Similarly, your automotive service advisors might enjoy talking to people but feel worn down after a long day of helping customers and building repair orders.
We've talked before about how modern shop management systems make it easier for your team to communicate, collaborate, and get things done.
Going a step further, there's an opportunity for shop owners or general managers to help create a culture within your repair shop that not only boosts productivity and maximizes efficiency, but rewards success and contribution as well!
What is Gamification for Auto Repair Shops?
You've probably heard it before: competition breeds innovation. And even in your shop, friendly competition can be a positive way to encourage productivity while keeping things engaging for your team.
Gamification is the process of using game-like mechanics and goal-setting for your employees in a way that encourages and supports productivity and high performance. A really basic example could be a "level-up" system in which workers are awarded different for completing tasks, which could lead to rewards outside of standard benefits.
According to the Gamification and Work study conducted by TalentLMS, employees say gamification makes them feel more productive (89%) and happier (88%) at work.
Here are six ways to gamify your auto repair shop’s workflow to incentivize your team and provide growth opportunities!
1. Track Shop Productivity with the Right Metrics
It helps to have a clear picture of your technicians’ current productivity levels so you can pinpoint which areas of their workflows might benefit from gamification.
For instance, if you notice that your technicians could be more thorough when conducting inspections, you might decide to create a game around seeing which technician can score the highest number of findings every day.
Similar to tracking your technician’s productivity, you can use real-time reports to track metrics that are unique to service advisors, such as the number of estimates written and Average Written Repair Order (AWRO).
From there, you can decide on gamification strategies for your service advisors that help them improve their performance while maintaining their independence.
Shops could set up a challenge where the service writer who builds the most number of estimates that month wins a reward, such as an extra day off or a gift card to a nice restaurant.
2. Create Shop-Wide Challenges
Shop-wide challenges are a great way to boost business for your shop, especially if you find that your shop has been going through a slower period.
Encouraging employees to collaborate on a shared goal can help drive productivity. It would make sense to think about creating shop-wide challenges that focus less on competing at an individual level, and more on working as a team to achieve a common goal.
Or if you do want that friendly competition, it's also possible to think about creating teams within teams, for example maybe pairing service advisors and technicians together and hosting a friendly leaderboard to see which team meets or excels at different metrics.
3. Implement Rewards and Badges
What good would challenges be without rewards? After all, that’s the basis of why gamification works! When we feel like we’re working towards a goal with a tangible outcome, those goals continue to motivate us to keep pushing and growing.
If you can track metrics like car counts or inspections, you can offer different rewards to technicians who complete certain thresholds of work on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
The same goes for service advisors; you can track ARO and create badges that incentivize them to close larger repair orders. These badges could take various forms, such as the shape of literal badges or ribbons that team members can pin onto their work uniforms to showcase their achievements.
You should also consider offering bigger rewards. For instance, at the end of every month, you can do something special and reward the highest performers with gift certificates or take them to their favorite restaurant.
It's important for auto repair shops, just like any other business, to create a supportive culture to not only attract but retain the best talent possible! Growing and supporting your team is not only cheaper in the long run, but a much more effective way of ensuring they deliver the best results.
4. Help Your Team Level Up
You can help your automotive service advisors and technicians achieve their goals by encouraging them to always learn new skills.
While continuous learning and education might seem like a baseline expectation for your team, it can be easy for longtime employees to get stuck in a routine and not make the time to learn about new tools, tricks, and technology.
Fortunately, you can help your team get back in the habit of learning by making a friendly game out of it! For example, you can reward the employee who attends the highest number of free online industry webinars in a quarter by giving them an award, like a gift card.
Employees who feel like they have a path forward and the opportunity to grow their careers will be more motivated to take on those responsibilities.
5. Celebrate Success
Rewards are great, but so are team-wide celebrations. Celebrations give your team members a way to relish in their accomplishments together and have fun while doing so.
Consider what shop owner Al Oramas of Pro Auto Care does:
“I celebrate different ‘wins’ with my employees. For example, I wanted my technicians to get ASA certified. Some were sitting on the fence. So I said that getting the certification would lead to a promotion. When one of my technicians passed his two tests, we threw him a party with cupcakes and balloons. It was a good time.”
As your team reaches certain milestones, you can throw them a party, take them on a retreat out of town, or organize a nice team dinner. When your team members can bond outside of work, they’ll come back to the shop refreshed, ready to communicate and collaborate to tackle what’s next.
Simplify Team Gamification With Tekmetric
Tekmetric’s real-time reports can help you decide the best challenges and rewards to use to incentivize your team. From there, you can continue to measure results as you take your shop to new heights!
Parts management is a critical function of any auto repair shop business. The only way to guarantee that you’re making a profit on the parts you sell on repair orders is by having an air-tight system for managing and tracking those parts from purchase to sale to reconciliation. The final step of making sure that each and every parts transaction is accounted for is probably the most important step—and the most misunderstood.
Some of the issues your auto repair shop will run into if you don’t carefully manage parts include:
Un-billed parts (forgetting to collect payment on parts)
Inconsistencies between your cost of goods sold and accounts payable
Inability to track and receive return credits
Inability to detect theft before it gets out of hand
Many of these issues can be avoided by using purchase orders to reconcile the parts you sell on repair orders.
But many auto repair shop business owners still wonder what some of the best practices are when it comes to parts management. How often should you be reconciling parts payments? Who should take on this task: you, your service advisors, or a dedicated parts manager? How do you make sure you’re getting the best value for the parts you buy and sell? How do you ensure that each and every part is being billed?
Let’s answer some of these questions, and unpack the best practices for parts management.
By streamlining your auto repair shop workflow, you can help your shop create a memorable customer experience that will keep them coming back next time they have a problem.
From the moment customers walk in the door to when they pick up their vehicle, your shop’s service advisors play a crucial role in creating a smooth, enjoyable experience.
Shop management software makes it easy to establish a standardized intake process so that shops can provide the same level of care to their customers every single time.
Service advisors can build repair orders in seconds, apply the right digital vehicle inspection templates with just a few clicks, and quickly text or email the results to the customer for approval.
This frees up their time to focus on the customer directly, address their concerns, and create a stress-free experience. If things go well the first time, and customers feel like they can trust your shop's recommendations, work they'll more than likely come back for future repairs.
Tekmetric, the leading Houston-based automotive repair technology company, has been recognized as a 2022 MOTOR Top 20 Award winner for its recent integration with RepairLink by OEConnection (OEC), a renowned technology provider for the aftersales industry.
The integration, selected by industry experts as well as public popular vote, allows shop owners to seamlessly order original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts directly from the Tekmetric Shop Management System.
For over three decades, the annual MOTOR Top 20 Awards have recognized outstanding new industry solutions across the automotive industry, from the most innovative tool or equipment to creating the best customer experience.
Winners are selected by automotive professionals and experts who voted over a thirty-day open voting process from a selection of this year’s most valuable contributions to the industry.
“As a leading shop management system, our team at Tekmetric shares a mutual belief with our partners at OEC that we best support shop owners in all their business needs by providing modern and relevant solutions,” said Sunil Patel, Co-Founder and CEO of Tekmetric.
“We are honored and humbled to have the Tekmetric-RepairLink integration recognized by both our customers – shop owners – and our industry peers as one of this year’s most innovative solutions.”
With its combination of Tekmetric’s cloud-based capabilities and RepairLink’s parts ordering platform, the integration builds upon Tekmetric’s existing parts ordering offerings to streamline the process of ordering OEM parts for auto repair shops. Through the integration, shop owners can track orders or returns with real-time online updates, as well as address orders in one screen, transferring any quoted parts and VIN numbers automatically into Tekmetric.
“Vehicle sophistication is growing rapidly, and all signs point to even more advancements, meaning it’s absolutely necessary for repairers to have enhanced access to critical parts and information,” said Bonnie Coleman, OEC Director, Mechanical Retail.
“This is why OEC is thrilled to partner with Tekmetric, and that this integration has been recognized for the valuable contribution it offers to the industry.”
Tekmetric, a Houston-based auto repair technology company, offers a cloud-based platform that enables auto repair shop owners to enhance productivity and increase profitability through its streamlined workflow management processes.
Designed by a former shop owner, Tekmetric’s platform drives shop efficiency through real-time data, a customizable user interface and customer-centric communication tools.
Since its launch in 2016, Tekmetric has disrupted the industry with its robust fully-integrated system, developed with an emphasis on customer transparency and user collaboration.
OEConnection Holdings’ portfolio includes OEC, the leading parts ecommerce technology provider for OEM distribution networks, serving over 20 OEMs and 100,000 dealership and repair customers.
Providence Equity Partners is the majority stakeholder of OEConnection Holdings; Ford Motor Company and General Motors are minority stakeholders.
The company is headquartered in the greater Cleveland area at 4205 Highlander Parkway, Richfield, Ohio, 44286
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