State Farm shop-rating system is cloaked in mystery

Jan. 1, 2020
This number is supposed to provide a performance metric for each participating repair shop to know its status compared with others on the Select Service program.
Passwater ABRN auto body repair collision repair State Farm shop rating system For months, I've watched and chuckled at a TV commercial by ING titled "Gazillion." As the commercial opens, an elderly gentleman walks up to his neighbor's yard while the neighbor, who is standing on a ladder, is trimming his shrubs. "Hey, Clark. What do you have there?" Clark replies, "It's my number ... for the way I want to retire." He's holding a cutout of a number ($1,086,523) to his side. Then Clark looks at his neighbor, and the number gazillion appears next to his head. When Clark questions his neighbor if that's his number, the neighbor replies, "Yeah ... a gazillion ... bazillion." When questioned how he can plan for that, the neighbor replies, "Blindly throw money at it, and hope something good happens."

As the industry is aware, State Farm rolled out its number scoring for the industry. During its introduction presentation at CIC, the methodology of how the number is determined was, and still is, cloaked with the business proprietary defense. How it's calculated, or the validity of its methodologies, isn't explained clearly.

Actually, there are two numbers provided in the new scoring system. The first provides a single number rating between 1 and 1,000. The second is a percentile score that signifies where a shop ranks in the entire group of Select Service providers. Although what is actually being used to formulate the credit-score-like number is buried in secrecy, State Farm assured that it factors in all of the key variables. It even includes the types of vehicles being repaired and the subsequent costs (in dollars) and time it adds.

This number is supposed to provide a performance metric for each participating facility to know its status compared with others on the Select Service program. But how is the performance metric relative to any performance criteria that benefits vehicle owners? Whether this is a positive step to improve the partnership between the Select Service repairers and State Farm is questionable.

This is simply an initiative to homogenize the collision repair industry. It is not a positive step to achieving any of the above. The number shouldn't be considered a valid metric in any sense.

Business management 101 tells us to make sure any performance metric is well understood to anyone being measured, especially how it's derived and what is being measured. I've contacted shops throughout North America asking what their number is. It's obvious the number has no valid relationship to the performance of a collision repair center as it relates to what is critical to the industry or vehicle owner.

One shop with a score higher than 950 operates as if it were the 1970s. I'd never allow anyone to take their 1980s or newer vehicle there. The top repair shops on our continent specializing in prestige vehicles with factory approvals, specialized training and equipment, along with top customer service ratings are receiving numbers less than 400. Even the top shops of typical collision repair vehicles in many markets are receiving scores less than 800, whereas the shops that have minimal equipment and almost no training are scoring much higher.

One clear fallacy is that the adjustments made for the vehicle types are invalid and bias to just costs, and again attempting to compare severity, but not across the entire network. It's also evident that key performance elements critical to long-term business success, such as the customer experience, quality of workmanship, training, and equipment, take a back seat to rental expenses, alternate parts usage, severity and missing estimate items.

The unfortunate future of this scoring system will become a nightmare. It is going to encourage poor management decisions by shop owners and managers who believe that relying on their metrics to run their business has any correlation to get their number higher than all other shops in their market.

My greatest fears are when the like-a-good-neighbor agents are brainwashed into believing this number represents a quality, state-of-the-art repair facility that emphasizes a great vehicle-owner experience. I hope this is just a bad dream, and everyone realizes it and wakes up.

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