When customers walk into your auto repair shop, they’re trusting you and your team with the health of their vehicle, one of their most expensive assets.
They’re coming in with a problem or set of problems and expect your team to effectively fix those problems in a reasonable time frame.
And modern expectations for customer service have shifted as our technology has evolved. Customers don't want to have to find time for a phone call when they can just get texted updates about their repairs, and digital tools make it easier for shops to build transparency in their process.
Modern auto repair shop software not only makes it easy but lays the foundation for a modern customer experience at every step.
Offering a Modern Auto Repair Shop Customer Experience Starts with a Modern Shop Management System
We're big advocates of modernizing your auto repair shop, and we don't necessarily mean replacing all your racks, updating all your compressors, and swapping out your alignment rack. Sure those might help, but we get those can be really big investments.
That's why we're focused on the behind-the-scenes operations of your shop, the overall management and flow of repair orders. Modern shop management software enables owners, managers, service advisors, and technicians to gain visibility into, and control over, their individual part of the process with specific functions:
Cloud-based shop management
Real-time control
Digital Vehicle Inspections
Built-In Payment Processing
Digital Shop Communications
Efficient Parts and Inventory Management
While all of these directly work to modernize your shop operations, they also work to modernize your shop experience for customers.
When your shop is using Digital Vehicle Inspections instead of paper printouts, you're not only making it easier for your technicians and service advisors to communicate and collaborate, but you're also modernizing how your shop interacts with customers, by emailing or texting results and approval requests.
How Automotive Shop Programs Give Customers More Agency
The common way shops get repair authorizations from customers is verbally, either in person or over the phone. But this approach is rife with the risk of misunderstandings.
By contrast, digital vehicle inspections give you a way to transparently show your customers what’s going on with their vehicles, as well as a way for them to clearly indicate how they want to proceed.
Technicians can concisely break down findings, send photos and videos of issues, and indicate the severity of each issue using a color-coded system. Service advisors can then quickly put together estimates that clearly display those findings, and email or text them to customers.
Customers will then receive their estimates and clearly see which issues are the most pressing, as well as the expected costs. With digital authorization, customers can check off the repair work they want, and your team can start tackling repairs.
How Automotive Shop Programs Help Your Team Move Jobs Along Faster
With automotive shop programs, service advisors can get a high-level overview of every repair order at your shop. They can see which repair orders are pending authorization, in progress, or completed. Your team can even see more specific details at a glance, like which repair orders still need parts ordered, so they can swiftly move repairs along.
Service advisors can also see exactly what each technician has on their plate, so they can then assign the outstanding repair orders to the technicians that have the most availability, evening out workloads at your shop. Service advisors can dispatch specific jobs in one repair order to different technicians to avoid lopsided workloads.
As for technicians, they can use the system as their digital to-do list; they can glance at it and know exactly what they’re responsible for each day—and in which order they should tackle repairs.
How Automotive Shop Programs Help You Keep Customers in the Loop
Using automotive shop programs, service advisors get a snapshot of how far along every repair order is so they can communicate updates to customers without ever having to leave their workstations and interrupt technicians’ workflow.
As each technician works and marks labor lines as complete within their own work area in the system, service advisors will see the corresponding updates and be able to tell customers exactly where their repairs stand.
How Automotive Shop Programs Simplify How Your Customers Get In Touch With Your Shop
An automotive shop program with true two-way texting simplifies communication for you and your team. And adding your shop’s phone number to the system opens a new channel of streamlined communication.
Service advisors can message any customer directly from the system, the message will show up as a regular text message on the customer’s phone, and they can text right back. Back at the shop, every service advisor with access to the system will see their response within the system.
With true two-way texting, your team and your customers will be able to avoid the pitfalls of verbal communication and exchange information with more clarity.
Plus, with true two-way texting, there will be a record of the information exchanged between your shop and the customer, enabling you to safeguard your shop.
How Automotive Shop Programs Make It Easier for You to Get Paid
An automotive shop program with a text-to-pay feature benefits all customers, especially those on the go. Service advisors can send customers a payment link right to their smartphones when it's time to pay, and customers can then quickly punch in their credit numbers and authorize payments on a secure platform.
In turn, service advisors will have an easier time collecting payment and will be able to keep track of which customers have paid, and which customers haven’t.
How Automotive Shop Programs Make It Easier to Give Back
You can benefit from a referral program where you give back to your customers. Of course, if you do decide to give out discounts, you want to make sure that they don’t negatively cut into your bottom line.
An automotive shop program with real-time reports will enable your team to use discounts strategically. Giving back can also be as simple as handing a customer their favorite soda to sip on while they wait out their repair.
Facilitate Delivering the Best Auto Repair Customer Service Possible With Tekmetric
Tekmetric’s various features, including DVIs, the Job Board, and the Tech Board, help you streamline your team’s ability to provide exceptional customer service that gets people back behind the wheel quickly, and has them telling their friends and family about your shop.
This month we were all about operational efficiency saving you time in messaging customers, managing employees, and staying on top of your inventory. Your time is your money. So be sure to take advantage of these features to save time in your day.
Save Time With Template Messages
Effective communication is vital to a high quality customer experience. However, it can be time consuming and frankly, repetitive. That’s why we’ve introduced templated messages.
Your top 3 most used customer messages (inspection, estimate, and invoice) can now be customized to fit your shop’s communication needs and voice. These are fully customizable and paired with the ability to create any other message template you’d like.
Who’s this for?: Customers on our Scale Tier with Tekmessage turned on.
Have employees that work across your multiple locations? Well, managing them just got easier. This month we put out two separate releases that allow you to seamlessly create, move between shops, and delete employees right from the MSO dashboard. No more hopping in and out of each shop’s profile.
Who’s this for?: Customers with our multi-shop add-on package.
Manage Inventory More Effectively With The Inventory Feed
Managing inventory effectively is crucial for shop operations. To help shops stay on top of pricing and quality changes we’ve introduced the Inventory Activity Feed. This will now automatically log stock orders, parts moved into inventory, and purchase order cost updates.
See Continuous Improvement of Our ALLDATA Integration
In August, we launched our ALLDATA integration, offering you yet another option for labor guide integration with Tekmetric’s shop management system. Since then, we’ve continued to improve it including the introduction of vehicle specification information and a search bar for easy navigation.
Who’s this for?: Customers on our Grow and Scale Tiers who integrate with the ALLDATA labor guide.
No matter what your auto repair shop specializes in, chances are you're facing similar challenges.
New customers are hard to come by
It can be difficult to keep even the most loyal customers coming back
Repair work is frequently declined or pushed off
The reality is, people don't want to have to pay for an expensive fix when they don't directly see or understand the value or necessity behind the repair. We've become very used to simple solutions to complex problems, and more often than not customers wish their cars were like that too.
Auto repair shops can also be intimidating: they're loud, usually covered in oil, and they can feel like a trap.
That's why transparency is so critical in the auto repair industry, and why digital vehicle inspections have become such an important tool for shops. Customers want to know that they're only being charged for necessary work, and digital vehicle inspections help your shop show them that.
Digital vehicle inspections are just one aspect of your entire shop's workflow, but are an incredibly powerful foundation that go a long way in making your shop more money.
Your automotive shop's service advisor plays an important role in the overall operation and even growth of your business. The service advisor explains maintenance and service needs to customers, and answers their questions in detail. The success of your business relies on having the right people in these roles and supporting them with necessary skills training.
To find the best candidates, look for people with potential or training in these areas:
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