Improve Your Auto Repair Shop's Workflow With a Shop Management System

June 1, 2023

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Simplify Your Shop's Workflow

Once the service advisor has entered the relevant customer notes into your shop management platform, the guest needs to know what’s actually wrong with their vehicle so they can decide what work needs to be done.

At this stage, service advisors can use digital vehicle inspections (DVIs) to give customers a visual of exactly what’s wrong with their car.

DVIs help build trust with customers because they add an additional layer of transparency. Guests can see with their own eyes that the repairs listed are necessary. DVIs also make your shop more efficient because technicians and service advisors will be able to work with the same information and collaborate in one place.

Once the technician has finished their inspection and creates a DVI, the service advisor can put together a repair estimate to send along with or after the DVI. That repair estimate should break down each repair so the guest can see exactly what works need to be done, and the urgency of the work.

Modern shop management tools streamline the creation of DVIs and repair estimates. Technicians and service advisors can collaborate in real-time to create accurate, easy-to-understand inspection reports and estimates, and service advisor can dispatch a technician to run a DVI in real-time.

The technician can then go through a pre-set list of tasks for different types of inspections.

Tighten Up Your Shop’s Parts Ordering Process

Once the guest has approved specific jobs, the service advisor should know exactly which parts to order (if they aren’t already in the shop’s stock or inventory).

Your shop’s service advisors should be able to quickly and easily shop around for parts, place orders, and keep technicians in the loop about when the parts have arrived. As for parts reconciliation, a comprehensive auto repair shop management platform should automatically keep track of purchase orders and play nice with your accounting software.

Shop management software can further simplify parts ordering by integrating with major parts vendors, enabling service advisors to place orders with just a few clicks. If the service advisor calls up the local parts dealer instead, they can place an order and make note of it within individual repair orders.

The service advisor can add additional notes, such as who the point of contact is at the local dealer and what number to call if needed.

With a comprehensive shop management system, service advisors can indicate each stage of the parts ordering process—needed, quoted, ordered, and received. Additionally, the software should automatically keep track of parts ordering details.

Quickly Dispatch Tickets to Technicians

The service advisor has gathered all the customer information, the customer has approved the repair estimate, and the parts are at the shop. Now, it’s time for the fun part—starting the actual repair! But it’s important that technicians are set up for success.

The service advisor needs to get a quick snapshot of what each technician is working on and what’s in their repair pipeline, and then quickly dispatch repair orders to an available tech. The service advisor should be able to do this from behind their desk, rather than having to go find individual technicians and ask them questions about their workload.

Shop management tools can give service advisors a bird’s eye view of each technician’s workload from their workstation. Service advisors should be able to go into the software and see a list of outstanding repair orders.

From there, the service advisor can dispatch a repair order to the appropriate technician. If it’s more efficient, they can dispatch individual line items from a repair order to different technicians in order to distribute work more evenly.

Work Smarter with the Right Tools for the Job

Using a comprehensive shop management software like Tekmetric can help streamline the process of creating DVIs and repair estimates, simplify parts ordering, and dispatch tickets to technicians.

See why thousands of auto repair shops rely on Tekmetric.

👉 Ready to grow your automotive business? [Book a personalized Tekmetric Demo Here]

FAQ

If you run an auto repair shop, chances are you have customers that think they know what’s going on with their vehicle as soon as they set foot in your shop. Although customers with preconceived assumptions can be frustrating at times, we have to give drivers credit for doing their research, especially now when we have a wealth of information at our fingertips.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Yes, but automotive repair estimates online aren’t always the best source of information.” And you’re right. But let’s think about ourselves for a second. As people who have experienced the world and have naturally developed our own worries, fears, and doubts, we tend to trust our own intuition and symptom-research sometimes more than we trust professionals.

And it’s a well known fact that consumers have a hard time trusting the auto repair industry—or any business that gives customers diagnoses for that matter. Just as people look up their symptoms online, and come to a conclusion on WebMD, they tend to do the same thing when something is wrong with their vehicle.

Whether it’s true or simply a situation where someone is convincing themselves they have said illness, the internet isn’t going anywhere. And let’s face it, we’re all guilty of using the internet for quick and easy answers, which is why it’s important to empathize with customers. Just as they may Google their symptoms, it is likely that they might type into the search bar, “Why is my car making a rattling sound?”

Of course, it is highly possible that the results that populate aren’t necessarily what an auto repair pro would point out to them. But whatever they find online still gives them some peace of mind, knowing they are informed before stepping foot into an auto repair shop that they may or may not trust.

It’s inevitable: people feel more protected if they understand—or even slightly understand—the issue at hand first.

Now, take a step back and think to yourself where your customers are getting their car repair information from. If you answered “auto repair estimate online tools,” you’re exactly right.