Three Tips For Growing Your Career as a Service Writer

Abruptly shifting from task-to-task a handful of times throughout the day can disrupt your workflow and distract you from spending time with customers. And let’s face it: we’re all prone to tunnel vision when we’re focused on mundane tasks that can probably be automated for us.

For the shop owners and service advisors who have been in the game for a while now, it’s likely you already have your shop’s tedious functions down, but you may still have a major opportunity to save time. And for those of you who are new to the game—whether you just started your shop or are in the process of getting things up and running—you might have clicked on this blog to find your solution to your shop’s auto repair receipts. There are many auto repair receipt options out there. You could get a template or use a basic PDF. But the modern customer experience can be met with a shop management system that has a receipt process built into it.

Changing even a small procedure in your shop can have a big impact. Streamlining your auto repair receipts, for example, can save your shop time, enhance your shop’s customer experience, and even boost transparency within your shop. Let’s say your shop takes about five minutes to fill out one receipt manually. So if you have about 25 repairs in a day, that five minutes adds up to around two hours a day—simply filling out receipts. You shouldn’t have to spend time rewriting the same information over and over. The same information that you’ve already plugged in during the estimate process should automatically go into the receipt for you.

But when it comes to receipts, you can’t just cut corners to save on time. You need to make sure you include all requirements on an auto repair receipt—at minimum. Let’s take a look.

HOUSTON – October 31, 2023 – Tekmetric, industry leading automotive repair shop management system, has released Smart Jobs, the industry’s first smart job building feature that quickly builds jobs in just one click to help streamline the creation of repair orders. In just one click, shops can quickly build an estimate with parts and labor, check on-hand inventory levels and shop at preferred vendors right in Tekmetric. This revolutionary feature enables service advisors to focus on customer service while simultaneously reducing workload.

"When it comes to running an independent auto repair business, efficiency is paramount," said Sunil Patel, CEO of Tekmetric. "With Smart Jobs, shops have the opportunity to respond to customer needs quickly and accurately, saving time and hassle for everyone. This is a game-changer for our industry, and we are confident that it will revolutionize the way shops operate and deliver customer service."

With one click in Tekmetric, service advisors can now build a job based on the vehicle selected, and Tekmetric will automatically:

● Create a job title

● Add the relevant labor line and apply a labor matrix

● Add the necessary parts, filters and fluids and apply a parts matrix

● Check inventory for all parts, then fetch them from your favorite vendors if not in stock

● Apply a locked package price to the entire job

● Apply any necessary fees

In addition to building repair orders more efficiently, Smart Jobs also accelerates the parts ordering process. Not only can the feature automatically apply the correct quantity of parts, filters and fluids to the repair, but it also shops for out-of-stock items and prepares an order within Tekmetric. For quick jobs, like cabin air filters, Smart Jobs has been able to save approximately one minute per job, adding up quickly throughout the day. Smart Jobs can also help new employees to begin building jobs faster. This can lead to improved productivity and reduced errors, helping employees to produce high-quality work earlier in their training.

Smart Jobs will be available to Tekmetric customers in 2024. To request pricing or schedule a demo visit https://www.tekmetric.com/feature/smart-jobs.

About Tekmetric

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. For more information, visit www.tekmetric.com.

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!