Increasing Technician Efficiency

Who are your best technicians?  What comes to your mind first?  Is it his pay rate, or his efficiency rating, or maybe even his skill level, or maybe how reliable he is or how long he has been with you?  And all of these are important because they all influence our ability to grow our business.  These are our guys who help us deliver on the promises we make to our customers every day.

But can you get to the metrics behind your ratings?  How quickly can you compare the data to the impression?  I don’t want to rain on your parade but you may be doing your employee and yourself a really big disservice if you can’t provide concrete results that back up your relationship.

How many hours do your techs flag a day?  Are they 80% efficient, flagging 6 hours in an 8-hour day?  Let’s say you have two of these guys.  And another one who can only turn 5 hours.  And maybe another who can turn 9 hours on average?  What if you could develop your 5-hour guy into a 6-hour guy and move the 6-hour guys to 8 hours?  You just went from 26 hours per day to 31 hours, a 19% increase in hours available to turn and generate revenue, without adding any employee benefits or other fixed overhead costs.  That means 20 more hours a week or 1,040 hours a year.  What could you do with this “margin on the margin” revenue stream?

Look at it another way.  How often do you have your “A” tech doing oil changes or tire balancing and rotation?  The natural migration of technician pay plans in shops is to move to the “A” tech pay plan.  

Unfortunately the work doesn’t necessarily follow that schedule and we end up with labor costs that suck away our profits.  

What if you could, in real-time, compare your tech average labor rates with the actual work they are doing day in and day out?  Easily, instantly, from anywhere?

MotiveLogic gives you the tools you need to monitor and manage these issues.  Using real-time dashboards that have flag hour goals for your techs, you can help them raise their efficiency, making them and you more money.  You can identify training opportunities to raise the skill level of your techs, to broaden their abilities and your flexibility.  And, as you grow, you can know exactly what type of technician you need at just the right pay rate.

Jay Baas