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.
Alex recently sat down with Ratchet + Wrench Radio to discuss a whitepaper she authored on how shop owners can identify inefficiencies in their shops. During the conversation, she discussed how shop owners can recognize these inefficiencies and fix them with shop management software.
He and Sunil Patel started Tekmetric in 2016, and today, it’s become the preferred auto tech software in the auto repair industry.
Prasanth’s success prompted Authority Magazine to contact him for an interview on the formula for scaling success.
Below are just a few excerpts of Prasanth’s interview with Ken Babcock (CEO of Tango), along with bonus content for any entrepreneur seeking to scale their business.
Scaling with People
Let’s look at each component.
The Right People.
First, you have to have the team that serves your company the best.
At Tekmetric, we learned this the hard way. We had a phenomenal idea — but our first team wasn’t comprised of exactly all the people we needed.
And that meant we failed in the first round. It was disappointing, but we learned a valuable lesson, and the next round, we hired people based on the talents we knew we needed. It was the right move, and it set us in the right direction toward success. In fact, many of the team members from this second group are still with us today.
Tekmetric’s People Today: The Best Support in the Industry
Today, Tekmetric has a growing team of people working in various departments, such as customer support, sales, product development, and human resources.
Walk into our Houston headquarters, and you’ll see people from all backgrounds catching up on their week, discussing the next product update, or talking about the future of our company over a cup of coffee.
A large portion of our team works remotely. We have employees across the United States, including: </p><ul>
Cleveland, OH
Washington, DC
Denver, CO
San Diego, CA
But no matter where our team members are, one of the big things they have in common is that they’re passionate about providing Tekmetric’s customers with the best experience and support possible.
Our support team in particular is easy to get in touch with.
Customers don’t have to spend hours listening to annoying “waiting” music on the phone or anxiously sitting in front of their computers for a response to a support ticket.
The Tekmetric support team acts to get questions answered quickly and any issues resolved fast.
After all, auto tech software needs to move at the pace of the auto repair industry—fast—and support is an important part of that process.
Having the idea is great; getting it right as you grow is vital. You may not have the details fully fleshed out, but you must know what you want to do and the tools you need to get there.
I’ve always said, if you have a goal in mind, and you don’t know how to get there, then you’re doing something right.
If you do know how to get there, you’re not thinking big enough. Think long and hard about what you want your business to look like.
Once you figure out those initial steps and orient yourself in the right direction, you can think ahead to challenges like growing and scaling.
Tekmetric’s Direction Today: Driving the Auto Repair Industry Into the Future
The Tekmetric team keeps a close eye on what’s happening in the auto repair industry so that we can stay one step ahead when it comes to driving the auto repair industry into the future.
For example, Tekmetric listened to its customers’ desires for a true two-way texting feature, which enables shops and their customers to communicate more seamlessly than ever before.
Tekmetric also frequently adds to its list of integrations with industry-leading tools so that shop owners can set up workflows that work best for them.
And Tekmetric listens to what shop owners, technicians, and service advisors are saying, taking their feedback and suggestions into account.
We know that we cannot do this on our own, and respect the contributions of people throughout the industry.
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