IDA Sponsor Spotlight: Urable

This month we chatted with Michael Abens, CEO and Owner of Abens Solutions, LLC., (Urable) IDA Diamond Sponsor.

International Detailing Association (IDA): How long have you been with this company? Were you a detailer prior to becoming a supplier?

Michael Abens (MA): We are a family owned and operated company that started in March 2018. Kyle and Kris, both of whom had their own careers underway, collaborated on a side project building a custom CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System for the healthcare company I was running. They had so much fun with that project, that after it completed, they called a family meeting to discuss the idea of quitting their jobs and starting a family business focused on app development for niche markets. I had retired in October 2017 after 30 years in healthcare and they dragged me out of retirement to help setup and operate the company. We could have picked any market to enter, but as an auto enthusiast, I had become a strong supporter of the professional detailing market ever since ceramic coatings entered the game. During my career in healthcare, I designed many business systems to improve patient care, employee effectiveness, and operational efficiency. My interactions with professional detailers, as a consumer, exposed opportunities for improvement in the customer experience, as well as general efficiency in operations. Based on that, we chose to address the detail market with our first product and Urable was born!

IDA: What type of training does your organization/business offer? 

MA: We offer video tutorials and live 1:1 video tours and team training sessions to help get shops up and running quickly. 

IDA: What makes your company unique compared to other suppliers?

MA: We did months and months of customer-driven insight gathering with dozens of detail businesses—both mobile and shop-based—vinyl wrap shops and PPF shops before we even began building a system. This gave us a broad picture of the industry that encompassed owner/operator businesses all the way to multiple location businesses with dozens of employees. This "customer-driven insight" approach is exactly how I addressed challenges in the healthcare services space for 30 years. It allowed us to create a system that is purpose built for the detailing market but also took advantage of the key learnings I had gathered from a career in healthcare as a large service provider. This is why Urable is so strong regarding automated customer retention features. We built in revenue diversification opportunities through the Virtual Shop in Urable. This is basically a branded e-commerce store and online booking feature for each of our customers.

IDA: Is there any advice you would give to detailers that may be looking into transitioning to product sales, distribution, or manufacturing?

MA: My advice is to have owners, or better yet an impartial mentor, take a critical look at their business operating model and the customer experience that is being delivered. If you desire to be a professional detailer, delivering premium services at professional rates, make sure you're delivering a professional customer experience to match. Scratching out invoices on paper and never following up with customers after the sale is not reflective of a professional service. Urable is uniquely designed to help you project a professional image that distinguishes you from your competition and reinforces why you are worth the premium rates you charge. It also carries a heavy load for business owners by automating the follow up process to ensure you never lose track of a customer again.  

IDA: What are some of the struggles your company has overcome to get to where it is today?

MA: It is sometimes a struggle to get business owners to see the value of systematizing their operation. We still have businesses that are reluctant to invest in a system at any price and continue to use pen and paper or a collection of disjointed apps to run their business. An annual subscription of our system is paid for by the system eliminating a single no-show, or facilitating an up sell through the inspection process, or securing more referrals because of more and better reviews; the list goes on and on. It is literally the cheapest employee any business could ever hire and it never calls in sick!

IDA: Why does your company believe it is beneficial to support the IDA?

MA: We are trying to improve the industry and elevate the professional detailer in the eyes of the consumer. IDA is doing the same thing through education, certifications and outreach. It was an easy decision to align with and support the IDA.

IDA: As a supplier, what changes would you like to see made in the detailing industry?

MA: More basic business training would benefit the industry as a whole. Understanding how to manage a business well is just as important as learning how to improve your technical skills. Owners need to learn how to value their time and focus on efficiency, consistency, and the long term health of their business. They also need to see the value in working "on" their business, as much as "in" their business. I've learned over the years that real breakthroughs occur when you're willing to step back and be critical of your operating model. Otherwise, you tend to focus on the self-defeating cycle of always "doing more" to grow your business. Doing things differently is often much more productive than simply doing more of something.