While it would be much easier to quote, on-board and maintain new clients if all industries had the same requirements, that is not the world we live in. The Collision Repair industry is certainly a unique space, and we’ve spent several years gaining expertise in this area, as well as a vital understanding on the most effective way to partner in our clients’ success. It’s all about keeping cycle times low, getting the absolute most out of your capex spend and keeping the surprises to an absolute minimum. Understanding the nuances of DRP vs Independent shops, OEM-specific tools and software and the fact that every repair is a boutique endeavor. It’s a huge challenge for body shops, but they perform magic and absolutely, positively have to be customer-focused. As you can imagine, they don’t meet new customers under ideal conditions.
Everything we do as an IT provider in this space revolves around empowering a shop to provide the best customer service they can possibly provide. We’ve been lucky to work with some incredibly dedicated MSOs and single shops.
Typically a new Collision Repair client will reach out with an all-too-familiar story:
“Our current IT sucks. They charge us way too much. They’re unresponsive, don’t understand our business and are always telling us to upgrade our infrastructure. How can you help us?”
Well, our approach is different than many MSPs. We always start with the biggest pain points (and typically they are the easiest ones).
- Responsiveness – This sounds like such an obvious thing, but as an IT provider you need to be a solid conduit between the person and the technology. You can’t expect that everyone you support is as excited or trained in technology as you are. Answer the phone. Reply to emails. Solve tickets quickly. Yes, there good reasons we include response times in our SLA, but we always (I mean ALWAYS) beat the clock on the SLA response time.
- Discovery – Doing a proper IT discovery effort is always one of the first things we do, regardless of whether we are coming in and getting thrown in the fire. The last thing you want to do is just start unplugging stuff and resetting devices. Starting with a simple asset list will tell you a whole lot about our new client. Are they using CCC? Mitchell? ProfitNet? Which parts providers do they use? Are they a DRP? For which insurer? If you come in not knowing how all this stuff fits together and keeps cycle times low, you’re going to be gasping for air.
- Partnering – Yes, we are an external IT provider, but we always choose to partner in the companies’ success. That’s not just a platitude. We are not in the business of replacing perfectly capable equipment with shiny new toys. Of course we are technologists and are always interested in the newest blinking lights and fun stuff but we are very open with our clients about risks we find. Is your 6 year old server likely to die soon? Not likely, but we have a plan to swap it out with the absolute minimal downtime. Should we have a separate guest WiFi? Yes, and you don’t need to spend a dime to make that happen. It’s already built into the device, we just need to configure it.
- Customer Service – We genuinely like helping people and solving problems. We like avoiding problems even more than fixing them, but…just like in the Collision Repair world, we are in the problem business, like it or not. We are a 100% on-shore, United States of America company and we pride ourselves in using clear, timely communication. If you’re an IT person who gets frustrated with someone who doesn’t know what a USB port is, you’re in the wrong business. Please and thank you go a long, long way. Infinite patience and a pragmatic problem-solving approach helps a ton.
If your shop or MSO is in need of specialized IT managment, please give us a call at (925) 875-0504 or email us at info@bayworx.com. We would love to discuss how we can help.