Next Level: Using Data to Open a New Auto Shop Location

Transparency within the auto repair invoice process goes a long way. Most customer will feel uncertain about approving expensive repairs if they don't truly understand the need for them. That's why it's up to your shop to foster a trusting relationship by clearly showing customers the issue, and the need for a repair.

The right invoicing system will improve your shop’s workflow, save your team time, enhance your customers’ experience, and provide you with peace of mind.

Here’s how Tekmetric’s Cloud-Based Shop Management System provides seamless shop management that leads to frictionless payment processing:

• A service advisor can create a repair order and dispatch it to a technician to run a digital vehicles inspection (DVI).
• The technician conducts the inspection.
• The service advisor sends the customer a DVI report, which will outline all the findings.
• The customer can approve or decline individual line items on the repair order directly from their smartphone.
• Once the customer finishes scrolling through the estimate, designating the jobs they approve and decline, your shop has the go-ahead to begin the repair(s).
• Once repairs are complete, there’s a digital record of exactly what the customer approved. That way, when it’s time to pay, there are no surprises.
• Once the customer pays with their preferred method, they can look back over the receipt—from their computer or smartphone—and feel confident that your shop did exactly what you said you’d do.

After a job is completed and payment is received, all the details from the invoice and repair order become part of your reports and customer history in Tekmetric.

Tekmetric’s cloud-based automotive invoice software has designed the entire process to reduce bottlenecks, build trust, and ensure that customers know exactly what to expect.

By moving smoothly from one step to the next, your team will be able to boost their efficiency, manage their workflow, and spend the extra time building rapport with customers and getting their cars back to good working order.

When researching digital vehicle inspection software solutions, you should look for these seven core features that benefit your team and your customers:

1. A searchable DVI history
2. The ability for technicians to attach photos and videos to inspections
3. A color-coded system that indicates the severity of inspection findings
4. A direct tie-in to parts and labor data when building estimates
5. The ability to add canned jobs when building estimates
6. Digital authorization
7. Automatic saving and tracking of declined jobs

1. Searchable DVI History

When shopping for digital vehicle inspection software, make sure that you can easily look back on past inspection findings. When service advisors are able to quickly find out what was uncovered during previous inspections, they’re less likely to miss a repair opportunity and leave money on the table. They can simply pick up where they left off, helping your shop sell more repair work.

2. The ability for technicians to attach photos and videos to inspections

It’s one thing to tell a customer, “Hey, your car has really bad engine corrosion.” It’s another thing to show the customer a photo of the orange, brittle-looking rust all over their engine. When customers can see what’s really going on with their vehicles, they’re more likely to trust your team’s word and authorize repairs right then and there. They’ll be less inclined to shop around for a second opinion or tell you, “Oh, I’ll sleep on it and come back tomorrow.”

A digital vehicle inspection software that enables technicians to quickly attach photos and videos will help your team keep repairs moving along and build customer trust.

3. A color-coded system that indicates the severity of inspection findings

When explaining repairs to customers, the best route is often the simplest one. Instead of spending time speaking or writing about the intricacies of each inspection finding, service advisors can leverage digital vehicle inspection software that uses a simple, color-coded system to instantly give customers an idea of how urgent each inspection finding is. For instance, an inspection finding marked in green would indicate that everything is good to go, one marked in yellow would indicate something that might need attention down the line, and red would indicate the need for immediate action.

4. A direct tie-in to parts and labor data when building estimates

It’s vital for service advisors to weave in the right parts and labor data when building estimates. But doing so manually is a tedious process. With everything going on, service advisors might accidentally scribble down the wrong piece of information, resulting in the customer getting the wrong parts and labor pricing, or inaccurate parts availability.

Digital vehicle inspection software with a direct tie-in to parts and labor data helps service advisors create accurate estimates from the get-go, so there are no unpleasant surprises for anyone at the shop come estimate-review time.

5. The ability to add canned jobs when building estimates

On a daily basis, service advisors may find themselves writing the same types of findings on estimates over and over.

Digital vehicle inspection software with a canned jobs feature will eliminate a lot of this repetition by enabling service advisors to add pre-saved jobs to estimates in a matter of seconds. That way they can complete inspections faster and get estimates in customers’ hands as soon as possible.

6. Digital authorization

The easier you make it for your customers to authorize repair work, the more likely they’ll quickly do so. That’s where digital vehicle inspection software with digital job authorization steps in. Service advisors won’t have to track down customers to get their verbal or written approval to start repair work. Instead, customers can approve or decline individual jobs from the moment they get their estimate.

7. Automatic saving and tracking of declined jobs

Some repair work is going to get declined for various reasons. But don’t worry. Declined jobs show that your shop is thorough with inspections and estimates; your team caught every budding and existing issue with each vehicle. Think of declined jobs as future business opportunities for your shop.

However, remembering and keeping track of declined jobs can get tricky with a pen and paper method. Service advisors might totally forget about these opportunities, or if they remember, they’ll have to dig through stacks of paper or navigate folder after folder on a computer just to find the right estimate.

Digital vehicle inspection software that has a “declined jobs” feature enables your service advisors to pick up right where they left off the next time a particular customer walks into your shop. They’ll be able to search which jobs the customer declined last time, and recommend taking care of those issues. The results? You’ll get more business and impress your customers with your great customer service.

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The checkered flag is in sight, moving to the last stretch of the race at a good pace! As Tekmetric kicked off Q3, we focused on two main priorities: streamlining the customer experience and enhancing our relationships within the auto repair industry. With a customer-obsessed approach, Tekmetric is committed to driving product innovation through these two avenues, as we continue to evolve and better serve you – our partner shops.

Streamlining the Customer Experience from Beginning to End

This quarter, we made it our goal to continue helping shops improve the customer experience from start to finish. The customer experience involves streamlining operations at every level, so the vehicle can be safely repaired and back on the road as soon as possible. From estimate to the final payment, our end goal is to help you be as efficient as possible.

As part of our efforts this quarter, we sought to identify and eliminate bottlenecks to enhance shop efficiency while meeting customers where they want to be. We also implemented updates that many of you, our partner shops, have recommended to keep Tekmetric relevant to the entire shop experience. Together, these updates combine to create a stronger shop management system that helps your shop run smoothly and ultimately supports growth over time: 

• Simpler Day-to-Day With Enhanced Data Integrations: With ALLDATA and TireFitment,  service advisors can now get labor and tire data directly from these integrations within the Tekmetric platform.
• Tire Purchasing Made Easy: With Tire Suite you can manage all tire operations directly from the platform including compliance, regulatory standard adherence, inventory management, and even purchasing via our integration with PartsTech. 
• Increased Transparency in Inspections: Through our integrations with Advance’s MotoVisuals, you can now more easily educate your customers with repair animations.    iCustomer Comms Simplified: We added template messages and the ability to adjust text verbiage for estimate, inspection and invoice links, which limits redundancy and streamlines communication.
• Increased Payment Flexibility With BNPL: Our partnership with Affirm allows shops to meet vehicle owners where they are with flexible payment plans for nearly any budget or repair need, including Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). Customers who introduce BNPL see a 3x increase in ARO. 

Growing Relationships Within the Industry

As Tekmetric continues to streamline and enhance the customer experience, we are also focused on strengthening our relationships within the auto repair industry. As a customer-obsessed shop management system, we aim to support shops in providing the highest quality service to vehicle owners they can – and this wouldn’t be possible without valuable feedback and insights from you, our partner shops. This approach allows us to better understand the real challenges you face, so we can provide innovative solutions that help you accomplish your goals and succeed in a market where the consumer expects more from their repair shops.

You may have seen us at the Shop Hackers Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where Adam McInturff, VP of Sales and Phil Acree, Head of Payment Sales presented on our latest features and upcoming innovations. We also spoke to many of you about the trends you are seeing in the industry and how Tekmetric can support your needs – from hiring service writers to succession planning. We continued these conversations at ATE Spokane in Washington and ASCCA in California and gathered key insights as we look ahead to the end of 2024 and the beginning of a new year. 

Thanks to you and your key feedback shared through these conversations, Tekmetric has been able to provide excellent service and innovative solutions throughout this quarter, resulting in recognition from the G2 Summer Awards in these categories: Overall Leader, Best Usability, Most Implementable and Momentum Leader. In addition, Tekmetric was named the best auto shop management software by G2. This recognition is a significant testament to the support of each of you, your teams and the valuable insights you provide.  

Aspiring To Inspire with Thought Leadership

For Tekmetric, customer relationships aren’t confined to the walls of a conference room. We also aimed to share the knowledge through webinars and conversations with industry outlets that sparked important conversations about what’s changing in our industry. 

With our webinars, our aim is to help you uncover actionable insights that you can apply to grow your shop. Some of these conversations included our webinar, “Innovate to Elevate,” led by John Phelps, Director of Channel and Partnerships, where he talked about transforming the customer journey with the end goal of streamlining operations and boosting customer satisfaction. Similarly in our payments webinar, Phil Acree, Head of Payments covered the current state of consumer financing and how shops can enhance the customer experience regarding the payment process.

We also shared this knowledge through key industry outlets, so you can share and discuss with your team, including:

• Future proof your shop exit strategy. P.J. Leslie, Director of Business Development, along with Matthew Schwab, owner of Clutch Automotive, shared tips to prepare your shop for the future and retirement by building a well-crafted exit plan so exiting shop owners can confidently step into the next phase of their lives, knowing they have set up a legacy for their shop.
• Strategic use of evergreen and real-time data. We also published an article with Vehicle Service Pros titled, “Using numbers to supercharge your shop’s performance, where we discussed how to use real-time and evergreen data to expand your shop.

As we leave an upbeat Q3, Tekmetric continues to keep its eye on the finish line for this year: helping shops enhance the customer experience through product innovation. We are very proud that our commitment to a two-way relationship with our customers has been the driving force behind every improvement and our collaborative approach with other leaders in the industry enables us to build a steady foundation for continuous innovation. We aim to continue measuring up as we enter the final quarter of 2024.