Traditionally, there are four pillars to an auto repair shop that all support one another: the shop owner, technicians, customers, and service advisors.
The integrity of the shop depends on each of these pillars in different ways. The shop owner needs to make the right calls and put the right systems in place for technicians and service advisors to do their jobs. Technicians must stay focused on repairs. And loyal customers keep the lights on.
By effectively leading your team, service advisors can support the other three pillars of the shop—and in turn, achieve balance and improve the quality of your job. Getting started in your Service Advisor career, or looking for some tips? Here’s how to lead your team with intention.
Strategize With the Shop Owner
During day-to-day operations, your service advisor duties and the decisions you make will directly influence the shop’s workflow. Because shop owners call the shots, and you see the day-to-day impact of their decisions, the relationship that you have with your shop owner is ripe for collaboration.
Tracking patterns can help you identify even more opportunities for shop growth:
As you delegate tasks based on priority and monitor your team’s performance, you might notice where there’s room for improvement.
If you see that a technician’s productivity has significantly decreased one month after a steady flow, you can work with them on an improvement plan to get back on track.
Service advisors might also notice where systems and processes can be improved. In many cases, productivity gaps aren’t the result of individual employees but rather the result of inefficient ways of doing things.
If you have a difficult time seeing the status of repairs or if you have to constantly leave your station to chase down a technician or a customer, a better shop management system can help add some transparency into the process.
Set Technicians Up for Success
One of your main service advisor duties is to maintain harmony in the shop. Finding the balance between helping customers and helping technicians keeps the wrenches turning.
It’s typically up to technicians to run inspections, but service advisors play a key role in handing off the inspection tasks.
If a customer comes into the shop concerned about a leak, you might prompt the technician to conduct a fluid inspection. One of your service advisor duties might even include creating vehicle inspection checklists that you can assign to technicians, helping them know exactly what parts of the vehicle to inspect.
After a technician completes the inspection, it’s now your turn to show the customer all the issues they found, write up an estimate, and sell the work. The more work you sell, the more work technicians have on their plates. And depending on how the shop pays service advisors and technicians, the more work you sell, the more money both of you make.
Once the work is sold, you can begin ordering parts and dispatching the jobs to one or multiple technicians. In many shops, ordering parts falls under service advisor duties, but some shops hire a parts manager to help find and purchase parts as well as manage the shop’s inventory. If your shop has a parts manager, you will still be responsible for communicating with them, especially when you write the parts side of the estimate.
When you dispatch work, you want to be careful to distribute the work evenly among technicians so that no one technician feels overloaded or that they’re not getting enough work. You might even want to know which technicians specialize in certain repairs so that you can foster better collaboration among technicians.
Support Your Team From the Ground-Up
It's also worth zooming out and thinking about setting your technicians up for success from a fundamental perspective. Everyone's working together as one piece of the puzzle at a your shop.
With service advisors keeping things organized, shop owners setting direction and goals and directing operations, technicians are the workers of your shop, the ones turning wrenches and fixing cars.
Something really interesting we uncovered in our recent Industry Index Report was that, on average, Tekmetric shops could pay their technicians almost $5 higher than the national average from 2022.
Shops should structure their team and payroll operations to, of course, maximize labor profit margins. But it's also critical that shop owners ensure employees are paid adequately for the work they do.
At the end of the day, one of the best ways to show your team how much you value their hard work is to compensate them well for the work they do, which will keep them motivated and driven to deliver great results!
Build Trust With Your Customers Through Transparency
Even though you work closely with the shop owner and technicians, the most important part of your service advisor duties is customer service.
A major element of leading your team is setting a good example for them on how to deliver great customer service.
Every day at the shop, you’ll need to take customers through the inspection and estimate process. Many customers will have questions about their car and the services you’re suggesting.
Probably the most challenging but rewarding of all the service advisor duties is building customer loyalty.
Standardized processes like including images with every Digital Vehicle Inspection sent to a customer, and features that help free up Service Advisors with fewer clicks or even detailed customer history, enable Service Advisors to create transparency, consistency, and amazing customer service at every step of the interaction.
When customers feel they can trust your shop, they'll be more likely to approve repairs. Especially those expensive, unexpected repairs.
By showing them exactly what's wrong, what needs to be fixed, and how much it'll cost, customers will be more likely to understand the why behind the repair, and not just focus on the cost.
Streamline Your Service Advisor Duties
Using Tekmetric’s many features, including the Job Board, Tech Board, and DVIs, you can set your team up for success—and create a shop environment where everyone can thrive.
Well, there’s an easy way to make sure none of that happens ever again.
Just like how it’s easier than ever to book an appointment with your doctor, or even your barber, in a matter of seconds online -- your auto repair shop can modernize the scheduling process too.
During a recent webinar, Join Kieran O’Brien Co-founder of ShopGenie Co-Founder, and our very own PJ Leslie, Head of Business Development at Tekmetric, offered their insight on how auto repair shops can provide a modern experience for their customers with online scheduling.
When it comes to auto repair, a great customer experience can make the difference between a customer returning for future repairs or not. At Tekmetric, we recognize the importance of creating an excellent experience for your shop’s customers that meets their expectations and keeps them returning again and again. To accomplish this, we strive to offer a solution that helps you meet four key pillars of the customer experience: convenience, comfort, trust and loyalty.
Convenience
For vehicle owners, choosing the most convenient shop is not necessarily about going to the closest shop. Rather, convenience is a matter of choosing the shop that makes their life easier.
With approximately 50% of all business shopping completed outside of regular business hours, convenience goes a long way – especially when it comes to auto repair. Customers may need to drop their vehicle off and pick it up later, rather than waiting in the lobby. They may even request to complete pick up after business hours. In all cases, convenient solutions can keep the pick-up process smooth and painless for both you and the customer.
Tekmetric’s two-way texting opens the door of convenience for vehicle owners. Two-way texting meets the customer where they are – anytime, anywhere. The vehicle owner can access updates to their repair process through a simple text, even from their office desk. Additionally, two-way texting can integrate with Tekmetric’s text-to-pay feature, so customers can pay from work or home, then come pick up the vehicle at their own convenience.
Comfort
Traditionally, we think of comfort in a physical sense. For example, we might say, “that chair is comfortable.” Customers choose who they do business with based on how comfortable of an experience they receive. Having the tools and resources that ease the tension inherent with getting a vehicle repaired is critical to making a customer feel comfortable. One example that is often overlooked is the payments experience.
With Tekmetric’s “Buy Now, Pay Later,” option, shop owners can offer vehicle owners the opportunity to complete necessary repairs and pay in installments over time. An experience like this can make vehicle repair affordable and comfortable, no matter what the customer’s budget is.
Trust
Trust between an auto repair shop and vehicle owners is paramount. Not only can it make the repair process smoother for all parties during the repair, but it also contributes to building a lasting relationship for future repairs. A customer is more likely to trust you when you have demonstrated that you can create an experience that is convenient, comfortable and transparent.
Digital vehicle inspections (DVIs) are a great opportunity to educate vehicle owners on the health of their car by providing them with recommended repairs accompanied by photos and videos. Through DVIs, technicians can offer a holistic, transparent evaluation of the customer’s vehicle by highlighting both areas in need of repair and parts that are working well. The result? Customers can gain a better understanding of the technician’s findings, making them more likely to approve work – and return for future repairs.
Loyalty
Prioritizing customer convenience, comfort and trust contributes to an enduring sense of customer loyalty. Building loyalty drives your shop’s bottom line in the long term. A good experience for one vehicle owner can lead to a domino effect within their personal network, as they return for future repairs and make referrals to others. Therein lies the hidden gem of long-standing, thriving businesses: strong customer loyalty.
One of the ways to strengthen customer loyalty is through education and clear communication. Our integration with MotoVisuals demonstrates Tekmetric’s commitment to education and clear communication by showing customers what is wrong with their vehicle instead of simply telling them. Informing vehicle owners about the health of their car accompanied with pictures and educational videos creates a dynamic that is forthcoming, honest and geared towards educating the customer while also ensuring the car gets repaired.
A customer-centric approach can drive your shop’s performance and establish an excellent customer experience. Use these four pillars – convenience, comfort, trust and loyalty – to drive your shop, and you will create a seamless experience for your customers from start to finish. Whether it’s meeting them where they are financially or educating them about a repair, you can establish a consistent, excellent experience that attracts and retains loyal customers now and far into the future.
Tekmetric Multi-Shop is designed to give owners everything they need to manage multiple shops in one place. Our goal is to help your team gain back time, make more informed decisions, and maximize your shops’ margins!
Our latest update for Tekmetric Multi-Shop, Shared Customer History, does just that! With stronger cohesion between different locations, multi-shop owners and service advisors can simplify their workflow and provide a more seamless customer experience.
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