"Most of the time insurance companies are looking for quality work," says ACT Owner Kim Parson. "Often an insurance company maintains a shop on their DRP because you keep them out of court. You repair cars properly."
Between its three locations, ACT is on 10 DRPs, which generate 60 percent of the company's business. The balance is comprised primarily of repeat customers.
"We've been asked to grow larger," says Parson. "The insurance companies are very happy with the quality of our work and they ask us, 'How much more could you handle?' and 'Could you grow more?'"Parson and a family member started ACT in a single, 10-bay location in Randallstown in 1994, but she bought him out in 1997. Before that, she had no experience in collision repair. She had an earlier career as a sales engineer for a telecommunications equipment manufacturer, and prior to starting ACT, she took a few years out of the workforce to raise two small children. (She has since had a third child.)
"I looked into the industry and fell in love with the people in it who are so genuine," she says. As the company got started, Parson taught herself all aspects of the business.
The contract reading and customer support skills Parson honed as a sales engineer also proved useful in her new career. "I began by reading insurance estimates as if they were contracts," she says. Based on that, she decided estimates were more than just guidelines. "I stuck to them, and that gave us tremendous integrity in the face of the insurance industry."
By 1997, the company had outgrown its initial facility and moved to its current Randallstown location, a larger, brand new shop. In 2001, the company made an even more ambitious move — opening a 27,000-sq.-ft. facility in Westminster, which is about 20 miles away in a separate county. The move paid off. "In about two years, we filled that 27,000 square feet to capacity," says Parson.In 2004, the company expanded when Parson purchased a towing company that had been in business for 38 years and had one of only three exclusive agreements with local police to tow from the main highways. Although margins on towing services are quite narrow, the towing business, which now is co-located with the Westminster facility, has provided many indirect benefits.
"It's been a vital tool for building relationships in the county and to provide more repair work," says Parson. She adds, though, that the company had to maintain strict performance criteria in order to retain the arrangement with local police. "We had to prove ourselves," she says.
ACT expanded again in 2005, when it opened an 8,500-sq.-ft. location in Glen Burnie, 20 miles from the other two locations. Parson says her decisions on where to open new locations have been influenced by what she hears from insurance appraisers and adjusters. "If you're a good listener, you can hear the right direction without being told," she says.
Today, both the Westminster and Glen Burnie locations have drive-through estimating booths, where insurer represent-atives are available two to three days a week. Having insurance personnel on-site has helped generate additional business from those companies. But if a customer already has worked with a different body shop, ACT respects that relationship, Parson says, adding that the company takes the same approach toward towing custo-mers. "If they have prior loyalties, we take them where they want to go," she says.Managing three businesses in three separate counties hasn't been difficult, Parson says, because she has good managers. To help make employees at each individual location feel that they are part of the same team, she has monthly manager meetings, and from time to time all employees are invited to crab feasts or pig roasts. If extra help is needed at one of the shops, some employees from the other locations are always willing to work outside their usual base for awhile.
Parson says her staff is the reason insurance companies have confidence in ACT. "When you hire the best technician and management staff, and the insurance company sees competent faces and good estimates, they're very comfortable putting their work in your hands," she says.
The company doesn't have high turnover — something Parson credits to the company's benefits. After coming from a Fortune 500 company, Parson was dis-mayed by the lack of benefits when she started in the collision repair industry, and she quickly set out to change that. After ACT put a health insurance program in place, other body shops in the area also started to do so in order to remain competitive on the employee front.
Parson says the company ensures that employees are I-CAR trained and even has an I-CAR training room in its Westminster facility.
Currently, ACT has so much work it is booked one month in advance. Accordingly, Parson is in the process of considering her next expansion, which likely will be another location in Baltimore County that she hopes to open during 2007.
