Superior Service

May 1, 2014
To say Professional Automotive Technicians' Jim Wakefield was proud of his military service in the Navy during the Vietnam War would be an understatement. 
To say Jim Wakefield was proud of his military service in the Navy during the Vietnam War would be an understatement. “He really loved his military experience, the camaraderie,” says Rob Wakefield, Jim’s younger brother and his parts manager at Professional Automotive Technicians in Ann Arbor, MI. “It was a dramatic point in his life; he got to experience life on an aircraft carrier and travel around the world.”

Wakefield was in charge of coordinating maintenance aboard the U.S.S. Coral Sea until around 1969, when he developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Transferred into the Navy Reserve to receive treatment, after rounds of radiation therapy Jim and his wife, Midge, decided to treat themselves with a 1970 Porsche 911. This in turn led to Porsche club membership, employment at the local VW/Audi/Porsche dealership, and ultimately, his own shop.

“My brother and others decided that the people coming to the dealership weren’t really being taken care of personally,” Rob explains. “There was a disconnect between the customer and the technicians servicing the vehicle, (the latter) not really caring about what they were doing.” To better cater to the clientele, in 1978 Jim and his business partners left the dealership and opened Professional Automotive Technicians, Inc., or P.A.T.

“The idea behind it was professional, personal care for your car, and it’s been that way ever since,” Rob says. “The technicians are responsible for talking to the customer personally. Not that our service manager doesn’t discuss issues if the technician is unavailable, but it creates a connection you don’t have when it’s just a guy working on a car.”

As the shop prospered, Jim’s vision grew beyond exclusive European marques. “Asian cars started coming on very strong, the minivan came onto the scene,” recalls Rob. “We had a lot of customers that had one, and we kept having to say no, we don’t work on them. Finally my brother said, ‘Look, these people believe in us, they have confidence in our abilities; we’re turning away good business.”

Jim’s partners didn’t share this vision and by the late 1980s had sold out their portions, leaving him in sole control of P.A.T. Always forward-looking, he was also in the vanguard of computer use. “We started developing Apple software back in ’83 specifically for the automotive industry,” says Rob, who had studied computer science in college. “I later mentioned to him about the Internet, and we developed a website early on. Jim put quite a bit of content up there and we made our cyber entity known early on, optimizing our position on the web through Google AdWords and AdSense. My brother started off doing that in-house himself. We also started transitioning into direct marketing, probably quicker than other places, targeted specifically to our demographic.”

Wakefield also worked on optimizing the shop’s software. “He noticed that as technology evolved within the automotive industry, the flat rate was becoming a more difficult way of billing for repair,” Rob explains. “Take advances in the diagnosis of a drivability issue; some of our brightest technicians were losing out in billing to someone doing brake/suspension work. So to level the playing field, Jim developed a program called the Lab Dog Time Retriever to create matrix pricing for diagnosis, which is now incorporated into our shop software. I think that was something that really set us apart from a lot of other shops. We were able to attract very intelligent technicians and pay them well.

“We’ve evolved with the technology,” Rob continues. “Back when I had to look up information through microfiche, I dreamed of the day that I would have an exploded view of parts that I could just click on the screen and it would get me information. In that regard, the technology is wonderful. But it’s a double-edged sword: It opens up opportunities, but on the other side, it marginalized a lot of people. But you have to embrace it, or you’re going to fall behind.”

Yet keeping up is tricky; customers now expect more immediate turnaround. “We try the best we can in that regard,” says Rob, “and we provide taxi service for them, getting them wherever they need to go. We’ve also got a lot of people out there who don’t know what they’re doing, so consequently we have a lot of customers who come to us that have spent money on their car elsewhere, and they’re frustrated and hesitant. So our job is to teach them about their car and what we’re going to do differently.”

Some people are putting off repairs to save money; to soften the financial blow to customers, the shop started classifying repairs by importance. Meanwhile, dealerships are offering new cars with better service packages to keep consumers coming back. “If they get these people to recycle through (the dealers), we may never see them again,” Rob comments. “We’re also starting to contend with computer systems like Ford has, which integrates text messaging, navigation and entertainment.”

But they have a high-tech ally. Starting in 1986, P.A.T. began a long and prosperous relationship with Bosch when they became one of Bosch’s first certified Service Centers in the U.S. They were declared the best independent auto repair shop in the United States by the Robert Bosch Corp. after competing in a multi-leveled evaluation, and in 1997 won the Bosch Jetronic Cup, formally presented to Jim at a ceremony held in Wernau, Germany.

“I’m hopeful with Bosch as a partner that we can continue,” says Rob. “They’ve pushed a lot of technology into our field, and that’s what it’s really going to take for our industry to survive.”

Sadly, Jim Wakefield is no longer at P.A.T.’s helm; in September 2013, he succumbed to the cancer he had fought so long against. Rob, Midge and the rest of the staff carry on his legacy — and memories.

“When we’d go out to eat dinner together,” Rob recalls, “if he saw someone in uniform, he’d offered to pick up the bill. That always sent a message to me that he put those individuals on a different level because they served our country.”

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