Repair shop management has many moving parts that require a collaborative environment. There's a lot of information to share, whether that's service advisors getting information from customers or providing updates to them, or even technicians and service advisors discussing the repair process of that customer's vehicle.
Without clear communication, you'll be playing a game of telephone, with details changing or getting lost, causing repairs to fall short, or forcing service advisors to pick up the phone and bug customers throughout the day. None of that is ideal.
That's why clear and effective communication is the key to providing great service in pretty much every industry, especially auto repair.
The better your team can communicate with your guests, the more at ease your guests will feel about their repairs, and the more likely they are to walk out of your shop happy and willing to come back to your shop the next time they need a repair.
In turn, your team will feel even more energized and incentivized to provide great customer service. Win-win!
Communication in Auto Repair Shops
The repair process usually starts with your service advisors, who have to make a great first impression on your guests. When a guest walks through your shop’s doors, a service advisor should immediately greet them and learn what’s wrong with their vehicle.
But if that service advisor has to then leave the desk to carry a message to the technicians, there may not be another service advisor available to offer a friendly greeting to the next guest who walks into your shop.
The more time service advisors have to spend away from their workstations, the greater the likelihood that your guests will end up in a queue, frustrated that no one is helping them.
As for your technicians, their work slows down, too.
Every time a service advisor walks up to a technician to get a repair status update, that technician gets pulled away from doing their work.
That time can add up, resulting in repairs taking longer to complete and your guests having to wait longer to get their vehicles back.
Embrace Cloud-Based Shop Management Tools For Effective Communication
Now, this might sound contradictory, but bear with us. Some repair shop management tasks require good, old-fashioned face-to-face conversation. But other communication tasks can be handled via technology.
The less time service advisors have to spend going back and forth from their workstations to the repair bay to get in-person updates from technicians, the more time they can spend providing quality service to your guests and leveling up their careers.
That's where the beauty of a cloud-based shop management system comes in.
Since the platform is handled and maintained in the cloud, shops always have access to customer information, and even the ability to directly communicate with customers or their team members from anywhere they have a mobile device with an internet connection.
How Repair Shop Management Software Streamlines Communication
Repair shop management software that includes true two-way texting, in-app notifications, and repair tracking can help your team cut back time on the back-and-forth between your service advisors and technicians, encouraging greater independence.
Whenever a repair gets approved, everyone on your team will be made aware of it with notifications.
From there, when parts arrive at your shop, the relevant technicians and service advisors will get text messages alerting them about the deliveries. That way, if a particular technician in charge of a repair happens to be out sick that day, and a job got authorized the previous evening, the service advisor knows that the parts are at the shop, and can assign another technician to complete the repair.
While the repair is in progress, the service advisor can use the software to monitor how far along in the process every repair at the shop is. They can also dive into the specifics of individual repairs and update the guest accordingly, so the guest can better plan their day.
When all of the work for the repair is completed, the software will capture it, and the service advisor will immediately know it’s time to call the guest to pick up their vehicle.
Throughout this process, team members don’t have to stop what they’re doing to double check for the latest updates, but instead can focus on their specific job to help quickly get customers back on the road.
Streamline Repair Shop Communication With Tekmetric
Tekmetric reduces the back-and-forth between your team members by giving service advisors a window into how far along technicians are with their repairs, and enabling technicians to keep service advisors updated about repair milestones—all without needing to leave their work areas. The results? Quicker repairs and happier guests.
Tekmerchant now includes the industry’sfirst “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.
If your customers don’t understand their estimate, their repair order, or the progress of their repair, they may become frustrated or even decide to take their vehicle somewhere else.
But when service advisors communicate effectively with customers, they’ll increase the likelihood that each customer will become a repeat customer who will refer their friends and family to your shop. In other words, clear communication with your guests can exponentially improve your profits.
Everyone at your shop has their own responsibilities, but they all need to be skilled in communicating effectively with each other and with your guests.
Your service advisors in particular need to be great at communicating with your guests because they are the ones who will set the stage for your guests’ experience at your shop.
Here are three service advisor tips for assessing and upgrading communication with your guests.
How organized is your shop’s schedule? When you look at it, is it easy to see gaps? Is it cluttered or organized?
Appointment scheduling should be a quick, simple process that gives you and your team more time to focus on customers and their vehicles.
Automotive scheduling software gives auto repair shops the ability to bridge the gap between saying “yes” to customers, while not overwhelming their team. Although “saying yes” is a simple concept, the ability to not turn people away will have a lasting impact on your customers.
Humans are not computers. As much as we try to keep up, the impact that smart software has on our day-to-day workloads is impalpable. What may take us hours to create, log, and plan can take computers minutes, if not seconds.
Although you have the ability to plan exactly what repairs need to be done, automotive scheduling software can help you coordinate times, notes, and schedules faster than it would take with a whiteboard or pen and paper. Implementing software into your shop’s scheduling routine can significantly improve your team’s capacity.
As your repair orders (RO) start to stack up, your team will need reliable scheduling software that can keep up with your shop’s growth.
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