here’s probably no better way of spending a vacation than with family and friends and an RV — unless the RV runs into problems. If you don’t know your way around your rig mechanically, even relatively small snafus can bring outings to a premature end or, worse still, cancel long-anticipated travel plans. Learning about the myriad systems included in an RV — from plumbing and electrical to the operation of slideouts — is critical to not only making repairs on the road but also extending the life of your travel trailer, fifth wheel, motorhome or truck camper.
Acquiring that much-needed education, though, can be a years-long process of frustration and skinned knuckles. But it doesn’t have to be.
Staging hands-on technical seminars is nothing new to Lippert. For much of the past decade, the Elkhart, Ind.-based company has taken a leadership role among those RV suppliers that had undertaken the task of educating service technicians on maintaining and repairing components produced by each firm. For Lippert, this is particularly critical as the largest supplier in the RV industry continues to expand both organically and through acquisitions to nearly three dozen brands.
Now, the company is taking its hands-on educational curriculum directly to RV owners.
This summer, Lippert will roll out a number of one- and three-day sessions of its new RV Owner School, intended to educate consumers on everything from air-conditioning and sewage system repairs to the operation, maintenance, troubleshooting and upgrading of brakes, hubs and suspensions. And, while tutoring consumers isn’t new to Lippert — company technicians play an active role in seminars staged during various RV manufacturer owner rallies — the company’s RV Owner School marks the first time a supplier has captained a program designed to educate RV owners in the systems and components that make up the typical recreational vehicle.
“In early 2020, some of our leaders here at Lippert reached out and said, ‘We want to start something in customer experience. We know that this is crucial and we feel like our industry has an opportunity to really step up in taking care of consumers,’” Sult said. “So we started our customer experience program to get close to consumers. We felt it was time to understand what they may be missing. What do they need from us? How can we really improve their camping experience?
“We started out with a mission to keep campers camping, and we’ve spent the last two years sitting around campfires with them, attending events and rallies with them — really, just spending a lot of one-on-one time and trying to understand how we can help.”
That, in turn, led to the development of the Lippert Scouts program.
“We started with the idea that if we could just get 50 people interested in talking to us and tell us about what we could do better, where we needed to focus our time and attention, it would be great,” Sult noted. “So, we placed a generic post asking ‘Want to change the future of RVing? Apply here.’ That was it — just those words on a post.”
Rather than the anticipated 50 people Sult hoped would apply, Lippert received more than 3,000 applications in a matter of days. The group, open to any RV enthusiast, has since grown to more than 10,000 members.
“One of the things Scouts have been telling us from Day One was, we want technician training,” Sult said. “We had the resources — our Technical Institute is a huge part of this industry and is really moving forward dealer technician training. We actually had consumers trying to sneak into the technician classes because they wanted that hands-on training. So we worked with our teams to create the RV Owners School.”
The development of the school, she added, was encouraged by the Scouts.
One-Day RV Owners School
- May 23 (Grand Design RV Coldwater Rally, Allliance RV Owners Rally)
- June 6 (Heartland RV Owners Club Rally, Great Lakes Area Rally)
- June 27 (Coachmen Owners Association Rally)
- July 15 (Redwood Owners Group Rally)
- Aug. 12 (Forest River Owner Group Rally)
- Sept. 9 (Montana Owners Club Rally)
Three-Day RV Owners School
- June 14-16 (Heartland RV Owners Club Rally, Great Lakes Area Rally)
- July 26-28 (Redwood Owners Group Rally)
- Aug. 23-25 (Forest River Owners Group Rally, Grand Design RV Owners National Rally)
Additional details for each of the schools can be found at support.lci1.com/rv-owner-training. To learn more about the Lippert Scouts program or to become a member, visit facebook.com/groups/lippertscoutsthecommunity.
The Lippert Scouts program — and, with it, the RV Owner School — is overseen by both Sult and Craig Joachim, Lippert’s director of customer experience. Underscoring Lippert’s commitment to consumers, the entire Lipper customer experience team now numbers 16. But realistically, Joachim said, the school is a “for Scouts, by Scouts” program.
“The program is designed to provide RV owners with hands-on training on a lot of the components that are on their RVs so they become comfortable with their operation, maintenance and, in many cases, troubleshooting and repairing problems that may crop up,” he pointed out. “We want to keep them camping and enjoying their RV.”
A side benefit to the program, Joachim added, is the ability of owners schooled at the program to assist friends and neighbors who may likewise experience snafus while on the road.
“We know the RV spirit is a big part of this, and we know that people have this appetite to help each other,” he said. “That, to me, is what’s so special about this (school).”
John Elder, an ‘OG’ Scout, concurs. Part of a group of about two dozen Scouts that participated in a pilot event at Lippert’s Technical Institute in late April to provide the company with feedback and fine-tune the curriculum prior to the program’s debut in late May, Elder noted the wealth of information presented at the school was extraordinary.
“There also are a lot of products that Lippert has that I have no experience with, due to a lack of exposure to other types of RVs,” he added. “This school offers me the opportunity to see all sorts of different technologies, like slideouts that I don’t use but my family might. It gives me the opportunity to be ‘that person’ at the campground who sees someone having a problem and says ‘I can help you guys with that.’ There’s nothing better than to share that experience with someone.”
The schools, said Joachim, also include meals — all offer catered lunch breaks, while the three-day programs start with breakfasts each morning and one dinner to celebrate completion of the course — before breaking out into various hands-on seminars.
“We’ll have three to five different seminars going at any given time,” he said. “Those attending the school will be able to select which courses interest them the most.”
Along with the hands-on technical training, RV Owner School attendees will also receive a unique “swag pack” and a Lippert Technical Institute Certificate of Completion. Three-day courses will also afford attendees to tour some of Lippert’s manufacturing facilities, meet various leaders from around Lippert and have access to parts specialists where participants can order components for their next upgrade.
“With the younger generations coming in, we need to approach customer service and our service and products differently,” Sult said. “We don’t want to stay stale. So we asked campers and really learned a lot about what they think is missing, what’s annoying to them. And we came back and asked ourselves, ‘how can we solve that?’ We’re doing it through education, social media, engagement…that one-on-one time. And programs like RV Owner School.”
