Jan. 17, 2017—CARSTAR Auto Body Repair Experts recently said it expects the collision repair industry of 2017 to require major MSOs to broaden their services to meet the needs of insurance carrier partners.
Arlo Johnson, vice president of insurance relations for CARSTAR, noted some trends CARSTAR North America is addressing:
- Consolidation of work to large MSOs will continue. Major MSOs are better able to meet the high repair standards and program guidelines of the top insurance carriers. Shops with better trained technicians, standard operating procedures and team members focused on the insurance-based work will be better suited to serve their insurance partners.
- MSOs will develop and provide strategic services that support their insurance business. CARSTAR will expand its insurance services to support partners with a new CARSTAR Call Center, a central claims review function and one point of contact for efficiency.
- More insurance companies will leverage PBAs to drive performance. Johnson said MSOs that want to have national relationships with the insurance carriers will need to implement performance-based agreements that set guidelines and goals for performance. This will require shops to be more stringent in their work processes, operating procedures and KPI performance. And it will require MSOs to expand training and operations programs to continually deliver performance improvements.
- Training and education in the shop is more important than ever. The ability of an MSO to meet the insurance carriers’ standards depends on the performance of every single technician, estimator, customer service manager and owner in the network, Johnson said. Their continuous training and education about the advanced technology and materials in today’s cars will help ensure they are able to deliver the highest quality repair experience every time, for every customer.
