By John Yoswick
Recent industry meetings have given collision repairers a chance to hear relevant news from the automakers. Dan Dent, who oversees the certified collision repair network for Nissan, for example, told attendees at a recent Collision Industry Conference that the automaker has launched a new virtual academy for training, and is enhancing its shop locator to allow Nissan and Infiniti owners to schedule appointments and request photo estimates. That system will use Carwise, so appointments and estimate requests will arrive at the shop “in a format you’re used to seeing it in,” Dent said.
But the change in the program he announced that actually drew applause from meeting attendees was some new dealership training launching this fall. He asked shop owners at the meeting to all raise their hand, then said they should lower their hand if they’d ever had a customer say, “I talked to the dealership service advisor, and they said I didn’t need to do that,” referring to something the body shop said needed to be done. Every raised hand in the room dropped. Dent said Nissan is working with Collision Advice on training that will help service advisors “completely understand the situation you’re in on a daily basis.”
“So when they ask about calibrations, what does that really mean, how do we answer that,” Dent said as an example. “Dealers will have about 90 days to complete that training once that class is out.”
Later this fall, the automaker announced that shops buying Nissan and Infiniti parts through the electronic parts system OPSTrax can now receive a rebate on eligible purchases; the rebate percentage is based on purchase levels, and the automaker’s certified shops can receive potentially larger rebates.
Using the OEM repair information
Dent described Nissan’s TechInfo website as “the baseline truth for everything when it comes to our repairs,” but noted that current usage of the site does not correlate with the number of Nissan vehicles being repaired.
“I don’t think if there’s 100,000 repairs, I have to have 100,000 logins,” Dent said. “But when I’m a lot less than that, that reflects on the operators [of] the majority of the body shops.”
Shops and technicians can’t continue to rely on “doing what we’ve always done,” he said.
But Dent also was asked about the challenge of even a small job requiring hours of research.
“We know that’s a problem. We see that,” he said, noting that he and a colleague worked on an estimate that required more than four hours of research. But he also pointed to other sources of information that could help bridge the gap, noting that using OEConnection’s “RepairLogic” for that same estimate shaved hours off the research time.
“Is it 100 percent? No, but it’s better than what you’re doing” if you’re not looking up any of the automaker’s information, Dent said. “I have endorsed RepairLogic to say at the very least why aren’t you using that?”
Other OEMs share information
Other automaker representatives offered a variety of insights during discussions at CIC. Anita Rexwinkle, who oversees the aftersales parts program for Mazda North America, said the message she’s heard during recent industry meetings is that more collision-related position statements are needed from Mazda.
“That’s a big issue of mine, to support you repairing a car properly, and having the directives to be able to utilize when you’re writing estimates,” she said. “I’m glad to say that’s finally starting to move.”
Ben Cid, collision manager for Mercedes-Benz USA, said the industry shouldn’t look any time soon for vehicle telematics to provide a parts list for a vehicle after an accident.
“But it is highly possible to start using some of that information in the not-too-distant future for proper triaging of vehicles,” Cid said. “You may not know the parts list on it, but you’ll know how severe that impact was. You can start to get an idea of whether it’s drivable or not.”
Kelly Logan, director of the Rivian collision repair program, concurred that an accurate parts list through vehicle telematics won’t be available soon.
“That’s the ultimate goal [but] it’s going to take a long time to get there,” he said.
Vehicles are getting better at self-diagnosing problems, he said, but there are too many variables related to collisions.
“You have an accident and it shows the headlight is bad. But is the headlight bad? Or did the wiring harness get damaged in the accident and there’s actually nothing wrong with the headlight,” Logan said.
Logan said shops working on Rivian vehicles (or others for which owners have a cell phone app) need good procedures for ensuring those vehicles are placed in service mode during repairs.
“It’s not about disconnecting the customer from their vehicle,” he said. “But in certain instances you can open doors or open the hood or honk the horn. I’ve known of probably two instances where there was a car in a paint booth and someone decided to [remotely] open a hood that was all masked off. If you’re a technician working on the front end of a car and all of a sudden the horn blares, you’re really not going to be too happy about that.”
SCRS’ view of automaker agreement
During a recent Society of Collision Repair Specialists’ meeting, the association pushed back against several organizations that have been critical of an agreement that SCRS — along with the Automotive Service Association (ASA) — announced mid-year with a coalition of automakers. The agreement reaffirms that “independent repair facilities shall have access to the same diagnostic and repair information that auto manufacturers make available to [their] dealer networks.”
Several organizations, which also represent industry segments beyond mechanical and collision repair shops, say that agreement lacks enforcement and does not diminish the need for federal right-to-repair legislation.
But SCRS’ Aaron Schulenburg said he doesn’t have collision repairers telling him they can’t get the OEM information they need. He said SCRS believes that consumers should be able to choose an independent repair shop to work on their vehicle, and that those shops should continue to have access to the OEM repair information — and that’s what the agreement with the automakers is all about.
“I think any [organization] that challenges or objects to that shared position between two leading repair organizations and an automaker organization, should be questioned,” he said. •
