Going around the table

Oct. 4, 2021
Each year, ABRN hosts a “Collision Industry Roundtable,” bringing together a panel of collision repairers to discuss what’s happening at their shop, the challenges they are facing, and what they see for their business and industry as they look ahead.

Each year, ABRN hosts a “Collision Industry Roundtable,” bringing together a panel of collision repairers (see sidebar, “Who Was At The Table?”) to discuss what’s happening at their shop, the challenges they are facing, and what they see for their business and the industry as they look ahead. Here are some of the highlights of this year’s “roundtable” discussion, which featured:

  • Jason Boggs, a second-generation owner of Boggs Auto Collision Rebuilders in Woodbury, N.J. 
  • Rob Grieve, owner of Nylund’s Collision Center in Englewood, Colo., and a member of the board of directors of the Society of Collision Repair Specialists
  • Troy Lindquist, co-owner (along with his wife) of Premier Auto Body and Paint, now with two locations in central Oregon, for 21 years
  • Frank Rinaudo of Frank’s Accurate Body Shop in Slidell, La., who has been a shop owner for more than 30 years; and
  • James Rodis, who has been in the industry for 34 years, and helps customers at three Woodhouse dealership collision centers in the Omaha, Neb., area

Let’s start with changes you made during the pandemic. Are there any that will stick? Are there things in hindsight you wished you’d done before the pandemic?  

Troy: I wished we had ordered masks. [laughter] As far as changes, we’ve focused a lot more on making sure we’re having proper meetings with the teams. Parts have become such a problem that anything we can do to try to catch that, to give us time to get the correct parts we need, in a timely manner, has pretty much taken all of our focus in the shop. 

Frank: We really stepped up our electronic communications with customers, to be able to sign authorizations or total losses releases electronically. Trying to make it easier for the customer to work with us. We’ve also implemented video. We can shoot a video on a car, and the management system we have has a customer portal so they can view that video if there’s any unrepaired prior damage we need to discuss. 

James: Yeah, electronically, there has been a big uptick for us. Pick-up and drop-offs, no contact pick-ups, make it a lot easier. We have a ton of drivers so it’s pretty easy for us to do things like that. 

Jason: I wouldn’t disagree, however, we are going back as much as possible to customer contact, in-person, face-to-face. Only because it’s a huge part of our business. We’re not a big DRP-based model. We love the interaction. We feel it sells them on who we are. So while we did all those [contact-free] things, we don’t intend to continue to do them moving forward.   

Is there some new technology or use of a technology that you’ve implemented within your business in the past year or two? 

Jason: We were using Podium to communicate with customers through text messages before the pandemic, and it just became even more useful to us during that time. Potential customers can send a text to my phone even at night or on weekends, and it will auto-respond. If it’s something that looks like a promising job, I’ll start communicating with that customer over the weekend. That’s been very helpful. I wouldn’t have done that in the past, but I’ll continue to do that moving forward.   

Frank: We tried photo estimating but we mainly use it for triage, to get our eyes on a car. Customers think, “If I can turn the key and start it, it’s drivable.” We can look at it and say, “You really shouldn’t be driving this car.” That’s helped us a lot. We’ve also been focused on geofencing a lot for marketing. It allows you to see which people have been at your competitors’ and then wind up in your building. I like that over, say, a billboard, where you pump stuff out there in hopes they will see it and remember you when they need you. When they’re out searching for your services, that’s your opportunity to get in front of them. We also tried to use that in a little bit of a reverse way. Geofencing targets people when they go inside a fence. For my competitors, if a phone IP address reoccurs [inside the fence], like an employee, it stops sending them messages. So in search of employees, I tried to do the reverse of that, and target some competitors with an employment ad targeted to the IP addresses that did reoccur there. It was a good thought, but I got squat out of it. 

Rob: One thing I like is we now have a thumb-drive for each file. The files were getting out of control, with printed procedures and everything in them. So now every file has a thumb drive attached to it, with everything saved to that. We also hired a company to shoot a video of the shop as an introduction to potential customers: who you’re going to see, what goes on in the shop, what happens to your car, that sort of thing. We send that out every time somebody calls or emails us about an appointment for an estimate. It gives them a sense of what to expect, and builds some familiarity ahead of time. That’s been very well received. Every week I also do a consumer-focused YouTube video, just talking about the industry, to inform them of what happens ‘behind the curtain’ in the industry, what to look out for.  

Troy: Believe it or not, this year, we actually got a website. In 21 years, I guess I didn’t think it was important. So we now have a website and also Facebook pages for each location. We’re moving into social media, and fortunately, the staff is way smarter at that than I am. I don’t know if it’s bringing us more work. I don’t know if it’s going to save us if we ever have dire straits like this again. But it can’t hurt. I think it’s important that you have as much out there, as many tentacles stretching out there, as you possibly can. At the very least, you can go to bed at night knowing you did everything you could.  

How about insurer relationships: What do you see that’s working – or not working – in your interactions with insurers, whether as part of a DRP or not?  

James: We have no DRPs, so the relationship is what it is. We write our bill, and try to get them to cover as much as they’re going to cover. I think it’s gotten worse. They’re just sitting on their hands. I don’t know if they’re trying to wait people out or what. I was working on one today that the accident date was [two months ago]. That’s just nuts. That’s unacceptable.  

Jason: I don’t know if this is just regional, but Geico and Progressive are two companies that update their customers constantly as far as what’s going on with the process. That really helps avoid the delays that everyone else is experiencing, where cars sit for days or weeks without anything being updated. I’m at least appreciative of those two companies being proactive and calling the customer, without us having to call the insurer 10 times saying, “Where’s our paperwork?” Or, “Why hasn’t somebody looked at this yet?”  

Rob: I’m seeing the insurance company in full-on attack mode against [customers]. In Colorado, we have all the MSOs here by the dozens. They’re happy to pull a car out of our shop if the insurance company says Nylund’s is too expensive, over-repairs, blah, blah, blah. I’ve never seen anything like it. What they are saying and doing to [customers] is cruel and unusual punishment. These people are now starting to have to hire lawyers to get their car fixed properly. It’s tragic. Then you have other insurers like Chubb, Amica – good companies that just pay the bill.   

Frank: I agree with what Rob said. It’s getting harder. I think it has to do with local management. I talk with other shop owners who say how difficult Geico is, but they’re pretty easy for us.  

Troy: I’m struggling to find something good to say, something that’s working well. I’ve thought about that as we’ve been talking and I just can’t find something good. I hate to say that. 

Jason: Their checks haven’t bounced, so that’s a good thing. [laughter] 

Finally, let’s talk about what you see as the biggest challenge facing your business in the next year or two? 

James: One hundred percent it’s finding employees. We have a community college with a new facility, and the place is gorgeous, and we’re trying to figure out how to help them fill it up. We are trying to get a co-op off the ground. So students will go to school x number of days during the week, and work in a shop x amount of hours during the week. You’ve got kids going to school now who are working at McDonald’s. Let’s get them in a shop, and have them come out of school better equipped. We have to change how we’re doing it, and quit making them wash cars for two years before we teach them anything. If you can’t weld on a quarter, hey, that’s okay, I need to somebody to learn how to do calibrations. I need somebody who knows how to properly pull procedures. There’s tons of jobs we have for people who maybe can’t quite do some of the work, but that like being around cars and like being part of a team. We tried to get a meeting going with the school, and sent an email out to a bunch of shops. It was very disappointing that only eight people show up – and three of them were from my company. Everybody wants the school’s top guy every year, but nobody wants to help fill up the school.  

Rob: Ranken Technical Institute has a great program that maybe you want to talk to them about. My son is actually enrolled. You’re in the classroom for eight weeks, and for the next eight weeks you are at a shop working all day long. They teach how to go get the job, how to interview and all the rest. 

Jason: And those guys get paid while they learn, instead of coming out of college with a big debt bill to pay. The more we promote that, the better off we’ll be. For us, our biggest challenges is acquiring people. But not just employees. It’s also acquiring customers. If I type in one of the big MSOs’ names in my phone, there’s one 3.4 miles away, and 4.2 and 4.7 and 5.8 miles. They’re all over the place here. The process of choosing an independent shop that’s not on a DRP is getting more and more difficult. The fight for a customer is just ramping up. I don’t know what our solution will be to overcome that, other than what we’ve always done in the past. But I’m a little concerned about how easy the process is going to become, electronically, to choose a DRP shop. 

Frank: We ask everyone: Why did you choose us? Google reviews is obviously the No. 1 thing. I see people nowadays, especially younger people, doing their own research and not trusting the insurance company as much as it was in the past. I see more people thinking for themselves. I’m nervous and DRPs and MSOs coming. But I think as smaller shops, we have advantages over them. They’re more insurance-focused, and I try to stay customer-focused.  

Rob: MSOs have been doing me a favor lately. Repairing cars incorrectly is an epidemic around here. It seems like I have at least one post-repair inspection in the shop every week, and we don’t advertise for any of that. These cars are all totaling, they were repaired so horribly. And I’m picking up a [customer] because we help them through the whole process. They’re shouting that all over the world. So we’re picking up new guests because of the MSOs. I hope they just keep doing what they’re doing. 

Troy: Right now probably the No 1 struggle we’re dealing with is parts. We just cannot get parts, especially for newer vehicles, on a timely basis. And trying to send a car out to a dealership for calibration when they’re scheduled out three weeks. You find yourself thinking: Can we move this in-house so we can control the outcome of it? But despite the challenges, I still love this trade. I think everybody else here does also. We all want to see it better, everything that we know it’s capable of being. No matter what, we just need to continue to do the right thing, continue to fix cars the correct way.  

Jason: We’ve all just been kicked in the teeth by a lot of things recently. That might be where some of the negativity comes in. It’s not going to get easier, but maybe what we need are few nice weather months. And I don’t mean accident weather, I mean just some smooth sailing.  

James: Well, we could use some good accident weather, too. [laughter] 

About the Author

John Yoswick | Contributing Editor

John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore., who has been writing about the automotive collision repair industry since 1988. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].

Sponsored Recommendations

ADAS Applications: What They Are & What They Do

Learn how ADAS utilizes sensors such as radar, sonar, lidar and cameras to perceive the world around the vehicle, and either provide critical information to the driver or take...

Banking on Bigger Profits with a Heavy-Duty Truck Paint Booth

The addition of a heavy-duty paint booth for oversized trucks & vehicles can open the door to new or expanded service opportunities.

The Autel IA700: Advanced Modular ADAS is Here

The Autel IA700 is a state-of-the-art and versatile wheel alignment pre-check and ADAS calibration system engineered for both in-shop and mobile applications...

Boosting Your Shop's Bottom Line with an Extended Height Paint Booths

Discover how the investment in an extended-height paint booth is a game-changer for most collision shops with this Free Guide.