Digital Vehicle Inspection software enables auto repair shops to go beyond a traditional paper system for inspections and repair order estimates.
Customers have become accustomed to a digital experience every time they shop, and having their car fixed is no different. Auto repair shops need to update their processes to meet those expectations. When look specifically at auto repair shops, there are even more opportunities to go digital beyond receipts.
Printed estimates may seem like a professional way to present work to customers. But the problem is that paper estimates don’t really show drivers what’s wrong with their vehicles.
The result? Customers approve a small sliver of work, or worse, go to another auto repair shop for a second opinion.
Digital vehicle inspections not only save time and paper but also build trust and enhance the customer experience. Not to mention, they help sell larger repairs and increase customer loyalty.
What is a Digital Vehicle Inspection?
A digital vehicle inspection is an inspection method for auto shops built directly into a shop management system.
Like your usual inspections, DVIs are performed by technicians on every vehicle to identify repair work usually with a tablet or phone, to record the results.
How Does a Digital Vehicle Inspection Work?
Because digital vehicle inspections are just one feature of cloud-based shop management systems, they work as a single step in your shop's workflow.
When they're assigned a repair job, technicians carry out their digital vehicle inspection right in the app, and they can even take pictures or videos to quickly attach their findings to that repair order estimate.
That estimate can then be sent directly to customers for approval through text message or email, and all of this information will be tracked by your shop management system.
The 3 Biggest Benefits of Digital Vehicle Inspections
We'll cut to the chase: digital vehicle inspections can make your shop more money. With DVIs, customers will know what's going on, they'll be more likely to approve repair orders, and you'll see your shop's average repair order skyrocket.
1. Save Time
Once the technician completes an inspection, they can send it to the service advisor to share with the customer and build a repair order. Shops can setup a default inspection, attach canned jobs, and get repairs approved in minutes. This frees them up to focus more on the customer directly, and maybe even start looking into their history with the shop and provide a personalized experience.
2. Sell More Repair Work with Transparency
It's not easy to get repair orders approved simply because it’s challenging to show customers what’s going on with their vehicles. Typically your customers don't know how cars work, and they're far too familiar with horror stories of family members or friends feeling ripped off.
This industry relies on trust: when customers can trust that your shop is doing right by them, they're be more accepting of the necessary costs, which usually results in customers approving larger repair orders.
Because technicians can include pictures, videos and even other files like repair manuals, customers can see exactly what's wrong. And when they can see what's wrong, they know why something needs to be fixed or replaced. They can trust your shop is doing necessary work.
3. Track Declined Jobs
Shop management systems with built in DVIs also provide more visibility into what’s approved and what’s declined without the service advisor having to re-enter any information.
Any job that the customer declines from the estimate (which is built from the DVI) will be sent to the “declined jobs” list on the customer’s profile. Being able to track declined jobs enables your shop to keep in touch with customers, which builds customer loyalty and even gives you an opportunity to pick up more business when times are slow.
Common Digital Vehicle Inspection Features
Thanks to tablets and smartphones, technicians can take advantage of touch screens and cameras to build out comprehensive digital vehicle inspections faster than they ever could with a pen and clipboard, while minimizing mistakes and making your shop more money.
Include Images, Videos or other files Go beyond just a simple checklist and enable techs to include pictures, videos, pdfs with diagnostic results, or even links add links to web sites with relevant info.
Leverage Canned Jobs Add canned jobs to inspections to quickly build out repair orders for common work. Spend less time on each individual RO and quickly add in parts like BG products.
Share through email or text Send your digital inspections right to your customers email or even text them a link so they can quickly view what's wrong and approve any work that needs to be done.
How to use a Digital Vehicle Inspection
Tekmetric makes it extremely easy to create digital vehicle inspections that are well-organized and simple for technicians to follow. Your shop can create as many different inspections as you need.
If your shop offers body work, repair work, and transmission work, you may want to create three different inspections that focus on the type of repair work specific types of customers come in for. You can set a default inspection to automatically
Tekmetric also lets you organize inspections by “groups,” which helps guide technicians through checking different areas of the vehicles. Groups can also represent different types of maintenance.
For example, your shop can create an inspection group for “scheduled maintenance” to remind technicians to check the odometer and recommend maintenance at different mile marks (3,000 mile service; 5,000 mile service; 6,000 mile service; etc.)
When you create a digital vehicle inspection in Tekmetric, you can also tie different inspection tasks to canned jobs, which makes it easier than ever for the service advisors to build an estimate and recommend work tied to the technician's findings.
Running any business is an art and a science. There are tons of daily and long-term decisions you have to make to continue growing your business.
As a shop owner, you have to make sure your employees and customers are happy, that repairs are efficiently getting through the door, and that your shop is profitable.
The Art of Running Your Business
Intuition and emotional intelligence are what make up the art of running your shop.
Your intuition will steer the split-second decisions you make when it comes to things like helping technicians work through a challenge, answering customer questions, exploring business opportunities, and networking with partners. Intuition can be a good thing—after all, it’s the culmination of the experiences you’ve had before. For example, the bad gut feeling you get about a potential business partner can save you from a world of frustration.
Your emotional intelligence is also a crucial part of running your business. As a leader, you have to be there for your team, which means knowing when someone is having an emotionally off day so you can help them work through the situation. Your emotional intelligence is a guiding compass for your team's emotional responses to each other and to customers.
Some days, you or your service advisors will run into customer challenges. Your service advisors will follow your lead, so if you use your emotional intelligence and show empathy and understanding when a customer is having a bad day, that positive example will rub off on your entire team. Your service advisors will show patience and grace in similar situations.
However, while intuition and emotional intelligence are valuable, you can’t rely on them alone. You also need to test your business decisions—your business “hypotheses,” if you will—with data so you can know whether or not you’re on the right path.
Payment methods aren’t simply about an exchange of money. They're personal. And in the ecommerce environment, offering the right payment methods is like extending an invitation — it lets your customers know they're welcome here and they can expect a seamless experience.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) methods provide even more convenience and flexibility, allowing customers to break their purchases into smaller payments. When you add BNPL to your menu of payment options, you open the door to even more customers and to higher-value sales. In fact, a recent survey found that more than 70% of businesses using BNPL report higher conversions, average order value, and customer acquisitions.
We've partnered with Stripe to make Affirm’s BNPL payment methods available to your customers. Businesses that offer BNPL through Stripe on average see a 24.5% increase in sales. Adding Affirm to your mix of payment methods can help your business:
1. Boost Conversion
A $400 price tag, for example, might discourage some customers from clicking buy, but when they can split that cost into four $100 payments, the transaction may be more appealing. That's how BNPL methods can help motivate your customers to make an order, driving up your conversion rate.
2. Increase Your Average Order Value
BNPL methods may encourage your customers to order more lower-value goods at one time, increasing your average cart size. It may also encourage them to purchase high-value goods, such as luxury items or furniture. In either case, your customers have greater ability to place higher-value orders, which can help drive revenue.
3. Reach More Customers
BNPL methods can help you tap into new market segments by making a purchase easier on a customer's budget through a series of smaller payments. These payment methods are especially attractive to younger customers who may not have a credit card or the ability to pay for large purchases in a single payment.
The flexibility of buy now, pay later is a huge benefit to your customers—one that can inspire them to make a purchase. And—maybe the best part—this all happens without extra work on your part, and Affirm takes on any potential risk.
With Affirm, you get paid in full immediately, while your customer owes only a portion or nothing up front. Affirm handles underwriting the customer and collecting payments, and assumes liability if a customer files a fraud-related dispute, so you can focus on growing your business.
Click here to learn more about how Tekmetric and Stripe can help you optimize your checkout
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.
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