CARSTAR Auto Body Repair Experts announced it is now offering a “Masters in Bodyshop Administration” program exclusively for body shop owners in its network that will teach business practices and financial management through its proprietary EDGE Performance Group (EPG) training program.

CARSTAR states that the program, now in its second year, has helped many of its stores achieve the industry’s highest KPIs – a measure of performance and operational efficiency – and customer satisfaction. For 2015, the CARSTAR operations team has expanded its EDGE Performance Group platform, with the goal of continuing to raise the bar in the CARSTAR CCC initiative, which stands for Closing Ratio, Cycle Time and CSI/NPS scoring.

“As the collision repair industry consolidates and becomes more sophisticated, our store owners are tasked with becoming better business operators to meet the industry’s performance demands,” said CARSTAR CEO David Byers. “We’ve combined the business management principles taught in most business schools with an industry-focused curriculum that addresses the unique financial, consumer satisfaction and performance metrics of the collision repair industry. As the industry’s largest MSO network, we want to have the best operators, and can provide them the most advanced training and resources to run their businesses.”

According to CARSTAR, many of its locations repeatedly have a Net Promoter Score (NPS) exceeding 90 percent – 10 points higher than the industry average of 79 percent. CARSTAR is not only working to uphold those high numbers, but they are also focusing on another important benchmark: length of rental as measured by insurance companies. With the understanding that insurance companies are seeking to drive down car rental cost and drive up customer satisfaction, another goal of the EDGE Performance Group is to help stores to reduce their length of rental.

New additions to the EDGE Performance Group program include more substantial content in each tier of the program. A new Tier 5 focused on technical competence around aluminum, the addition of OPGs, or Operational Performance Groups, will be held regionally to support GM training and new MPGs, or Market Performance Groups.

Many CARSTAR shop owners are participating in EDGE Performance Groups this year. The most recent event was held at CARSTAR’s R&D Center – CARSTAR Metcalf in Stilwell, Kan. The CARSTAR operations team and its partners from 3M, BASF, Matrix 1, AE Tools and Worth joined together to lead training sessions including:

• Disassembly for repair
• Vehicle mapping
• Stock parts management
• Parts cart management
• Vehicle pre-measurement
• Vehicle pre-repair diagnostics

“The ability to interact with other stores in an environment blended with financial review and shop operational process systems that those stores are using is extremely valuable for me to bring back to my store,” said Gary Boesel, owner of CARSTAR Alpine and CARSTAR Jordan Road in Colorado. “I really enjoyed the store site visits to CARSTAR locations around Kansas City. And, it was incredibly helpful to spend the time at the CARSTAR R&D Center to be able to move around to the various workstations and training sessions. The knowledge gained was invaluable.”

Mark Theobald, owner of 10 CARSTAR locations in the Cincinnati area, said, “With the EDGE Performance Group, we got more of an overview of the entire business – production, office administration, accounting, etc. We learned what we need to do to be more efficient, better our cycle time, improve our performance for the customer, and also have a better understanding of what insurance companies are looking for.

“I enjoyed the camaraderie with the other owners,” continued Theobald.  “Because they are from all over the country, there are various things that you can take away from the sessions.  Everybody seems to do things a little different. This way, we can corral all of us together and start thinking along the same lines. It’s a good overall view of what’s going on within the industry that you might not normally see. You get something out of each and every session.”