Manager of Repair Shop - Expected salary?

[MrM]

Just a quick question regarding what would be the minimum yearly salary you would take to manage a computer repair shop in the UK?

Here is what I currently do.

Running the shop on my own.
Dealing with customers, all repairs and answering Emails/Phone.
Ordering replacement parts.
Running the retail shop and ordering stock.

I have worked for nearly 4 and a half years now, 3 and a half part time and 1 year Full time.

I work Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm.

I just feel like I am being severely under paid and it is slowly getting to me. The issue is, am I being unrealistic in my expectations.

When I took over the shop for my manager, it allowed him to focus full time on running another company which has doubled revenue within its 2nd year.

So my question is, what is the minimum I should ideally be earning? and if it was yourself who was hiring for someone to run your shop, how much would you pay?

Looking forward to your replies.

 

[untoldtech]

from an owner in a similar situation: just because he's successful in other endeavors does not mean you deserve more. What are you doing differently to deserve more $$$ fro the day you were hired? Allowing him time to do other things isn't something you're giving him, remember you're getting PAID for what you do, you're not doing him a favor. The goal of him owning multiple businesses isn't to pay you more money, it's to make him money. I take care of my employees but sometimes I think they get too cocky thinking that we're chums, at the end of the day it's business. Why should i give you a raise if you're doing the same work you always have? inflation adjustment, yes, maybe but beyond that you need to prove yourself and show your worth if you want more money. I don't have a manager and I act as manager/owner but largely do work to ensure tickets get completed in my shop. I have assistant managers and they make less than techs because they're not technical, my techs get paid more. "What you get paid" is subjective to where you live as standard of living plays a huge role in rates paid to employees.

Often my technicians close out the credit card machines at night and see the $$$$ and sometimes will comment on us having a 'good day' it just shows their ignorance. They don't see the rent bill, the electric bill, the $$$$taxes$$$$ state/federal, the freetime I lost with my kids, the 80+ hours a week I spent getting the business going, the RISK i take/took and wages paid out, part costs, the money I fronted to pay for opening the shop. Which is fine, they dont need to understand but they do need to understand they're part of the success but I PAY THEM for what they do that's my thanks, I don't owe them anything beyond that.

 

[MrM]

I fully understand what you are saying and I'm aware of all the other factors that go into the day to day but I'm interested in what other technicians/managers get paid and want to compare it to my current situation.

I'm at a point in my life where I love the job, but I feel like I'm wasting my life with nowhere to go. And I don't want to work my life away for no advantage in later life.

So the reason I'm asking is not because I feel like I'm owed anything, I just feel like I'll be stuck on this wage until I find a new job. And therefore I'm interested in knowing what other people earn in a similar role.

You mentioned that you pay technicians more, however I am the only technician. Out of curiosity what do you pay?

I just want to see if I'm being paid fairly. Pm me if you don't went to list it on the open forum.

 

[Markverhyden]

Obviously wages vary by location. But around here starting techs in a big box get around $11-12/hour. From several years ago, '06'ish. The tech manager at the CompUSA I was at made around $50k/year. Around that same time I talked to a shop owner about going to work for him. He was paying his only tech, pretty experienced guy, around $12/hour. Could not afford to pay me $20/hour as shop manager and senior tech.

@MrM, not knowing what you are getting paid now, but assuming the wage is a fair prevailing wage for the skills and responsibilities I doubt that you will see or be able to achieve any increase in what you are getting paid without bringing something to the table. I'd take a look at what you can do to increase revenue and profits and then work on a profit sharing type of situation.

 

[mraikes]

Having no experience in this area I'm a little surprised that it would be just salary. I've always imagined that if I had a shop with a manager/lead tech employee that I'd pay a base plus a commision structure of some kind. So if the shop was well managed and performed well, the manager would benefit too.

Is it more common for techs & managers in shops to just be straight hourly or salary rather than receive commissions?

 

[untoldtech]

I pay hourly 11-12/hour to my techs. I've juggled this before but my problem is multiple techs will work multiple issues. The problem with commission is, imo, fraud, how can you possibly calculate that when multiple techs work an issue? You get techs who did little to no work on it a ticket but rubberstamping in a ticket it to get a % of the commission. I'd love to hear ways in which you tackle this issue. I'd love to pay them less hourly but make jobs based on commission to motivate them to work. I have one tech who I pay a bit more than other techs because she gets more stuff done and I have one lazy tech who gets similar hours but barely ever gets done with anything.

 

[Vyper28]

We start our techs at 20/hour and after the first year do a review and evaluate accordingly. Our last bench tech makes 20/hr, our business to business/server guys are floating around 28-30.

We had techs for 12.50/hr for a long time, but I got sick of offering a median level of service to my clients. At the end of the day, my techs were great at solving problems but not so great at upsells, customer service, ect ect. Now we pay much better and get much better employees after turfing the old ones. We also have a program for achieving monthly goals. We set a goal for billable labour based on the last couple years avg. If they are able to beat the previous years average by 15% everyone gets a nice bonus on their paycheque! We also do a yearly bonus at Christmas based on billable hours and performance on the job. My best tech last year got a nice $3500 bonus on his Xmas paycheque, and he earned it. He billed out 55% more than all my other guys and still managed to have 6 clients over the year phone me directly and tell me how great he was to work with. If he ever decides to go out on his own I'm going to have to have him cloned before he leaves.

I believe exceptional performance deserves to be rewarded accordingly. We pay exceptionally well and offer exceptional service to our clients, and if they can offer that level of service great, if they can exceed it, even greater and I will compensate accordingly.

 

[altrenda]

I think we are seeing 2 different philosophy's in dealing with employees.

But there are also different levels at work here.
There s a difference in responsibility and compensation between a bench tech, a tech that interfaces with customers and a tech that also has management duties.

 

[Markverhyden]

I pay hourly 11-12/hour to my techs. I've juggled this before but my problem is multiple techs will work multiple issues. The problem with commission is, imo, fraud, how can you possibly calculate that when multiple techs work an issue? You get techs who did little to no work on it a ticket but rubberstamping in a ticket it to get a % of the commission. I'd love to hear ways in which you tackle this issue. I'd love to pay them less hourly but make jobs based on commission to motivate them to work. I have one tech who I pay a bit more than other techs because she gets more stuff done and I have one lazy tech who gets similar hours but barely ever gets done with anything.

When I was at CompUSA every tech had their own queue. They were responsible beginning to end for the service event. CUSA tried several different metric methods. Things included touches which were handled via notes in the WO. That was completely abused as all one had to do was put in a line of a certain type. So they ended up calculating the $ per WO. Both warranty and non-warranty. People tried to abuse that as warranty claim revenue were a fraction of non-warranty so some tried to cherry pick. So they had the manager assign the WO's into each tech's queue as they came in. Over time it evened out balancing the non-warranty and warranty. The really good techs were able to turn work over quickly along with adding upsells. The bonuses were paid out quarterly. They started with 10% of the quarterly revenue but got a bit of sticker shock right off the bat. My first 3 quarters were between 35-40k in revenue each, 3.5-4k bonus. They dropped it to 5% which lasted a couple of quarters and they dropped it all together. Cost too much. What idiots. Of course we techs just stopped trying do the 110% thing.

This has always been a problem with the big boxes. The entire management team is focused on selling shrink wrapped product at the lowest price (read margin). They have no concept about how profitable service is and how to properly manage that segment. As soon as I started in the tech department I found out that they had a sku for data recovery, $50/hour, but they discouraged the techs from selling it. Did not want the "risk". The grocery store/department store/drug store clerks running things had no idea how simple that process really is. Back then W98 was common and ME had just started coming out. Techs would hook up a drive to a Windoze box, get the can't access folder permissions error and toss their hands up in the air. In the mean time I'd setup a Linux box which, as we all know, could care less about M$ "permissions". After a several months the tech manager told me that our store had sold more data recovery than the entire chain, over 200 hundred stores, the previous months.

 

[gikstar]

Often my technicians close out the credit card machines at night and see the $$$$ and sometimes will comment on us having a 'good day' it just shows their ignorance

And sometimes it only means that they are proud of what has been accomplished over the previous day. I would hope to think that they are TEAM players and feel invested in the outcome of sales for the day, the better the sales, the more secure their job is.

 

[CompConfig]

There are many different business models here. Our business is on-site and mostly business clients. Our lead on-site techs have to know networks and servers. My assistant, manages our techs but she deals with people and scheduling and actually makes less than a lead tech.

 

[Vyper28]

What Mark said hit the nail on the head for us. We offer Exception Service. I don't sell I.T. services, I sell what is perceived as the BEST I.T. service you can get. When you call us, you don't get an antisocial neckbeard who doesn't really want to talk to you, you get a well dressed, polite, knowledgeable technician with a team to back him. You get complex services delivered in a simple fashion. We don't leave our clients in the dark behind the wall of "lack of knowledge" we translate in terms they can understand. I've had techs pull in huge bonuses but you know what? That's the cost of really good techs. If I don't pay them exceptionally well, and treat them exceptionally well, I wont get exceptional techs. I know this because my best tech is stolen. One of my clients told me about "this guy" at the company they used to use for I.T. support. They said "He was really good, super friendly and helpful, he was fast and he didn't make us feel stupid" the problem was, they took a gamble each call. They told me "Sometimes we would call back 2 or 3 times to get him, they didn't let us ask for him, you call helpdesk and got whoever was available". I found him, found out what they paid him, and offered him a 20% raise plus bonuses and medical/dental. He left that job 2 weeks after I approached him. He also brought us 4 new clients that could pay his salary on their own.

If you have a good tech, that provides a strong ROI, you should do everything you can to keep him (while remaining profitable of course) because if you don't, someone will steal him, and if your customers like him, they will steal him too. Techs that give 110% deserve a 110%. It's not like it should hurt your bottom line ever, you should have systems in place that ensure that you make at least X% profit per tech, and if a tech doubles that, why not reward accordingly! If they cant meet that, you need to replace the take because that gear in the system is not working.

*Edit* Just thought I would add, since we are primarily B2B, we have a different system that a walk-in shop, but maybe the principal can be the same. My clients have a lead tech. Each tech has a set number of business under them that they are responsible for. Each client has a "Tech order" so it works like this:

Ticket comes in from Client,
Client has Technician A as primary, B as secondary and C as failover
If the ticket is not severe, it is assigned to Technician A's queue.
If it is severe, it is assigned to A, B and C, whoever finishes their current ticket first picks it up.

This also helps with team-building, because Technician A and B have a "pow-wow" once every 2 weeks. The 2 techs work like a sort of team, With tech A covering B's tickets when B is busy, and vica-versa. Tech C in this case, is my most recent hire and least knowledgeable. He does not actually have any primary clients under him, so he handles the easy, non-critical tickets as he is learning more about each client.

I find this helps with a big issue in our industry, business and customers like to see the same face. They like to know whoever is working for them knows them, they are not just a client number, they are in the silk glove of tech A. We also have Tech A and B introduce each other to each client in-person to build a sort of rapport. Eventually Tech C will start taking over as secondary for tech B, freeing up technician A to take on another few clients. This way my best tech handles my best clients, and over time I should be able to add more clients to his queue as his responsibilities for B's clients go down.

TL;DR My staff work sort of like a RAID1 array.

 

[jft135]

I pay hourly 11-12/hour to my techs. I've juggled this before but my problem is multiple techs will work multiple issues. The problem with commission is, imo, fraud, how can you possibly calculate that when multiple techs work an issue? You get techs who did little to no work on it a ticket but rubberstamping in a ticket it to get a % of the commission. I'd love to hear ways in which you tackle this issue. I'd love to pay them less hourly but make jobs based on commission to motivate them to work. I have one tech who I pay a bit more than other techs because she gets more stuff done and I have one lazy tech who gets similar hours but barely ever gets done with anything.

We just make sure that overall the tech that starts the job, finishes the job. That doesn't always work out, but they understand that if they want to take time off, they need to make sure all their work is done, or the guy who wraps it up for them will get the commission. We're all adults here and haven't had any conflict with our system. If someone is sick or has an emergency, a supervisor will finish up their work (managers get a percentage of all their underlings work, and that's one of the strings attached.) Everyone does get a little hourly pay as well to compensate them for doing things that help keep the shop running, but don't directly result in commissions.

 

[GhostDog]

Consider the hard numbers: use something like salary.com to see what the range is for that position in your geographic area. Where is the poverty line and your pay scale? How far are you from minimum wage?

Note that you can pay more than minimum wage, and still put every person with at least 1 child that works for you below the US Federal Poverty Guidelines, which means you will have a hard time recruiting people with families, and will get more upwardly-mobile, just out of school technicians that may not stick around.