Mohammed,” Ahmad explains. “He started working with us as a technician and in no time at all his management expe- rience from other automotive shops came shining through. So when my father stepped out of the business, I brought Ali into the office to help me run things. Ali proved to be an invaluable employee. When the Oakville operation became a reality, Ali became an equal partner in the business. And while he’s a great technician, he’s an even better business owner. His attention to detail is masterful and he treats our customers with the respect expected by CRS Automotive customers.” Regardless of their skillset in the bays, their attention to detail under the hood, or their boardroom prowess, Ahmad is quick to point out that his employees are endurance athletes first and foremost. “Our hours and size of the shops make us a force,” he insists with a notable tone of pride. “When you have 13 hours each day with 10 bays in Hamilton for six days a week and 8 bays in Oakville for seven days a week, you’re going to get a lot of work done. We work this hard because we love what we do and we know it makes a big difference to customers who don’t have to wait the industry-standard amount of days to get their vehicle back.” Working with reputable vendors is a major factor in deliv- ering above-standard service for CRS Automotive. Ahmad points out that the newly crowned Tire E-shop found at www.crsautomotive.com has been a huge success in part because of local suppliers who deal parts online and who deliver within a 30-40 minute timeframe. “Coupled with our daily out-of-town deliveries – which we see several of per day – the workflow into our shops is constant,” he says. Even while e-commerce represents calmwaters for Ahmad, he is not willing to put CRS Automotive on cruise control. “We’re always working with innovative people who help us promote ourselves online through social media platforms in the most up-to-date manner possible. We use an awesome company in Europe that helps us maintain and promote our website. Ali and I are always seeking to capture videos and photos of automotive-related material and send it off to our media team to post. We have found that the more we interact with people online, the more business it generates for us. We also ask our customers to help us grow our business by leaving a review on Google; this goes a long way to helping us build our online presence and ultimately bringing in new customers.”
Ahmad sees a lot of overlap with CRS Automotive’s approach to sales and service. “If you can absorb costs to get the customer on the road or back on the road quickly and pain free it goes a long way,” he explains. “We offer Fleet Services, for instance, to companies with multiple vehicles to manage. We customize our services for each company to ensure we are taking care of their needs. We go the extra mile to ensure as little downtime as possible for the company’s vehicles – which includes picking vehicles up and dropping them off, pre-ordering parts, full and preventative inspec- tions, directly dealing with out-of-town fleet management companies so they don’t have to, arranging transportation for drivers stuck in the in-between, and, of course, special rates for larger accounts. This kind of consideration brings customers back.” Offering both traditional automotive and customized mobile services to any and all in their expansive pocket of Southern Ontario requires Ahmad to comprise his team at CRS Automotive of the best of the best. He feels that his three-part screening system is fail-proof. “When hiring new staff, the first thing we look at is their skill set,” he says. “We look for people with the proper training who are comfort- able working on a wide array of vehicles. It’s important to us to have someone who is capable of moving between dif- ferent manufacturers and different technologies. Next we look for people who are team- oriented. It helps everyone when a tech is willing to share their knowledge and gets along well with other team members. Third, we look for someone who pays attention to detail, because it’s usually the small things that cause big problems.” The crème de la crème for Ahmad are those Automotive Service Technicians who are certified by The Interprovin- cial Standards Red Seal Program. “All of our technicians are licensed by the ministry and have their Red Seal,” he explains. But always the consummate student, Ahmad emphasizes that “We do higher apprentices to take care of small jobs while learning the finer points of the trade along- side a licensed tech. With the apprentices we hire, we do our best to ensure they get time to go to school and receive hands on instructions from our licensed technicians.” “In Oakville we are surrounded by new and high-end car dealers and many of them use us on a daily basis for services they don’t do themselves. We take on wheel alignments, service off- brand vehicles, perform emissions testing, you name it. We’re constantly seeing that kind of business our way.”
Ali Ghaddar is the kind of technician skimmed from the right part of the barrel. “He was actually hired by my father,
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • AUGUST 2017
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