Topic: Business Talk

Why We Attend the Annual Service Training Institute

Posted on January 19, 2016 by - Academy Talk, Business Talk, Tech Talk

ASTI 2016Managing schedules (and time, in general) is a common problem, especially for people in service businesses, like ours. Everything tends to be emergency driven, and we feel pressure from the demands of customers and all the other aspects of running a business. The result of constant fire-fighting is burnout.

When we stop learning and creating, we stop growing and life becomes routine, tedious, and boring. We need to deliberately set aside time to do things that that help us grow. Recreation (literally, re-creation) is one form of this. But another equally important form is training and honing our craft, and experiencing those "Ah-hah!" moments when we gain a deeper understanding of the technology we work with every day.

It is vital that we MAKE the time for some big-picture work on our business. This is why annual training events, like ASTI, are so beneficial. Not only are you in a different physical location-- taken out of your regular work space-- but you're reuniting with old friends, meeting new Brethren in the Craft, and learning tons of cool new stuff, both business and technical.

With the Master Samurai Tech Academy, we have an additional reason for attending ASTI: to get the word out on the comprehensive, cost-effective appliance tech training that we offer online! We'll have a booth again and will be running an ASTI special, but also raffling off a free enrollment in our Fundamentals of Appliance Repair training course to anyone who stops by our booth for a visit.

Speaking of the MST Academy, a recent benefit we’ve added for our students is regular Office Hours live technical training webinars. I’ll usually have a special presentation on technical topics of particular interest to appliance techs. Some of the past topics we’ve talked about are:

  • Troubleshooting Strategies for Computer-Controlled Appliances
  • Digital Communications in Appliance Repair
  • Reading Tech Sheets and Schematics
  • Diodes and Rectification
  • Split-phase motors: theory of operation, types, and applications in appliances
  • Voltage and Voltage Drops in Electric Circuits
  • Techniques for Measuring Voltage without Getting Head-Faked by Open Neutrals and Ghost Voltages
  • Series and Parallel Circuits
  • Open Q&A on Student Coursework

I conduct these webinars using Join.me, the best service of its kind out there on the web today. I can pull up schematics and tech sheets for us to talk about and use the whiteboard app to whip out some sketches and talk through circuits.

Another big benefit of doing these weekly, live training webinars has been that we've gotten a real-time look into how, specifically, students are struggling to understand basic electricity, circuits, and schematics, and we’ll add additional videos and instructional material to the courses to address these trip points. This month alone (January 2016) we’ve added three new videos to the Fundamentals of Appliance Repair training course as a direct result of the Office Hours webinars! Here’s a 2-minute excerpt from a video we recently added to the Fundamentals course:

 

Do you know the answer?

We posted this clip on our Facebook page and got all kinds of different answers which confirms what we already knew: there’s lots of learnin’ to be done out there in the appliance tech community on basic circuits! And if you don’t know basic circuits, there’s just no way you can effectively use schematics to troubleshoot modern appliances.

What to do with a new tech who has more enthusiasm than experience

Posted on September 9, 2015 by - Business Talk

Ready4TrainingLet’s say you have just hired a bright, energetic, and enthusiastic person who shows a lot of promise but lacks seasoning as an appliance repair tech. What’s the best way to bring this new hire up to speed in the ever more complex field of appliance repair?

Obviously, training is paramount. We’re assuming this person has gained some familiarity in a trade — perhaps welding, electrical, or plumbing, for example. Those occupations have less to do with technical troubleshooting and repair and are more about installation, fabrication, or simply replacing an obviously bad component such as a faucet, outlet, or switch. However, the skills and work ethics your new tech learned in other shops demonstrate an ability to learn and adapt — valuable traits in an appliance repair tech. What the new hire needs now is specialized training in appliance service repair.

 

Here’s what we recommend:

1. Enroll your new tech in the online, self-paced Tech Bundle (Fundamentals, Refrigeration, Advanced Schematics, and Professional Development) at Samurai Tech Academy. This formal training should start in the first week of employment, if possible.

The courses in the tech bundle will not only lay a solid foundation for the essential skills and technologies your new technician will encounter, they will also expose the rookie to the modern, advanced computer-controlled appliances with multiple electronic control boards. By demystifying the inner workings of those appliances, the tech can avoid the all-too-common “Hail Mary pass” — replacing the control board and hoping they're right — a desperate strategy too many so-called technicians fall back on today.

2. Assign a mentor (maybe the owner). It’s imperative that the rookie have a seasoned technician (who ideally has also taken the Samurai Tech Academy courses) to show him or her the ropes — not just where the break room is, but the ins and outs of your business, technical and otherwise. An interested and supportive mentor will greatly improve chances for career success as an appliance repair tech. In a smaller multi-truck operation, this mentor may be the owner himself.

3. Start running calls as an assistant. A critical component of learning any skilled trade is actually doing it. It is vital that any book learning be accompanied by time spent as an assistant to an experienced tech on actual service calls. That way, the rookie can learn the hows that accompany the whys presented in the online training. Plus, putting course lessons into actual practice really speeds up the mastery of a topic or skill.

4. Review and correct. The mentor or senior tech observes, comments on, and corrects not only the rookie’s performance on real-life service calls, but also reviews the trainee’s progress in online training. It's actually very motivating for a tech student to know that a mentor, manager, or owner is available to help with questions that arise in coursework or on the job and periodically checks on the trainee’s progress in both. Nothing says “get to work” like your boss asking “how's it going on ___?”

5. Expect mistakes. Even the most experienced of us make mistakes, hopefully fewer and fewer as we gain knowhow. But remember back to your own fledgling days and expect your new tech to inevitably screw up something. When that happens, keep in mind that we humans often learn more through failure than through success, and losing your cool in the face of a trainee’s (or employee’s) mistake never makes anything better. Explain the error matter-of-factly and patiently, demonstrate the correct way to perform the task, and move on. Trainees who know you won’t blow your stack at every little flub will learn better and faster, to the benefit of your business in the long run.

Finally, how can you be sure you won’t lose your new tech once you’ve invested in all that training? This is rarely an issue if your business provides a positive workplace and has a competitive compensation plan — and providing training as part of the compensation package is a good way to instill loyalty to you and your company. However, if you’re worried your new tech will jump ship, you can have the technician pay for some portion of the training, to be reimbursed in the form of a bonus or other compensation at some time in the future.

 

7 Tips for Becoming an Excellent Public Speaker

Posted on September 4, 2015 by - Business Talk, Career Talk

As an appliance tech you may not have to stand at a podium and speak very often, but every day you are dealing with customers, and that is also a form of public speaking.

Check out this cool infographic and think how these tips can help improve your customer interactions. Each one of these corresponds in some way to your communications during a service call, such as knowing what you need to say about your company's way of doing business, being calm, pacing yourself appropriately, being confident (even if you don't always feel it!), and judging your "audience."

The "soft skills" of customer relations require study and attention just like the "hard skills" of technical training! We cover these skills in both the Professional Development for Appliance Repair Technicians training course and Operating a Profitable Appliance Repair Business course. If you enroll in a course bundle, you'll receive one of these courses at a deeply discounted rate!

 

bi_graphic_the-ultimate-guide-to-becoming-an-excellent-public-speaker

Why is it so hard to find good help these days?

Posted on August 1, 2015 by - Academy Talk, Business Talk, Career Talk

cost-of-bad-hire-chartIf you’re an appliance repair operator with a fleet of service trucks, you may be finding it difficult to keep them all on the road these days — not because your trucks are broken down but because you can’t find skilled service technicians to staff your growing business.

Why are qualified techs in such short supply? Because, unfortunately, ready-made appliance service techs with the background, experience, technological knowhow, and interpersonal skills you need to keep your business flourishing are nearly as rare as unicorns.

 

It’s not just the appliance repair industry that’s feeling the pinch of skilled trade scarcity. According to the National Association for Business Economics, there's a shortage of skilled technicians and mechanics across all sectors of the U.S. economy. The Association reported that in July 2015, 44 percent of small businesses came up short in their search for qualified technical personnel. That adds up to a lot of jobs going unfilled — and in our industry, appliance repair business lost.

A lot of this talent shortage can be blamed on the too long and too recent “Great Recession” of the first decade (plus a few years) of this century. So many people who lost jobs simply gave up looking for work and remain unemployed or underemployed to this day. How many of those people, properly motivated and trained, would find excellent and rewarding careers in the appliance service industry? This is a subject ripe for speculation.

Another real problem is the 20th century emphasis on four-year college as the only valid pathway to achieving the American Dream. Thousands upon thousands of young people who took this mantra to heart now find themselves with expensive educations and crippling debt, but no real skills to enable them to pursue rewarding and productive careers. What if a significant proportion of those young people had been encouraged to train for technical or trade jobs that didn’t require the magical BS or BA degree but did offer intellectual stimulation, job stability, good pay, and personal satisfaction? If they had, the jobs outlook for the long-term employed might not look so dismal today — and our industry would be able to find the qualified techs we need, when we need them.

Of those young people who did find themselves in the appliance repair trade, many if not most have learned on the job. Unfortunately, that means they may not be trained to a level that allows them to cope with the increasingly sophisticated electronics and computer-controlled mechanisms of modern appliances. As a result, the appliance repair trade is full of parts-changers calling themselves technicians. Too many of them are really good at taking things apart and (maybe) putting them back together, but troubleshooting, schematics, circuits, and the expanding complexity of 21st century home appliance technology are far beyond their ken.

And to be blunt, some of the blame for lack of good help must rest with repair service owners themselves. Some owners are very skilled and up to date on current and emerging technology but don’t have the time to pass on their knowledge to their techs. Other owners may not have kept their own skills current so can’t properly train their staffs. And a certain percentage of owners simply don’t see the value of comprehensive training or think they can’t afford it.

If you fit into one of those categories (we won’t ask which one), Samurai Tech Academy can help you develop the your technical team’s skills. We are a reliable resource that is convenient and effective, and our courses are offered online so techs can complete modules at times that fit with their work schedule. We’ve found that having a trainee spend an hour or two a day working on the courses, then spending the remainder of the day alongside an experienced tech, gives them an ideal combination of theoretical and practical experience that improves learning and knowledge retention.

A trained, skilled workforce may be easier to find than you think. Samurai Tech Academy can help.

 

Multi-truck appliance repair companies: Invest in online technician training now, reap the benefits for your business’s lifetime!

Posted on July 7, 2015 by - Business Talk, Career Talk

tech-group 400For most service companies, summer is the busiest season in the appliance repair business. Refrigerators especially seem to need attention during the hot months, possibly because customers want to keep the condensers dust-free and the gaskets tight to keep the motor running efficiently — or perhaps because they forget to do just that and their fridge gives up the ghost from overwork.

Whatever the reason for your busy season, during the summer months your appliance repair technicians are probably booked from clock-in to quitting time covering service calls, which leaves little time to attend appliance repair schools to update their training.

 

But as experience tells us, summer’s hectic service call schedule will taper off when the temperature begins to drop. So now’s a good time to plan for continuing technical education that your techs can take when their workloads are more manageable and your entire operation swings into a more relaxed mode.

At Samurai Tech Academy, we specialize in on-demand, self-paced online appliance repair training that your techs can take at any time on a learning schedule that works best for them.

You can use our courses to train newly hired appliance repair techs this year or fill in knowledge gaps and enhance the skills of your seasoned service staff ten years down the road. Our courses are updated continuously to incorporate the latest systems and technologies, so they’re always up to date — and there’s no extra charge!

Check out our website today for more information about Master Samurai Tech appliance repair school online training. Pay for your courses now, when business is booming; use them later, when techs have more time flexibility.