensure we get the most out of both the environmental and economic opportunities created by these new technologies.
The key ingredients in an EV battery, including lithium and cobalt, are hard to mine, and come via a challenging supply chain. Happily, they are not consumed when either storing or releasing energy unlike fossil fuels. However, their performance is slowly degraded, so we must seek to understand this process and maximise performance and utility in their first and second lives, before recycling them for a further generation of uses at peak performance. This creates a circular economy which is about to get dramatically larger and more exciting.
Built on data
Data is fundamental to achieving this. Altelium is working with diverse stakeholders to ensure that data flows to where it is needed to unlock the potential of this new economy, while respecting and protecting the commercial interests of each link in the supply chain. While each stage in the lifecycle helps the planet, it also creates value. Data is the glue that holds it together.
Altelium collects this data and uses its expertise to turn it into the useful information. This underpins Altelium’s warranty and insurance products which facilitate the finance, confidence and value of all the products and businesses in each part of this circular economy.
In order to use the batteries from EVs in second life application, it is essential to know its state of health (SOH) and the performance history of the individual battery cell. Armed with accurate data from the cells we are able to identify the healthiest ones and use them in new products such as stationary storage.
Data will also ensure that any cells not fit for second life uses can be processed as part of an efficient recycling system. These systems are being developed by many interested parties worldwide, targeting at least a 95% recovery and reuse of materials. Sharing data will help the motor industry prosper as we develop the energy circular economy.
Service and repair industry
The garage industry is centred around service and repairs, and the main challenge here is based on the availability of technicians who have the necessary skills and qualifications to work on high voltage systems. The systems found in EVs are very high voltage; as such, it’s a very specialised area of work and there is a shortage of engineers and technicians already.
At the moment, most owners of high value EVs – and most of them are high value at the moment – will return to dealerships for servicing and repairs rather than independent garage or repair shops. Generally speaking, these are likely the only locations in which drivers will find the correctly qualified technicians to handle EV work, certainly in the first ownership of the car and battery; around five years.
The downside to running EV cars with limited service and repair options is the time drivers can spend waiting for appointments with their original dealership – currently this can be 3-5 weeks in many cases.
Another crucial point for garages to understand is that the drivetrain in a diesel or petrol vehicle uses thousands of moving parts, whereas the drivetrain in an EV has dramatically fewer, wiping out most of the common reasons drivers visit service and repair centres.
If we look at something that all cars need regardless of power source, such as tyre changes, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is an area in which smaller local garages will keep pace, despite the major EV shifts predicted. But again, even the amount of tyres from EVs will be less. EV drivetrains tend to be so smooth that despite high torque – which usually shreds tyres - EV tyres remain in good condition for longer. EVs are all automatic, but tyre usage is even less than ICE automatic vehicles. It’s not uncommon for an EV with a good set of tyres to last 30% longer than normally expected which will – across all the cars in the UK – further reducing garage bookings. In addition, EVs will also have self-diagnostic systems running which communicate problems as or before they arise. This will further reduce breakdowns and recoveries.
Other developments
Another development currently only running in China is battery exchange systems for EVs, as an alternative to charging. Cars would drive to an automated battery swap centre, knowing from an app that it’s time to change the battery and there’s one available, and a whole new one would be installed in just a few minutes. It will be the ‘EV pit stop’ – but one that requires no human input.
Overall the mechanical systems within EVs are dramatically reduced so what can service and repair centres do now, to survive in five or ten years’ time?
It seems to me that if you’re an owner of a garage and really wanted to see some return on investment for the future, you would start training your staff in high voltage. Already some of the older EV cars are coming to the end of their warranties, with second or third owners buying at lower prices and wanting the extra value of independent garage servicing, and the numbers will only increase. This is especially true of hybrid cars which need both combustion engines and electrical systems servicing.
It might also be worth looking at specialisms, such as battery reconditioning. Another option might be recycling processes for damaged batteries from collisions and crashes that can’t be used but can be recycled – will your garage be a first point for EV battery recycling?
Fundamentally, high voltage training and investment
will almost certainly be needed in garage settings, and a long-term plan put in place – there’s no doubt about it. Now is the time to stop and consider the future of traditional vehicle service centres – and look to future-proof service and repair businesses as we move into the age of the EV.
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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.
