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The Auto Repair Industry is experiencing a number of changes. From larger economic shifts to a growing technician shortage, its now more crucial than ever to set your shop up for growth.

Often in moments of chaos there are windows of opportunity.

After every economic decline, no matter how steep—the housing crisis, the dot-com bust, even the Great Depression—the world has managed to come back.

Times of economic downturn are difficult, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. As far as the virus is concerned, economists are even speaking of a “V” curve. Meaning just as fast as our economy slowed down, it may pick up that quickly too.

In other words, have hope. There are opportunities during slow periods to adjust how you operate and how you service your guests.

These opportunities can help you navigate a tricky economy and prepare your shop for when business picks up again. This may be an unprecedented time in human history, but it’s also an open window for innovation.

‍What you do now will have a big impact on the future of your business.

If less cars than usual are rolling into your shop for repairs, you now have some time to work on streamlining your process, being more efficient, eliminating waste (of both time and materials), and improving your marketing and guest experience.

How should shop owners approach this situation? In a way, the same way you might approach business at any other time: finding ways to innovate and improve.

It might sound simple, but it's true: smartphones and digital experiences have revolutionized the way people interact with businesses. We've all come to expect near-instant responses, simplified checkout processes, and visibility into what we're paying for.  

And independent auto repair shops aren't any different. There's a unique opportunity where your business can meet customer's expectations with modern service and modern operations.

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How Can You Make Your Auto Repair Shop More Modern? 

We keep saying that word "modern," but what does that really mean for auto repair shops? When we step back and think about the modern independent repair shop, we could sum it up with three core concepts:

1. The freedom to run your business in a more contemporary way with data, industry knowledge, flexibility and independence to work as in whatever way is best for you and your shop.
2. The power to simplify your shop's operations can gain complete visibility, control and opportunity to determine the best path forward for every decision.
3. The best experience for your customers, every time, for every job, whether that's a coolant flush and pad replacement, or a turbo rebuild.

With the right tools in place, your team members won’t have to stress about extra oversight and can feel empowered to take the reins at work. And your customers can have a more active say in the repair process.

One of the best tools for modernizing your business is a modern, cloud-based shop management system.

Abruptly shifting from task-to-task a handful of times throughout the day can disrupt your workflow and distract you from spending time with customers. And let’s face it: we’re all prone to tunnel vision when we’re focused on mundane tasks that can probably be automated for us.

For the shop owners and service advisors who have been in the game for a while now, it’s likely you already have your shop’s tedious functions down, but you may still have a major opportunity to save time. And for those of you who are new to the game—whether you just started your shop or are in the process of getting things up and running—you might have clicked on this blog to find your solution to your shop’s auto repair receipts. There are many auto repair receipt options out there. You could get a template or use a basic PDF. But the modern customer experience can be met with a shop management system that has a receipt process built into it.

Changing even a small procedure in your shop can have a big impact. Streamlining your auto repair receipts, for example, can save your shop time, enhance your shop’s customer experience, and even boost transparency within your shop. Let’s say your shop takes about five minutes to fill out one receipt manually. So if you have about 25 repairs in a day, that five minutes adds up to around two hours a day—simply filling out receipts. You shouldn’t have to spend time rewriting the same information over and over. The same information that you’ve already plugged in during the estimate process should automatically go into the receipt for you.

But when it comes to receipts, you can’t just cut corners to save on time. You need to make sure you include all requirements on an auto repair receipt—at minimum. Let’s take a look.

Hello Shop Owners, Sunil Patel, Co-Founder of Tekmetric here.

I’m writing this blog because I believe it’s both an honor and a duty to be a leader in business.

Recently, I was awarded by Houston Business Journal as a Most Admired CEO of 2020, and this got me thinking about the leadership principles that have helped me along the way and made Tekmetric what it is today.

Not only do I lead a team of great talent, but I also speak with and have the pleasure of doing business with many strong leaders, whether it be shop owners, other entrepreneurs, or even other leaders within the company.

The fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t have been able to build a robust shop management software without my team. Watching them succeed and set each other up for success is hands down the most rewarding part of my job.

It’s a privilege to work with talented and innovative individuals that make me proud each and every day.

Playing a part in helping them grow and flourish makes me feel like I have served a purpose larger than simply building a product or making money.

Inspired by the HBJ honor, I took the time to sit down and outline a few of the leadership principles that I have always relied on.

They focus on listening, learning, and recognizing everyone as an individual. I hope they help you and your team grow as people and as a unit.

1. Listen to Your Team

Good leadership relies on a strong feedback process.

Listen to your team, whether it’s an idea or how they’re feeling so that they know you care not only about their contributions but also about them as people.

Once a week, I sit down with the leaders of different departments and simply listen to how things are going. What are the current challenges they’re facing? What are some successes they’re proud of?

What do they feel they could use more support with? Giving them the room to voice their concerns, their desires, and their victories provide them with a model for being the best leader they can for the people they lead.

Even when we’re hiring new team members, we like to get input from our current team to make sure we’re considering all voices in the process.

No idea is a bad idea. Even the ideas that you never end up using still have value because they can spark other ideas, show your team a new perspective, or simply show the person who voiced them that they were included as part of the team or project.

The truth is that estimates tie into professionalism. When the first oral surgeon gave you an estimate for your wisdom tooth removal surgery, they helped you:

• Manage your expectations: You knew what kind of procedure to expect, and how much you could expect to pay for it.
• See that the office cared about your wellbeing: The oral surgeon and their staff wanted you to make the best choice possible and gave you a resource to accomplish that.
• Have a reference point for the future if any issues come up: For example, if you got charged a couple of hundred dollars more after your procedure, you’d have documentation to show that the extra cost wasn’t part of the plan.
  

Wisdom tooth removal surgery isn’t cheap. Neither is auto repair work.

Just like a professional oral surgeon’s office explains to patients what their options are and how much they should expect to pay for procedures, a professional auto repair shop shows drivers what their repair work options are and how much they should expect to pay for repairs.

That professionalism is what helps you win over and retain more customers. If your customers are deciding between different auto repair shops, they’ll likely stick with the business that shows the most professionalism.

Old habits are hard to break, especially when it comes to the physicality of handwritten notes.

A pen and a piece of paper can provide a better sense of security—they’re tangible and tactile. In our minds, we view paper as something we “own”, which makes it seem more reliable and easily obtainable.

But is pen and paper more reliable than digital tools?

Although the trusty pen and paper method does have perks, there’s a time and a place for everything. Which leads us to paper’s modern day competitor: digital software.

Switching paper out for a modern, digital format will enhance legibility, make archiving far easier than having file cabinets full of papers, and will strengthen collaboration across your team. Not to mention, you don’t run the risk of a fire or flood destroying your shop’s backed up data the way a natural disaster would with paper files and documents.

Now, this isn’t to say that digital software will replace every single piece of paper; however, software can successfully improve the efficiency of projects—especially when it comes to running an auto shop.

Let’s bring it back to the initial question: is automotive work order software a replacement for pen and paper? The rough answer is "yes," although there may be times where you still want to have paper as an option.

But many pen and paper tasks can be replaced, and should, for better productivity and organization. Automotive work order software can astronomically enhance your shop’s productivity and organization in ways that traditional methods cannot.

In your personal life, paper can take precedence in whichever way you wish. But in your shop, opting in for a digital system instead of pen and paper has more pros than cons.

The answer to that question depends on a number of factors, and getting the right categorization for each part is crucial for maintaining healthy profit margins while minimizing the risk of rush orders and frustrated customers.

Inventory and Stock Management to Minimize Complexity

When you and your team are replacing parts during repairs, it’s important to consider what parts you have on hand versus what parts you’ll need to order.

If you don’t, you risk overstocking and sinking money into too many units of a particular type of part, or understocking and making a customer wait while you hope that the expedited shipping for a part pulls through.

By having the right inventory and stock management processes in place, you can make it easier for your service advisors and technicians to avoid frustrations.

Here are some best practices for inventory and stock management at your auto repair shop.

We’ve all fallen under a “fear of the unknown” spell—whether it stems from waiting for your doctor’s results to come back, or not hearing that check-in text alert from your kid while they’re out with friends. The waiting game can cause our imaginations to run wild with thoughts of “what-if’s.”

Similarly, auto repair customers like the ability to see what’s getting done to their car, if any additional issues were found, and exactly where their car is in the repair process. You can build customer loyalty and enhance your customer service by giving them the ability to see and confirm that everything is going smoothly and according to plan with their vehicle repairs.

Visibility and transparency go beyond just shop-to-customer; it also helps bridge imagination and productivity gaps within your shop.

Expanding your business into multiple locations is exciting but can come with challenges. One of these challenges being, the ability to manage data and reports across all of your shops.

To simplify this process, Tekmetric has developed Multi-Shop, our most powerful set of tools and reports to easily manage multiple shops through custom shop comparison reporting, organization-level reports and centralized data management.

Multi-Shop allows you to gain back time, make better business decisions and maximize your margins. 

When thinking about how to run an auto repair shop, we might start by thinking about a well-managed football team. The different players know what they’re responsible for, show up to accomplish their jobs, put their best effort into everything they do, and perform their best as a team. Players have each others’ backs both on the field and off the field. They can think on the fly, and move as a unit toward the end zone.

How do your players work together? When mechanic shops assemble the right team, devise the right strategy, and run the right plays, they can win, too. Service advisors can stay informed about what’s going on with every repair order at any given moment in time, switch easily between tasks even when the shop is busy, and provide excellent customer service. Technicians are able to focus on their work and spend more time turning wrenches. And customers? They’ll get their cars back fast and drive away with a good impression of your shop.

Shop owners who think more deeply about how to manage a mechanic shop are rewarded for their efforts. Well-managed shops see exponential returns. Stellar team performance leads to customer satisfaction and repeat business. The more successful your shop, the more you can invest back into your team, continuing the cycle of success for all involved.

With so many different aspects of running an independent auto repair shop, the teams that keeps cars moving through your bays and repair orders flowing through your workflow function best when they run like a cohesive unit.

Just think about your favorite sports team. The players share a common goal, whether it be scoring a touchdown or hitting a home run, and they encourage each other to always perform at their best.

But there’s usually one person on the team who everyone looks to for guidance and inspiration: the team captain. Every player in the auto repair industry is important—from the technicians to the parts managers. But service writers are like the team captain. They keep everyone on track.

If you’re ready to learn about a challenging but rewarding career where no two days are the same, you’re in the right place.

Although our goal is to help you determine the best ways you can enhance your auto repair shop profit margin, we’re still going to shoot straight with you: opening a shop isn’t easy.  You’re going to have to put in some hard work, but exceeding your goals will be well worth it. Along the way you’ll learn new things through trial and error and encounter some unexpected challenges, but who doesn’t when they step outside of their comfort zone, pursuing something they’re passionate about?

One question you may have is, "Is it even a good time to start an auto repair business?" That's a tricky question to answer. Coming off the heels of a pandemic in an economy that has seen better times might scare any new business owner. But remember, some of the most long-standing businesses were started during economic recessions.

Although there’s been better times to start an auto repair business, your shop can still be successful. And it’s clear that the demand for automotive repairs isn't going anywhere.  

Take a look at these statistics on the latest automotive repair trends:

1. In 2022, there will be an estimated 76 million vehicles aged 16 years or older in the United States.
2. It’s estimated that by 2022, 18% of American households will use an auto repair service at least once a year.
3. The number of vehicles on the road that are 12 years or older is anticipated to increase by 15%.
4. In the past decade, the average length of time that drivers own their automobiles has increased by 60%.

As you can see, the need for vehicle repairs will likely increase due to the fact that drivers are choosing to stick to their trusty ol’ vehicles rather than opting for a shinier new ride. But regardless of whether the auto repair industry’s profit trends are growing or plateauing, making smart business decisions will not only prepare your shop for future transformation but also help your shop survive disruptive trends in the future.

Let’s get to boosting your shop’s short and long-term profits.  

We’ve listed each of these tactics in the order you should take during each of your business growth phases: the seed stage, the start-up stage, the established stage, or the expansion stage. The order of these 10 tactics does not determine their importance; each tactic complements one another to put your shop in the fast lane to success.

Fast Facts

• ‍Industry size and past growth: The U.S. auto mechanics industry is worth more than $68 billion in 2022 and has seen steady growth the past five years. ‍
• Growth forecast: The U.S. auto mechanics industry is projected to experience continued growth in the coming years and expand by more than 10% by 2026.
• ‍Number of businesses: As of early 2022, 264,121 auto mechanic businesses operated in the US.
• ‍Number of people employed: As of early 2022, the United States auto repair industry employed about 561,359 workers.