Daimler Truck North America Attracts Service Technicians to its Dealer Network with Techlane
PORTLAND, Ore. (Oct. 24, 2024) – The Class 6-8 vehicle service industry is faced with an ongoing challenge: recruitment and retention of a service technician workforce. This is due to several reasons such as technical school enrollment rates, and the generational retirement wave that is reducing a long-standing talent pool.
To incentivize both the next generation of technicians, as well as those currently employed, DTNA has developed yet another tool for its Uptime Management Suite of service applications that empower a technician to grow professionally, while taking part in a technological revolution.
After navigating through its initial pilot phase amidst the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, Techlane is now widely available. The powerful AI-incorporated application is utilized by technicians via laptop or tablet directly in the service bay to assist with the troubleshooting, repair and warranty processes to expedite a vehicle’s downtime and return it to the road as quickly as possible. The platform not only enriches a technician's career with its use of cutting-edge technology, but it also streamlines the customer/dealer relationship with procedural improvements to repair orders, warranty claims and invoices.
Techlane harnesses the ingenuity of AI to quickly diagnose the root cause of any repair issue. This feature allows a significant reduction in time previously spent by a technician during the troubleshooting process. Techlane’s generative AI functionality provides the ability to consolidate a technician’s repair process into a customer-friendly, detailed summary. This affords the customer a simple overview of the repair while offering transparency. This level of efficiency and trust elevates both the customer and dealer experience.
As of October 2024, DTNA’s dealer network has trained and onboarded over 400 dealer partner locations with more than 3,000 individual technicians using Techlane in their everyday operations. By the end of 2024, the goal is to have Techlane implemented at over 500 dealer rooftops across North America.
“Techlane maximizes uptime for customers by consolidating AI-based diagnostics, technical information and repair processes specific to the vehicle being repaired. With this new technology, we are not only driving increased efficiency for existing technicians, but also attracting a new generation of technicians who thrive on this technology.” Paul Romanaggi, GM of CX and Service, DTNA.
Techlane’s origin was born out of DTNA’s 2019 Hackathon held at the Capital Factory in Austin, Texas where developers, designers and entrepreneurs competed to help innovate and streamline a technician’s truck repair process. Teams from across the state of Texas assembled and collaborated with DTNA personnel to craft their solutions and submit their ideas to be considered as the optimal choice for driving uptime. The resulting analysis and data created from the top winning teams of the Hackathon help shape Techlane and allow for its full-scale rollout happening now.
“For our new or lesser experienced technicians, the true benefit in Techlane is bringing resources to a central location so they don’t have to constantly hunt for answers. They can reduce time spent out of the bay and be more productive. For our highly experienced technicians, we are seeing an average of 10% efficiency increase, with some achieving an even greater increase of 25% or more. For all technicians, Techlane gains back small amounts of time over the course of the repair order which adds up to big gains in efficiency and customer uptime.” - Jerry Kocan, President & GM, Four Star Freightliner.
The evolution of a dealer’s service environment is accelerating with the use of Techlane. The enhanced customer experience it provides elevates the way service departments, fleets and their drivers interact with day-to-day operations. The next generation of service technicians are at the forefront of this evolution ensuring higher dealer efficiency, consistent quality of repair and the maximization of vehicle uptime across DTNA’s dealer network.
About Daimler Truck North America
Daimler Truck North America LLC, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, is a leading provider of comprehensive products and technologies for the commercial transportation industry. Daimler Truck North America designs, engineers, manufactures and markets medium- and heavy-duty trucks, school buses, vehicle chassis and their associated technologies and components under the Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, Freightliner Custom Chassis Corp and Detroit brands. Daimler Truck North America LLC is a subsidiary of Daimler Truck Holding AG (DTG), one of the world’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturers.
For more information, visit Freightliner.com or northamerica.daimlertruck.com.
