RFINA™

On Time, Clean & Tidy, Polite Staff – A Happy Owner

Below Average Severity (Cost) – A Happy Bill Payer

Efficient Repairs and a Good Profit Margin – A Happy Shop Owner

Is the Car Safe and Next Accident Ready?

We Don’t Actually Measure That

There are a lot of cars being repaired and the insurance side of the industry must have a standardized way of measuring the performance of the repairers. These standardized measurements are commonly referred as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs.) In the insurer/ repairer world, the relationship is based almost completely on these numbers with the most important being severity (another word for cost), cycle time (how quickly was it done) and customer satisfaction.

Cost is easy to measure and the lower the better, the time it takes to repair the vehicle is also easy to measure with the quicker the better. But how is quality measured?

Quality of Repair scores are based very much on the vehicle owner’s response. The problem is that the vehicle owner is not qualified to answer questions about safe and correct repairs. They only see the clean shiny painted result and have no way of knowing how the structural repairs, which are not easily visible in the completed vehicle, were done. They may, or may not, notice an issue if the electronic safety and driver assist systems of the car are not properly verified and calibrated.

If there is no licensing of technicians and no physical inspection of the repair, then it is left entirely to the integrity of the repair facility to do the complete correct repair.  There is effectively no one checking. 

Billing for a correct repair will be accepted and paid but so will billing for an incorrect repair and the correct repair will not improve the rating that the repairer receives from the insurance company.  In fact, the correct repair will increase both severity and cycle time, with resulting lower scores.

The collision repair industry has to date largely avoided attracting the attention of regulators. The main reason why this lack of regulation exists is the public has not needed the protection. Competition kept the prices down and for 50 years cars evolved in a manageable way. This manageable evolution meant that skills and work habits from one year could still be used the next, with minor tweaks and updated versions of equipment.  Problems were created, but these were more anecdotal than systemic.

Poor repairs did compromise the car, but two significant factors kept these compromised cars from being very real problems.

The first was the structure of the car. A car made primarily from mild steel did not change too much in strength and safety after that metal was repaired with heat or pulling.  Today’s cars, made of far more sophisticated materials demand specific and accurate repair or replacement methods, otherwise their strength and safety are very much affected.

The second was that the control system of the car was 98% the driver and the driver was not affected by the repair. 

The changes that have occurred in mass market vehicle technology should be enough for regulatory oversight.  But for many valid reasons, across many industries, regulation does not happen until after the lack of regulation starts to cause problems. It then takes years to catch up and become effective.

Until around early 2019 the collision repair industry did not have a very clear vision of Certification and worked on the assumption that Certified meant Qualified and that Uncertified meant Unqualified.

The two quite different things of Qualification and Certification had been mixed into the same category.

Qualification is based on the capabilities of a repair facility, its equipment and people. A qualified facility has the right current equipment, the right current training and the right systems in place.   Qualification in itself does not have to be conferred by an outside party.  An outside party however is needed, because, to protect consumers, there does need to be verification of that qualification. 

Qualification should be verified by a ‘disinterested party’. Disinterested does not mean uninterested or uncaring. It means that the party has no stake in the outcome. The outcome will be fair, but the granting authority has no financial or competitive stake in the granting, or not, of the qualification.

A good example can be found in electrical services.  A very important difference between electrical work and collision repair is that all commercial electrical work requires technician licensing. A company cannot present themselves as Electrical Contractors without having government licensed electricians on staff. The designation or license for the contractor is provided by a ‘disinterested’ government agency. There is not a lot of confusion among consumers about the legitimacy of the contractors work as he has been licensed by the only authority allowed to provide that license.

Private companies can then choose to certify any of these licensed electrical contractors to work with their products.  Staying with electrical as an example Eaton has an Eaton Certified Contractor Network.  Eaton has not issued licenses that are an alternative to mandatory government licensing but has selected companies and individuals from within the existing licensed pool. This inclusion in the network will likely imply that these electricians may be more efficient with Eaton products, or it may be more of a marketing or administrative function.  The electrician with Eaton certification may have technical, or marketing, or administrative advantages, but there is nothing in that certification that diminishes or takes away from the electrician who has chosen not to join the Eaton network.

In Canada, this is where the CCIAP (Canadian Collision Industry Accreditation Program) could serve the same purpose as government licensing.  The program is administered by the AIA, but the AIA does not profit by more or fewer shops, it has no stake in where those shops are, and it has no business affiliation with qualified shops.  A consumer will know that a CCIAP facility is operating within industry standards, with current equipment, well trained staff and a proper business structure.

Certification by OEMs or insurance companies is a different thing entirely; the basis for certification by an OEM has a tremendous amount of marketing included and there are a range of financial interests in that certification.

Vehicle owners are bombarded with information about the virtues of the OEM Certified or insurer approved facility but are not told what criteria were used for including a facility in the program or leaving it out.  For example, a facility cannot be certified by Toyota without a sponsorship from the dealer in their market area. If that dealer has its own repair faculty it will not sponsor an outside facility, even if that facility is better qualified.

If insurers and OEM certification programs selected only from the qualified pool of shops in the CCIAP system, the consumer would know that these choices have reached a high base level and will be able to do the right repairs. But they will also know that the CCIAP shop without outside OEM or insurer certification will also be able to provide fully capable and professional repair.

A significant component of repair facility certification by non-OEM aligned certifying bodies (CCIAP is the national example in Canada) is customer service and the appearance of customer areas.  Pictures of the customer washroom are always asked for.

This is missing the point in 2021. These organizations should be verifying the important things that car owners cannot see or be expected to understand. They can all see the office and decide if they like it, none of them can see the spot welder and know what the gun pressure is. The certification should be verifying the ability to perform correct repairs and leave judgement of customer satisfaction and business style to the marketplace. It is unlikely that a facility that can meet the requirements for safe repairs will have a scruffy looking front office and impolite staff. If they do the potential customer can see that and will probably not do business there. Or maybe it will not bother them, and they will stay. 

There is also the 2021 reality of Online Reviews. This is where potential customers will look for insight on how other people feel about the facility. Customer service, in all its aspects will be well covered in these reviews.

The objective of accreditation should not be to standardize the overall experience to the customer, but to provide a safe repair. With demonstrated ability to provide that safe repair as a base the business owner should be free to participate in the market with whatever style they chose.

OEM certifications are not the same as a non-aligned certifying organization and these OEM certifications often have a strong overlay of marketing in these programs. Just as a manufacturer will have service and appearance standards for their dealerships, they may have these types of standards for their certified repair facilities. 

The concept of a self-regulated industry has been gaining some traction in the last year. Regulations are set and controlled by governments, but they would rather not do all the work in verifying and enforcing compliance. Many models are available as templates or guides.

For the collision repair industry CCIAP (Canadian Collision Industry Accreditation Program) managed by the AIA nationally and the ARA in BC can serve as the nucleus for this self-regulation.

Regulation of the complex repairs now required for a safe vehicle is inevitable, with government safety agencies soon enough seeing the need for enforceable standards. If they see strong voluntary progress on the part of the industry, they will be far more likely to add credibility to that effort than to expend the energy and money to build their own regulatory system