A Letter to Githesh Ramamurthy, CEO of CCC
Dear Mr. Ramamurthy,
I just received your FAX admitting defeat over the CCC/Mitchell merger. I think I speak for the entire collision repair industry when I say “Thank God!” The last thing this industry needed was fewer choices when it comes to collision estimating. Your takeover of Comp-Est was bad enough, we didn’t need our choices cut from three estimating platforms to two. It is understandable that competition is tough, but, and this is just some friendly advice, the next time you find your company in tough competition, it may be more cost effective to improve your product instead of trying to buy your competition. Your consumption of Mitchell was going to cost you an estimated 1.4 billion dollars. You could have hired a couple of high school kids for a few hundred bucks to give Pathways a face-lift and fix some of the dreadful inefficiencies y0ur users have been complaining about for years. For a few bucks more you could have hired a handful of Pathways users–collision repairers–to tell you how to improve your software. We are used to working for little or nothing. You should take advantage of that.
In your letter you claim to “to develop industry-leading solutions that help you set the right course.” I think you got your letters mixed up. I think I got the letter written to your insurance company customers. In fact I know there was a mix-up, because the letter was addressed to the wrong body shop. I think it’s safe to say that Nationwide Insurance didn’t receive a letter intended for State Farm. Perhaps you could pay just a wee bit more attention to your collision repairer customers.
Your letter announces a new product from CCC: CCC ONE Total Repair Platform. “Designed by and for repairers.” Come on Git–can I call you Git? Saying your full name is tough for a dumb collision repairer like myself–don’t you really mean “designed by insurers for repairers?” Isn’t it CCC’s new mission statement to “support good relations between DRP repairers and insurers?” Most of your body shop customers are small shops that can barely afford Pathways. How do you expect them to afford this CCC ONE unless you just include it in the cost of Pathways? And since CCC is too hard up for money to include broad band connection to your antiquated EZNET communications system, no one is expecting to be getting CCC ONE as a freebie.
CCC has indeed been busy working on new products, but, invariably, these products have been geared toward the insurance industry. The average body shop, even if it has a couple of DRP’s, is not interested in claims handling software, or software designed to ensure their estimates comply with the wants of the insurers. Being audited is like being raped. Only those handful of large shops that are the worshiping whores to the insurance industry are interested in having their estimates audited.
Look, everyone respects honesty. Please consider, as a face saving gesture, writing another letter and faxing it to your collision repairer customers, saying something like,
Dear inconsequential user of CCC Pathways:
From now on we won’t try to make you feel like a valued customer. Your industry just isn’t big enough or important enough for us to care about any more. All our future efforts will be directed toward making our insurance customers as happy as possible. Therefore, you may find some features of Pathways being changed that may hurt your business so that we may help improve our insurance customers’ businesses. We appreciate your past support but can’t appreciate your future support because of the conflict of interest it would create. If you do find a way to stay in business using Pathways, more power to you. It may be time, however, to start thinking about finding a new estimating product.
Sincerely,
Githesh Ramamurthy
Most of us are considering a change any way. But, if for some reason you decide to give a rat’s ass about your collision repairer customers again, there are some very talented people in our industry who would be more than willing to work with you and CCC in creating an estimating system that we all can be proud of.
I won’t take any more of you valuable time. I’m sure you have important meetings with various insurance company executives.
I look forward to hearing from you.
John Shortell
BodyShop Solutions
sales@bodyshopsolutions.com
860-778-6130
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Comments
One Comment on A Letter to Githesh Ramamurthy, CEO of CCC
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Josh on
Wed, 5th Aug 2009 12:26 pm
Hi there,
I totally agree with you on this john.
I run a small restoration business here in California and i just think it’s sad how they treat their small business customers. I hate paying for bull shit like this.
I have recently switched to a web based program called web-est.
The customer support and CEO were both very helpful with my questions and concerns. Good Riddance CCC.
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