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When my husband Dana and I started Haglin Automotive, our loyal customers found us from The Yellow Pages.

Things have drastically changed since then thanks to all the technology advancements. Online reviews and Google play a big part in whether a customer will set foot in your shop or return for future repairs. 

At Haglin Auto, we always adjust to meet customers, and whether they’re a return customer or a new customer, we prioritize how they feel.

It’s important to meet your customers where they are. We even offer customers free vehicle pick-up and delivery service, free shuttle services, and free loaner vehicles.

But, more importantly, we make sure they understand their repairs and can see everything that’s going on with their cars.

Build Trust with Digital Vehicle Inspections (DVIs)

Haglin Auto has been around for 41 years in the Boulder area, and twice a year 30,000 people come in and out because of Boulder University of Colorado, so we’ve always had an influx of students.

And in order to cater to our college students, we started implementing DVIs. 

The reason we made the change in the first place was because our service writers would call a local college student and say, “You car is doing this, this, and that,” and a lot of the times a student would respond with, “I don’t understand,” “I’m not the one paying,” or “Let me call my mom or dad.”

From there, the student would make a phone call home, they would ask questions, and then the student would call back with questions. 

Traditionally, there are four pillars to an auto repair shop that all support one another: the shop owner, technicians, customers, and service advisors.

The integrity of the shop depends on each of these pillars in different ways. The shop owner needs to make the right calls and put the right systems in place for technicians and service advisors to do their jobs. Technicians must stay focused on repairs. And loyal customers keep the lights on.

By effectively leading your team, service advisors can support the other three pillars of the shop—and in turn, achieve balance and improve the quality of your job. Getting started in your Service Advisor career, or looking for some tips? Here’s how to lead your team with intention.

Shop owner Judi Haglin runs Haglin Automotive by strategically monitoring her shop’s automotive metrics.

I have an Elementary Education degree from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), and my husband, Dana, has a Saxophone Performance degree. I know, random combination, right? Well, once my husband and I graduated and we got married, I worked at a kitchen in a retirement home. After that, I got a job for a few years managing a McDonald’s.

Both of those jobs really taught me about policies and procedures, but they also helped me a ton when it comes to numbers. They helped me gain the ability to put all of that together and learn how to run my own business.  

I operate Haglin Automotive by the numbers. Knowing how the business is doing on a daily basis is great. And it’s amazing when you share the things that you gain. I share my knowledge of numbers with other shops through 20 Groups so they can run their business by the numbers, too. I believe that when you get to a point and you're successful at one thing, whatever that one thing is that you do really well, share it. Share it with the world. 

8 Metrics and Reports That Judi Haglin Uses To Run Her Shop  

I could go on and on about how metrics and reports have helped me run our business. I could also go on and on about which specific reports have helped us get to where we are. But there are a select few that I will make a point to check weekly, if not daily. 

1. Effective Labor Rate from Tekmetric’s End of Day Report 

2. Labor Hour Inventory   

3. Gross Profit from Tekmetric’s Profit Details Report  

4. Realtime Service Writer Report

5. Customer Lead Source

6. Lifetime Visits from Tekmetric’s Customer List Report 

7. One Time Visit Ratio

And finally…

‍8. The “Closing The Back Door” Report

We have a policy in our shop called “Closing The Back Door.”

Here’s how it works: if you have 500 new customers that have come into your shop and you’ve serviced 1,000 repeat customers, in reality you should have serviced a total of 1,500 customers for that year.

But a lot of the time it’s not 1,500 because a lot of your previous customers didn’t come back. 

Tekmerchant now includes the industry’s first “buy now, pay later” feature, allowing customers to complete vehicle repairs and pay over time with no risk to your shop!

The Tekmerchant platform offers flexible, forward thinking solutions that allow shops to save time and effort when managing funds and customer payments.

Shop owners can share invoices and accept payments via text and email, enabling the customer to pay directly from their smartphone and pick up the vehicle when it is convenient for them.

Additionally, customers can leverage Tekmerchant’s “buy now, pay later” feature using Affirm and Klarna. This is an industry-first solution that is familiar to customers who use it in other industries. 

Concurrently, Tekmerchant improves shop owner accounting processes by automatically integrating all partial and complete payments into the point-of-sale.

This feature, added by popular request from shop owners, integrates with Tekmetric’s existing payments reports for real-time tracking and reporting. 

Chargebacks are something that no shop owner wants to deal with.

Your business relies on big-ticket sales, and chargebacks on those sales can squeeze your margins.

When a guest goes through their bank or credit card company to get a refund, whether it’s because they were unhappy with the repair or not, it can leave shop owners in a bind where they might have to eat the cost of the labor, parts, and profit.

There are some cases where business owners can make a case against the chargeback, but it can be a lengthy process and most banks and credit card companies will side with the cardholder who’s making the complaint.

Protecting your business from chargebacks doesn’t start when the payment is processed, nor does it end with being reimbursed for a single chargeback. The best way to protect your business from chargebacks is to establish clear, open communication with your guests and adhere to a consistent and secure payment process.

Always Get Your Guests’ Consent Before Doing Work

When your service advisors take guests through the repair order, they should listen carefully to what the client wants; service advisors can never be too careful.

If that means spending some extra time to review the repair order with the guest, it’s time well spent.

A little more time spent on the front-end can save you a lot more time on the back-end. Once the RO is thoroughly reviewed, you can get either written or verbal consent for the work and the cost. It’s worth keeping in mind that it’s easier to document written consent.

Using a shop management system like Tekmetric where the guest can see the courtesy inspection and click through and select the work they want and the work they want to put on hold can set clearer guidelines for both the guest and the service advisor.

Establish a Transparent Relationship with Your Guests

Providing excellent customer service is good practice for any auto repair shop, but it also goes a long way toward preventing chargebacks.

Let your guests know that you’re committed and dedicated to fixing their problem, even if that means taking their vehicle back into the shop if the guest is not 100% satisfied.

If you make it clear to your guests that they can come back to you about any concerns, they are far less likely to go to their bank or credit card company first. And it’s better to do a little extra work to ease the mind of your guest than it is to give away an entire repair order for free or go through legal hassles.

If your shop doesn’t already have one, consider establishing a clear and easy return policy and make it visible to guests via signage or with messaging on repair orders.

Simple policies such as “If you’re not satisfied, call us, and we’ll make it right” can go a long way in terms of letting guests know they should go straight to you if there’s something wrong.

After squaring away the basics and launching your career as an automotive service writer, the next step in the process of learning how to become a service writer is to gain hands-on experience within the automotive industry.

1. Find the Right Environment To Support Your Service Writer Career

Environment will have a major impact on the potential for your career to grow, flourish and shape in new ways.

You should consider whether you’d prefer to work in an independent repair shop, auto repair franchise, or dealership environment. Each work environment has its own perks and unique culture which might affect your decision.

You may also want to consider looking for a shop that has your career growth in mind, and one that has the right foundation like a cloud-based shop management system in place.

Features like texting your customers their inspection results have revolutionized the way service writers can interact with their clients.

And there’s also the team dynamics to think about. You might ask yourself: do I want to work for a high-volume brand with a large staff and management hierarchy, or would I prefer working with a smaller crew with more of a team feel?

Asking questions about a shop’s values upfront during the interview process can help ensure the work environment is a good fit for you and save a lot of headaches down the road.

Every element of your team is critical, from the technicians who complete the repairs to the service writers who assist customers and keep repair orders flowing through your shop management system.

They’re the people who are responsible for directly communicating with guests or working on vehicles. They're the core of your everyday operations, ensuring cars are brought in, estimates move along, and repairs are completed on time.

It is absolutely critical for great shops to start with great talent!

With the power of cloud-based shop management systems, auto repair shops can build the best team possible with the right mindset, culture, and approach to hiring and retaining the best talent.

We get that looking for a new shop management system can be overwhelming. There are a lot of options to wade through, and a lot of features you need to learn about. But most are probably of you are probably thinking “can this tool do what I need it to?”

To help you wade through all the options out there, the best way to find the right tool for the job is to look for information from the people using those tools every day. That means shop owners, general managers, service advisors, and technicians.

Of course, word of mouth is great, and it's always awesome to get the chance to talk to shop owners and workers in person at industry events, but you don't have to wait. With so many resources at their disposal, we wanted to help shop owners looking for a new shop management system leverage the wealth of information out here like online reviews, user groups, and case studies to help them make the best decision for their team.

With Digital Vehicle Inspections shops can go the extra mile and introduce a new level of transparency through a frictionless experience for the customer.

They can get clear pictures or videos to show them what's wrong, have the inspection results sent to their email, and approve or decline work with just the click of a button.

However, while this is super simple for the customer, for Service Advisors, finding the right inspection can be time-consuming. Especially when your shop is training new service advisors and introducing them to your standard operations.

To save your Service Advisor's time and effort, we are excited to announce our newest feature: Default Inspections. 

This feature streamlines the inspection process and makes it easier for you to provide great service to your customers.

With this latest update, we want to deep dive into one of the most beneficial features, buy now, pay later, so shop owners can see for themselves.

Tekmerchant was designed to help shop owners, like you, to build trust with customers, close out the day faster, and turbo charge shop’s payment processing by offering them a fully integrated payments solution, all managed by a trusted team. Building off your existing Tekmetric experience, Tekmerchant is another way to supercharge both your shop’s processes and your customer’s experience at the same time.

More specifically, we're really excited to tell you about our new buy now, pay later feature , making it easier for your guests to do business with your shop -- especially on those more expensive repair orders. 

With just the inclusion of Tekmerchant alone, Silver Lake Auto’s shop performance continues to grow. At the organization’s flagship store, average repair order (ARO) has increased by more than $200 a month!

And we’re excited to see how much those AROs grow with buy now, pay later.

Here, we explore the importance of service writers for an auto center or dealership. By the end, you'll have a comprehensive understanding of the service writer role, the qualifications they need, and what to look for when you’re hiring.

What is an automotive service writer?

A service writer is the liaison between the customer and the repair garage. Sometimes called a service advisor or coordinator, they run the front desk and interact directly with your customers. The service writer is essentially the face of the business, and they fulfill several duties that keep the service center functional.

What does an automotive service writer do?

Service writers do a lot for a repair center. Here are some of their main duties:

• Delivering exceptional customer service
• Coordinating and managing service appointments
• Monitoring and overseeing vehicle maintenance and repairs
• Maintaining accurate records of customer and vehicle data
• Generating service cost estimates for customers
• Facilitating effective communication between customers and technicians
• Handling billing transactions and manage financial records

The duties of a service writer typically depend on their qualifications. Understanding the foundational credentials can help you choose the right candidate for your maintenance center.

When you think about the most exciting aspects of being in the auto repair industry, it’s unlikely that the invoice and estimating process comes to mind. Drafting up invoices and getting approval on estimates can be a tedious process when all your team wants to do is get things rolling with the repair! And if you have a small team, it might be tough to find someone who can squeeze in the time to create an estimate and invoice for every single repair.

However, the auto repair invoice and estimating process is one of the most important parts of your business. By fine-tuning it, you can keep better track of repairs and sell more work, increasing your shop’s ARO.

Here are five main reasons why you should fine-tune your shop’s auto repair invoice and estimating process.