By CRM staff
Toronto, Ontario — June 19, 2018 — When it comes to certifications, Collision Repair magazine readers are not shy about their opinions – nor are they of one mind.
For some, they are seen as the next step needed to ensure that every repair is performed safely – and a good investment to boot. For others, there is great uncertainty about the value they bring. For the rest, they are the source of concern.
In our most recent survey – which received one of the highest number of responses – it emerged that most of our readers’s facilities were, or were working to become, I-Car gold-certified – though not by a great margin. Just one-in-four facilities surveyed were I-Car gold class locations, with another 37.5 percent working to become certified.
At 22.5 percent, the number of OEM certified shops was just shy of the number of facilities without any certifications, at 27.5 percent.
One-in-ten responded they had recieved accreditation from CCIAP, the same percentage as had recieved Certified Collision Repair accreditation. Just 2.5 percent of respondents had received Verified Quality’s seal-of-approval.
For shops that had persued an OEM certification or third party accreditation program, almost half responded that they had joined an OEM program in order to gain a market edge, while 30 percent did so in order to access specialized training. 17.5 percent joined on the basis of a reccomendation from a dealership.
Opinions on the return-on-investment were generally middling. Fewer than one-in-three respondents held an extreme opinion, with just 4 percent feeling very satisfied with the ROI, and 25 percent being very dissatisfied. The other 71 percent were either neutral about their ROI.
