Q&A With Clay Hoberecht 

Q. What sets Best Body Shop apart from others in the area?

A. We work hard to provide educational materials for our customers and for social media followers. Our goal is to pull back the curtain from the body shop world, and inform our customer on what is going on with our business and others in the area. We want to do more than just fix peoples’ cars, we want them to know what we did, why we did it, and the ethics of how it should be done. The average car today is a highly engineered vehicle, and there is a very specific way they are supposed to be handled. Other shops aren’t prioritizing that, and we want customers to know about this. 

Q. How do you educate your consumers? 

1) We leverage all of our social media accounts with a huge amount of content focusing on consumer advocacy and education. 

 2) We regularly hold in-shop classes. As an example, last month we had a seminar on electric vehicles, covering the potential dangers — including the possibility of fire. With these kind of vehicles, there is a high risk, as they are high-powered electric devices. 

3) We let our customers know we are not scared or intimidated by insurance companies, and that we will be their advocate when the tension with those companies comes up. 

Q. What challenges have you faced in running a body shop with this level of transparency?

A. The biggest challenge is that, in order to do the right thing, you have to be an outlier. It’s not a comfortable position to be in, and many body shops hate what we do because it exposes their bad behavior. But other body shops like ours throughout the nation have reached out to thank us for choosing to do the right thing, and for educating the public. They want to do what we do, and when they discover our platform, they feel more encouraged to keep going. 

Q. How do you approach hiring and training technicians and employees so that they know and understand your high priority for customer transparency?

A. To get good help, good training is essential. We have found it’s easier and better to hire people from outside the industry and then train them within our standards. Because of this, we place more emphasis on background and trainability, rather than experience. 

Q. Do you have a recent repair you’re particularly proud of?

A. We recently repaired a 2016 Subaru. When you pull the repair procedures for this vehicle, there are detailed specifics about how to measure and remove the steering column. In this case, the column was totally collapsed, so if we hadn’t followed protocol, we would have been sending our client out on the streets driving a potential life risk. To my knowledge, there are very few shops in Kansas that also follow manufacturer procedures, so if this customer had not come to us, they could very well be traveling around with a collapsed steering column. Subaru even specified that this step is essential, even for something as minor as hitting a mailbox. Every single car has specifics like this. However, many body shops not only pay no attention to this, but purposely ignore it, as they are under the thumb of their insurance, so they follow their protocol instead of the manufacturer’s guidelines. You can watch the Facebook live here to get the whole story: fb.watch/mjuHnYoizt