There’s a Growing Technician Crisis—Here’s How to Counteract It
U.S. service operations face an array of compounding challenges. These challenges impact warranty costs, raise prices for customers and shrink the profitability of service operations.
Statistics Confirm a Rapidly Shrinking Technician Community
The growing technician shortage represents the largest—and most immediate—threat to service profitability. U.S. Department of labor statistics indicate there are 750,000 technicians currently servicing automotive products. The most experienced segment of this population is presently aging into retirement.
To maintain workforce in the face of this mass exit, the industry requires an influx of 76,000 technicians per year. But the number of annual postsecondary technical training graduates has fallen 34% since 2012. As of this writing, only 39,000 new technicians graduate from the appropriate technical training each year—just over half the necessary number.
New Challenges in the Service Bay
Those techs who remain in the service bays will be forced to deal with massive product variation and unprecedented levels of product complexity.
Familiar vehicles are now stacked with ECUs (Electronic Control Units) and new ADAS (Automatic Driver Assistance Systems) technologies—to the extent one interviewed technician commented, “You have to be a mechanic and an IT specialist now to work on these vehicles.”
BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) have also made it to the service bay, and while these vehicles may be simpler, they’re completely unfamiliar to technicians, and many technicians actively avoid BEV repair orders.
The Trouble with Traditional Diagnostics
When multi-symptom/multi-DTC (diagnostic trouble code) failures confront technicians—whether they’re new to the job or highly experienced—the only viable solution is trial-and-error discovery. This “try it and see” methodology:
- Adds minutes, hours—even days—to the repair process
- Harms customer satisfaction
- Causes parts damage to products
- Raises warranty costs
It’s easy to understand the repercussions of these trends. It takes longer—and costs more—to perform a repair than at any point in history. On this current trajectory things will only get worse.
Why Worry About Boosting Your Technician Teams?
Even as the industry works out ways to replenish its tech community over the next 10 years, service operations must find immediate methods to counteract the growing resource shortage. One of the wisest countermeasures in this regard is to simply make technicians more effective in the service bay.
What is Guided Diagnostics?
Guided Diagnostics is the first system to apply a semantic network model in the dynamic prescription of troubleshooting procedures.
Traditional diagnostic systems are little more than a digital presentation of old-school printed diagnostic trees—static IF/THEN procedural flowcharts which lock the technician in to long, time-consuming step-by-step discovery processes.
The Industry’s Most Advanced Diagnostic Solution
Guided Diagnostics takes full advantage of the algorithmic intelligence inherent in connected digital systems. On first use, GD identifies hidden connections between issues and root causes, driving the technician to the most likely root cause.
And thanks to its network architecture, Guided Diagnostics reasoning engine ingests data from every diagnostic session. The diagnostics become more intelligent—and increase technician efficiency—with each subsequent use. Technician teams collectively increase the system’s value as it boosts their efforts in the field.
Fix it Right the First Time, Every Time
Guided Diagnostics leverages advanced technologies to make techs more effective in the service bay.
The system eliminates costly trial and error and drastically reduces wasted time and expenditures related to warranty and repair. It eliminates comebacks, reduces tech frustration and improves customer satisfaction.
Operational improvements will be readily apparent in the form of improved FTFR scores—and a more profitable service operation.
See a GD Sample Session
The best way to understand Guided Diagnostics is to see it in action.
Download our Guided Diagnostics Sample Session PDF to see how GD improves technician efficiency in a multi-symptom, wire-to-ground diagnostics session.
