Through an ongoing series of seminars, the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers of New Jersey (AASP/NJ) has been carrying out its commitment to providing its members with the best resources and education possible to help collision repairers get the most they can out of their businesses in this restrained industry.
On Sept. 27, AASP/NJ hosted “What’s Next? Repair Planning and Repair Logic for Profit” at Indasa USA in Fairfield, N.J. The meeting featured presentations by Taylor Moss of OEC, along with AASP/NJ President Jerry McNee (Ultimate Collision Repair, Edison) and board member Ken Miller (821 Collision. North Haledon). The discussion picked up where the June meeting, which covered laws and regulations, left off as it set out to answer the questions many members expressed following that event.
Getting fair reimbursement for repairs lies in building a solid repair plan that answers the question of why certain procedures need to be done. And the question can only really be answered by the documentation that supports the necessary repair procedures.
The RepairLogic Repair Planning Platform from OEC was built on the premise of getting repair procedures to shops as quickly and efficiently as possible, according to Moss. He compared the way insurers treat body shops’ needs to the way a parent tells their child “I said so” — as if those words constitute an actual explanation.
“We are the professionals, and we can’t back that up without documentation,” Moss said. “So, this document of repair tells the why behind it. We’re building the why — why is this calibration needed? There are all these different things that we have to do for certain reasons; if we can’t articulate why, we can’t be very successful in helping our partners understand and approve those things.”
Showing a blueprint or repair plan educates the customer — who otherwise would not understand what goes into a repair — on why these steps need to be taken. Good communication helps build a good relationship.
“They might not know anything about the quality of the repair, but if you are bad at communicating with them and don’t update them throughout the process, they’re just going to give you bad reviews,” said Moss.
Miller and McNee used repair examples to demonstrate how there is more to a repair than meets the eye upon first glance, and using tools that can help a blueprinter access OE procedures helps to identify all that is needed in the process.
“You can look at a car and see it is a simple bumper repair on the surface, but thousands of dollars later, it’s a lot more than a simple bumper repair because we went through the process and identified what needed to be done,” Miller said. “And the calibrations that need to be done is what drove the price up exponentially.”
McNee stressed that insurers are the ones who write estimates, which is really a “guesstimate … I don’t write supplements at all. We continue writing that repair plan and modify it the way we need to, and we hand that back to the insurance companies.”
AASP/NJ extends its appreciation to sponsors Indasa USA and OEC for contributing to the event’s success.
For more information on AASP/NJ, visit aaspnj.org.
