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.
Here are some of the highlights from the podcast.
Alex Bunkers: "The saying time is money is no truer than in the automotive industry.
You're literally charging people time. I don't know of a single shop owner that would say they love having to dig through a file cabinet to find an old RO or a purchase order, and it's hard to keep track of tech hours on a journal or spreadsheet (which, we have some shops that come to us doing that).
So having a shop management system allows you to stop spending time in your business and more time on your business—or just more time at home or on vacation with your family."
As any shop owner knows, running a business is an art and a science. Yes, shop owners need to listen to their intuition, but they also need to follow the data.
Tekmetric generates several real-time reports that help shop owners track their key metrics for specific date ranges.
As service advisors punch key repair details into Tekmetric, the system tracks it all, and then generates real-time reports.
Tekmetric saves shop owners time spent calculating their metrics, so they can instantly access insights and spend more time thinking through what those numbers tell them.
By taking their time back, shop owners can grow their shops faster and more methodically."
Alex Bunkers: “You probably do have some idea if you work in a shop what your bottlenecks are. But before you start, evaluate where your bottlenecks are formally. I would start, actually, with breaking out all the processes in your shop into two tracks.
The first one being all of your customer-facing things and kind of a step-by-step of what your customer goes through.
And that's something we like to call the customer journey. For most shops, this is probably going to look something like vehicle drop off, DVI and diagnosis, send the estimate approval, order parts, right, all the way through to payment and pickup. T
he second track would be all the back office things you do, your inventory audits, parts reconciliations, right, things that aren't part of the customer journey."
With streamlined workflows, auto repair shop teams are more unified. They can collaborate from one central hub, all while playing to their unique strengths.
Shop management software with workflow features, like Tekmetric, simplifies the process of streamlining workflows. Shop owners can set up manageable, trackable, adjustable workflows that minimize communication gaps and inefficiencies.
Tekmetric offers three main workflow tools for shops: the Job Board, the Tech Board, and DVIs.
The first is the Job Board, which gives service advisors a whiteboard-esque view of every repair order moving along at the shop, so they can track the progress of each repair and everything is humming along smoothly.
Next, there’s the Tech Board, which shows service advisors what’s on each technician’s repair to-do list and how far along they are with their assigned tasks, so they can know which technician is free to take on the next repair.
Finally, with digital vehicle inspections (DVIs), technicians can pinpoint issues and suggest necessary repairs, send the information to service advisors to create estimates, and then send the estimates directly to customers’ devices.
These three workflow features help service advisors and technicians reduce miscommunication and stay organized.
Alex Bunkers: “When you don't track metrics or take a serious role in orchestrating your customer journey, you're leaving money on the table.
We've worked with thousands of shops during my time at Tekmetric and I definitely notice a correlation between the annual sales of the owners who are actively involved in the operations, building the structure, training their teams, and tracking metrics, versus those who are having a hard time just staying on top of everything.
So, sometimes you have to make yourself slow down to speed up."
Let’s look back one more time at the importance of analyzing the data. It only takes an hour each week, or two hours every other week, to dive deep into real-time reports and monitor how things are going.
For example, spending a few minutes each day just to thoroughly analyze the End-of-Day Report can yield a wealth of insights into how to make more money for your shop and take back time in other parts of the day.
Examining the data makes it easier to know how your shop is doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis, and course-correct more intentionally as needed.
Let’s start off by laying down the foundational launching points for starting your original shop: you found your niche, you got the right advice, you started with the right branding, and you impressed your customers by providing exceptional customer service. But there are four key factors that become extremely important as you go from being a single shop owner to a multi-shop owner.
You’ll want to:
To select the management tools that will catapult your multi-shop owner journey, you’ll first need to weigh the pros and cons of each of your shop’s processes and procedures.
From there, you can find a system that will uphold and scale the processes that made your shop so successful in the first place, but now across multiple locations. Later in this article, we’ll specifically dive into automotive repair software like Tekmetric and discuss how it supports you, your team, and your customers as you go from a single shop owner to a multi-shop mastermind.
Here’s how to choose an automotive repair software that makes it possible to grow and easily manage multiple shops.
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Thought Leadership
January 17, 2023
This month we were all about operational efficiency saving you time in messaging customers, managing employees, and staying on top of your inventory. Your time is your money. So be sure to take advantage of these features to save time in your day.
Effective communication is vital to a high quality customer experience. However, it can be time consuming and frankly, repetitive. That’s why we’ve introduced templated messages.
Your top 3 most used customer messages (inspection, estimate, and invoice) can now be customized to fit your shop’s communication needs and voice. These are fully customizable and paired with the ability to create any other message template you’d like.
Who’s this for?: Customers on our Scale Tier with Tekmessage turned on.
Learn more about default messages Learn more about message templates
Have employees that work across your multiple locations? Well, managing them just got easier. This month we put out two separate releases that allow you to seamlessly create, move between shops, and delete employees right from the MSO dashboard. No more hopping in and out of each shop’s profile.
Who’s this for?: Customers with our multi-shop add-on package.
Managing inventory effectively is crucial for shop operations. To help shops stay on top of pricing and quality changes we’ve introduced the Inventory Activity Feed. This will now automatically log stock orders, parts moved into inventory, and purchase order cost updates.
Who’s this for?: All customers.
In August, we launched our ALLDATA integration, offering you yet another option for labor guide integration with Tekmetric’s shop management system. Since then, we’ve continued to improve it including the introduction of vehicle specification information and a search bar for easy navigation.
Who’s this for?: Customers on our Grow and Scale Tiers who integrate with the ALLDATA labor guide.
Learn More About This Integration
Tekmetric Marketing now builds ready-to-send campaigns. The message is written and the audience is selected. All that's left is to review, personalize, and send.
Most shop owners know the fastest way to fill this week’s bays is by bringing back customers who already trust them — the ones whose vehicles you serviced months ago but haven’t seen since. Re-engaging existing customers is one of the most effective ways to generate new repair orders.
The problem is finding the time to do it. Figuring out what to send, who to send it to, and when to send it almost always loses out to the car on the lift or the customer standing at the front counter
That's where Tekmetric Marketing's Recommended Campaigns come in.
Instead of starting with a blank page, Tekmetric Marketing does the heavy lifting for you. It analyzes your shop’s data and recommends campaigns that are ready to go. The audience is selected, the message is drafted, and all that’s left is for you to review it, make any changes you’d like, and send.
No blank screen. No guesswork.
Just a campaign ready to help bring customers back.
Recommended Campaigns automatically surfaces ready-to-send campaigns tailored to your shop using the information Tekmetric already knows — your customers, previous campaigns, location, and seasonality.
You’re always in control.
Review the recommendation, personalize the message so it sounds like your shop, adjust the audience if you’d like, choose when to send it, and you’re done.
What used to take an hour staring at a blank screen can now be done in just a few clicks.
Like most shops, Fox River Tire & Auto in St. Charles, Illinois, wants to stay connected with customers and bring them back when the time is right. But deciding what campaign to send, then building it from scratch, takes time most shops don't have.
Recommended Campaigns gives Tammi and her team a starting point instead of a blank page. They review the recommendations, edit the suggested content to fit their brand, and send with confidence.
"Recommended Campaigns provide an excellent launchpad for re-engaging with our customers. Instead of starting from scratch, we refine the suggested content to fit our brand and send it with confidence. The process is straightforward, time-saving, and always delivers."
— Tammi Vest, Business Manager, Fox River Tire & Auto
Recommended Campaigns is part of a much bigger shift in where Tekmetric Marketing is headed.
For years, marketing platforms have been good at showing you what already happened: campaign reports, open rates, clicks, and dashboards. That’s valuable, but it still leaves the work on you.
Tekmetric Marketing is evolving beyond reporting. Increasingly, it’s helping you decide what to do next, and doing more of the work for you.
You’ve already seen this with Recommended Review Responses. When a customer leaves a Google review, Tekmetric drafts a thoughtful response for you to review and approve.
Recommended Campaigns is the next step.
Instead of simply telling you that you should market to your customers more often, Tekmetric Marketing puts a campaign directly in front of you — already drafted, targeted, and ready to send.
Your marketing should keep working even while you’re heads-down under a hood.
Since launching Tekmetric Marketing in the fall of 2025, thousands of shops have made it part of how they attract new customers and bring existing ones back.
We’ve also continued investing in the platform based on feedback from shops like yours.
Recent additions include:
Rich text and custom links in every email so you can create more engaging emails and link directly to booking pages, review sites, and promotions. Bold a headline, organize services into a list, and drop in links to your booking page, review site, or a promotion, in both campaigns and automated emails like review requests and service reminders.
Recurring blocks for your calendar for lunch breaks, holidays, staff meetings, and other recurring events. Easily add recurring lunch blocks, staff meetings or holidays to your calendar with a few clicks. No more appointments booked over your team events without you knowing.
Smarter marketing-source tracking on appointments and ROs: Automatically associate appointments and repair orders with the latest marketing campaign or automation that reached the customer. When a customer books after getting a message, the marketing source pre-fills with the most recent campaign or automation sent to them, so attribution is accurate without the guesswork.
Recommended Review Responses, helping you respond to Google reviews in just a few clicks.
Every one of these improvements started with feedback from shop owners looking for simpler, smarter ways to grow their business.
Keep it coming.
Already using Tekmetric Marketing?
Head to Marketing → Campaigns to see what's recommended for your shop and send your first campaign in just a few clicks.
New to Tekmetric Marketing?
See how Tekmetric Marketing helps shops bring customers back with online booking, automated reminders, review generation, and Recommended Campaigns.
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