HYDRONICS
HEATING HELP Certifiable?
BY DAN HOLOHAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
grades, followed by a patch for your jacket or a certificate for your wall. You study for the next test and hope for the best. You move up the educational ladder and get better at your chosen profession, all the while striving for that Solid Gold rating. Does anyone really care? That’s the question that came up on one of the Internet
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boards recently. It caught my eye, because I remember a roundtable group that I moderated a while ago at one of our industry’s conventions. The folks in charge asked me to gather a group of technicians in a closed room with no bosses around. My job was to get their candid thoughts on certified continuing education. The folks in charge chose me because I am a very good listener and not a threat to anyone who has ever turned a wrench. One of the guys told me that he was at the convention
on his own nickel and on his vacation time. “The company won’t pay for it,” he said, “even though I’m here getting educated, and they know I always share what I learn with the other technicians when I get back. They like that, but they won’t pay for it.” Another guy said that when he went through the
certification steps, moving from bronze to silver to gold, he thought he might get a raise, but all he got was more work. “They give me the other guys’ work now, because I know more than they do. Those guys screw it up, so I get to do it for them.” He was furious about this. I asked him what he was going to do. He shrugged and told me that jobs are tough to get right now. I listened. So, now it’s a few years later, and I’m reading that
Internet chat board, and one of the guys writes, “I have my Gold certificate from NORA, but it means nothing to the customer. Only people in the industry know what it is and what it means. The customers don’t care. It’s no different with NATE, IGSPHA or RPA certifications. I have found that the certifications are helpful only if you are looking for another job; otherwise they are worthless.”
This made me think of Mr. Goodwrench. In 1977, General Motors came up with the idea of Mr.
Goodwrench and, because of the national advertising they did, Americans quickly picked up on it. Jay Leno had a lot of fun joking about Mr. Badwrench (the other side of the coin). The astronauts even called themselves Mr. Goodwrench while they were fixing the Hubble telescope. It was on all of our lips. With the Mr. Goodwrench campaign, GM’s plan was
for each dealer to adhere to a high set of standards. They wanted their customers to crave those genuine factory parts and those superb, factory-trained mechanics. GM promised that Mr. Goodwrench would always have all the correct parts on hand, and that he would also have lots of amenities for them in his service department. They celebrated the educated mechanic and marketed the heck out of him with an enormous national advertising budget. But think back. If you owned a GM product during
o you go to all the trouble of getting certified by the rating agency of your choice. You stay up late studying. You sweat out the tests. You get your
In 1977, General Motors came up with the idea of Mr. Goodwrench and, because of the national advertising they did, Americans quickly picked up on it.
that time, did you rush off to your GM dealer every time you needed service? I know you knew about Mr. Goodwrench; we all did, but did his certification inspire you to hire him? Or did you bring your cars to your local guy, because he got the job done for a lot less money? Or did you do it yourself? In 1996, GM got rid of the program’s human face by
dropping the Mr. from the title. It was now just GM Goodwrench Service Plus. Mr. didn’t matter anymore, because they weren’t seeing what they had expected. Two years later, they decided to put all their Goodwrench advertising efforts into NASCAR. Last February, GM abandoned Goodwrench altogether
and will now focus all their marketing efforts on selling new cars. Need service? Buy a new car. One of the other guys in that Internet chat room wrote,
“I think some of the manufacturers should only sell the higher-end equipment to certified guys, but that won't happen because it all boils down to sales.” This inspired a manufacturer to reply, “We sell our stuff
to wholesalers. They have their own certification program from well known agencies such as MasterCard, Visa, and the U.S. Government, which prints cash. If you pass the requirements to get any of those certified documents, you can buy any equipment you need from us. I think you should stop mocking the certification process needed to buy our products. It's not perfect, but it is certainly in place.”
So there. It’s cynical, but it’s also true. Look around. The few
manufacturers who insist that their customers attend factory training and get certified by them before they can buy are also the manufacturers who seem to sell the fewest units of whatever. They also seem to have the most complicated products, and that’s often a turn-off for contractors and for their customers. An uncertified contractor will look at the certified contractor as an elitist. The uncertified guy will tell a potential customer to steer
e Turn to HOLOHAN on p 58
phc april 2011
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