‘Modern-day cars have 50 to 60 control modules on them … depending on what issue the technician is trying to diagnose, it may be challenging to look at another brand.’
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When Matt Shepanek started his automotive career in the early 1990s working for an automotive supplier writing technician training manuals for General Motors, most people had never even heard of the internet, and Google and YouTube were years down the road.
The manuals he and others wrote, along with in-person training classes, were most new mechanics’ path to learning their way around the cars they worked on and getting up to speed on new models.
Now things aren’t so simple, to say the least, and though the internet is a fount of knowledge at technicians’ fingertips, keeping up-to-date on the dizzying flow of new technologies can prove challenging.
Add to the complexity the U.S. shortage of technicians, and auto dealerships can struggle to keep trained mechanics on hand to efficiently handle all of the vehicles that show up in their service bays. That’s especially true given that most service drives work on makes other than home brands, not to mention both gas-powered and electric vehicles.
“My message to new technicians is that you have to be a life-long learner because the technology changes at such a rapid pace,” said Shepanek, who’s now vice president of credential testing programs at the National Institute for Automotive Excellence, or ASE for short.
The nonprofit group offers third-party credentials that apply to all makes and models Shepanek also serves as president of ASE’s Training Managers Council, which is comprised of training managers from across the industry.
Continuing Education
For technicians to stay on top of all the brands and models they must work on, Shepanek advises them to take advantage of the many resources available for self-training.
“It’s important for you to have that mindset of, ‘I’m not just going to go in and get to a certain level.’ It’s going to be constant life-long learning.”
ASE says its third-party credentialing gives new technicians a baseline of knowledge and skill that they can take with them throughout their careers.
“They call it their walking resume,” Shepanek said.
Then it’s up to them and their dealerships to expand on those building blocks, especially when it comes to less-familiar makes.
Former service technician Josh McFarlin got his start at a Florida Ford dealership and is now a top executive at AirPro Diagnostics, which offers auto dealers and other shops brand-specific collision-repair guidance. He agrees that basic training is invaluable for technicians to handle all the jobs they face but also advises a couple of other fundamentals.
“Sometimes if you don’t have (brand-specific training), the best thing to do is to rely on the general knowledge you’ve acquired but really depend on the service information and treat that as gospel,” said McFarlin, who also previously worked for a training-development firm. Still, he suggests that technicians can also use their baseline knowledge to help them figure out other brands.
“We all know that a technician, once they think they know the instructions, they don’t want to read them again,” McFarlin said, “but you can get a long way, even if you don’t have brand-specific training. Say you’re working at a Ford dealer, and you’ve taken all its training. Odds are this GM product you’ve been asked to work on is going to be similar in the ways they operate, but there will also be differences, and the service information can help you bridge the gap.”
Getting Technical
For those times when technicians still need a hand in figuring out a problem, especially if their dealerships have only generic vehicle scanning technology, Opus IVS offers a sort of help-desk service manned by brand-trained master technicians, similar to AirPro but on the service drive side of the car.
The company’s three U.S. technician support centers staffed by a total of more than 100 experts help bridge any blind spots technicians encounter when servicing brands they haven’t been trained on, said its vice president of North American operations, Kevin FitzPatrick.
He affirms that ASE’s certifications are an “excellent” baseline, along with automakers’ brand-specific training, but emphasizes that more help is sometimes needed.
“The technology just moves so quickly,” he said. “Having a resource that has all those brands – say a BMW tech can use a diagnostic tool to connect with Porsche’s system that will provide the diagnostic decision on that car … Now they’re working fluently on the Porsche.”
Such expertise can be particularly helpful to dealerships when they lose technicians, a challenge exacerbated by an industrywide technician shortage. That’s a painful loss, since automaker training can cost $100,000 per technician, says FitzPatrick, who hires dealer-trained master technicians for his Opus IVS team.
“They’re keeping the wheels on their toolbox well-greased,” he said of today’s technicians. “We give them a second life” after years of kneeling on service bay concrete.
He agrees with ASE that technicians should also take advantage of the many continuous-learning opportunities now available after-hours through dealer learning-management systems and dealer associations.
Comprehensive and ongoing training is essential now because of cars’ increasing and continuously changing sophistication and due to dealers servicing more used vehicles of different makes as consumers go that route for affordability’s sake, FitzPatrick said.
Today’s models many times require resets with the help of expensive tools after repairs are made. If those aren’t done, or if a technician makes a diagnostic mistake on an unfamiliar brand, a car’s time in the service bay can be extended, he pointed out. Errors can be compounded if a new part must be ordered for the fix, and delays can last even longer due to lingering industry parts lags.
“It gets very, very complicated,” agrees Shepanek with ASE. “Modern-day cars have 50 to 60 control modules on them … depending on what issue the technician is trying to diagnose, it may be challenging to look at another brand.”
Efficient service can be the difference between retaining service customers and losing them to independent shops, FitzPatrick says. “The average customer will go back to the dealership for the length of a warranty unless the dealership has superlative customer service.”
Tech Love
But even beyond training or remote expert support, dealerships should make a concerted effort to demonstrate the value they place on technicians by offering mentoring and clear career paths for them, Shepanek said.
“We talk about this a lot – the dealerships that are doing things right aren’t experiencing technician shortages,” he said. “Good technicians are life-long learners, and given the opportunity, they want to improve their skills. Everybody likes to move up the food chain. As technicians learn, they become more productive.”
And technician training programs can themselves be an organic way for dealers to support and be supported by the programs as they serve on their advisory committees and recruit entry-level technicians through internships and job shadowing.
Additionally, those job bridges are a chance for aspiring technicians to experience a real work environment before graduating, making them more likely to find a good fit for themselves and the dealership and therefore stay longer, Shepanek said.
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