Customer Stories

After a few years of operating Prestige European, Eric realized that he was tied to the shop. When a friend told him “You don’t own a business, you own a job,” Eric realized he needed to get out of his own way if he wanted his shop to grow.

Eric teamed up with business partner Mike Difato and began to restructure Prestige Automotive by using innovative tools to empower his team. Their shop has grown from $300,000 in annual revenue to about $1.5 million in five years.

In recent months, Prestige European has been put to the test and had to quickly adjust business practices to address COVID-19. Luckily, Mike, Eric and his team have acted quickly and worked together to continue providing services to guests in a safe manner.

Why Auto Repair is Essential

People still need to work. They still need to provide for their families. There are lots of vehicles that still need to be on the road. It’s not just emergency vehicles. We're working on plumbers' cars, grocery store employees' cars, pharmacists, nurses, and doctors' cars, all of whom are on the front line helping our communities and their families. These are all essential businesses that we need to be there for.

A Chance to Let New Leaders Flourish

In January of this year, we promoted our head service advisor to shop manager. We wanted him thinking like an owner. And we promoted our lead tech to shop foreman. We just gave them the reins. We stepped away for about a month and let them figure stuff out on their own. Trust me, it was hard. That shop's my baby. But it's what you have to do if you truly want to step away from the shop and start to grow.

About a month after the promotions, my shop foreman came up to me and said, "Hey. I love you to death, but can you please not come in anymore? At first, I was kind of offended. I was like, "Excuse me?" And he said, "Listen. I'm trying to build my leadership, and when you come in, the people I’m trying to lead just go straight to you.

"So I gave him some metrics that I wanted him to meet, and as long as they were met, I said, "You got it. I'll come in once a week for your meeting, and I'll do everything else from outside the shop".

Now, we're using this as a chance to build up the newly promoted leaders. We're letting them deliver a lot of these messages so that they can grow. And honestly, we're letting them make the decisions.

Planning Together as a Team

My team brought their concerns to me and Mike. A lot of ideas and suggestions came from them. We're being very upfront because there's so much unknown out there. As we entered April, we made sure that they knew what our plan was. We had two weeks worth of cars to work on, and I presented a list of two weeks worth of shop projects like painting the walls, landscaping, and pressure washing the floor. I told the guys,

We're going to use this time to make our shop better.

How We Changed for the Better

We’re doing everything we can to limit the spread and keep each other safe. I told my guys to abide by the six-foot rule. We're in a big enough shop where we don't have to be on top of each other. My shop foreman can dispatch work right from Tekmetric, and everybody can see it from their own workspace.

We put a parts table out by the gate, so the parts guys can drive up, drop off the parts and go. We switched to touchless payment processing with Tekmerchant, so we can now use text-to-pay with our customers. I ordered a cell-phone locker to use for guest pickups. We text the customer the code, park their car in a neighboring lot, and let them grab it. We even ordered 1,000 little boxes of hand sanitizer with our logo on it to put in every car after we're done with them along with our Thank You note.

My team, my shop management system, my vendors, and my guests all played a critical role in helping us stay in operation.

For more information about Prestige European Auto Service, visit PrestigeEuropean.com

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Speeding Up My Business

When I became the owner of Import Auto, I wanted to make it more modern. One of the main ways I did this was by using Digital Vehicle Inspections. The first tool I used got the job done, but I realized that I needed a more robust tool that operated on the cloud.

That’s when I heard about Tekmetric, which I started using in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tekmetric has made life easier for my team and guests—and it’s also boosted our productivity and revenue.

Thanks to Tekmetric, we’ve gone fully paperless. We send every DVI, estimate, and invoice via text or email. It doesn’t take us twenty minutes to write a quote anymore, so we have no problem writing up a quote anytime there’s an opportunity to do so. We don’t put it off. And when we order parts, we can track them all in one place; we don’t have to bounce through multiple tabs.

Staying in Tune With My Guests Via User Profiles

Tekmetric has improved how we communicate with guests across the board.

Creating ROs takes just a few clicks, and guests can approve services over text or email. If they decline a service, we can quickly document it in the RO. If they come back a few months later and ask how much we’d quoted them for the service they’d declined, all we have to do is pull up the exact amount from our records and confidently tell them. And of course, once a job is done, we use Tekmetric’s text-to-pay feature to quickly deliver tickets and collect payment.

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Tekmetric also makes it easier to keep track of guest data. Tekmetric’s integration with Kukui enabled me to seamlessly transfer all of our guests’ contact information.

Because Tekmetric is cloud-based, I don't have to worry about losing years' worth of customer data if a piece of hardware breaks.

The cloud-based nature of Tekmetric has another benefit, too. While I try not to work in the evenings once I’m home, it’s comforting to know that I can check on appointments and order parts from my couch if I need to.

Taking Bigger Steps as a Business Owner

The COVID-19 pandemic has gotten me out of my comfort zone as a business owner. I realized that many people just weren’t on the road anymore. But my shop still had to make money. So, I got to work securing more fleet accounts. We’d handled some fleet accounts prior to the pandemic, but I wanted to drive more business in that area because it’s guaranteed income. We had a lot of success with it. We built great relationships with nearby companies by doing things we hadn’t done before, like picking up and dropping off their cars. It made a world of difference to those customers, and it made Import Auto more competitive.

Financial security, along with the time Tekmetric has freed up for us, has created the space for us to give back to our community.

When you’re worried about money and busy dealing with operations stuff, you can lose sight of paying it forward. For example, one of the things we did last year was get involved with Brakes for Breasts. We also began a lifelong discount program for public workers like teachers and firefighters.

Additionally, we have more room to continue the restoration work we do on classic cars, mainly for a classic car company up the street. It’s gratifying to work on getting cars like a 1964 Land Rover or a 1934 Chevy pickup truck back on the road.

This all ties back to something I advise shop owners—battle complacency. Look into the training and technology that will modernize your shop, so you can spend less time on operations and more time on fulfilling projects.

For more information about Import Auto, visit importautorepairs.com.

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Sam Craven, an automotive enthusiast turned entrepreneur, knew that when he opened his Houston-based automotive shop, Garagisti, customer service would be a key differentiator. 

“While fixing the car correctly is fundamentally important, the customer experience is what makes the real difference.”

From his shop’s beginning, Sam strategically leveraged Tekmetric to elevate his customer experience, yielding remarkable results in average repair order, customer feedback and more.

Driven by Customer Service

As a marketing and business development expert with a passion for cars, Sam recognized that exceptional customer service would be the key differentiator in the industry. 

He understood that trust and loyalty lie at the heart of a successful shop, and he wanted to target long-term customers by building those relationships from the beginning.

“Most people think we’re just here to fix cars, but that’s not actually the foundation of what we do,” Sam said. “While fixing the car correctly is fundamentally important, the customer experience is what makes the real difference.”

Determined to not just meet, but exceed, customer expectations, Sam set out to find a solution that would elevate Garagisti's performance in delivering a seamless and satisfying customer experience. 

Selecting a Customer-Centric System

Tekmetric's digital vehicle inspections (DVIs), customer communication tools and overall streamlined process offered significant value in transforming the shop’s customer experience.

“It was the most advanced system and easiest for our customer,” Sam noted. “I love the numbers side for business management, but the biggest asset I saw was the process – the show and tell process – of the DVIs, and how we could control the entire interaction, starting from the time the customer initiates the purchase decision.” 

By integrating Tekmetric into the everyday of shop life and leveraging its key features –, including DVIs and transparent communication tools, – Sam's team quickly gained their customer’s trust and confidence. Tekmetric’s versatile features proved invaluable to the experience they were creating.

“One thing that’s unique about our process: the advisor goes over the DVI on the phone with the customer,” Sam said. “They go line-by-line through the technician’s notes. The advisor makes recommendations he believes are important for the car to function safely. That’s the customer’s first interaction with Tekmetric – and it’s usually what wows people.”

That’s why when Joe Rush was looking to propel his Austin-based shops, Rush Automotive, to new heights and he knew he needed the right tools for the job. As a seasoned shop owner and entrepreneur, Joe quickly recognized the value of implementing a robust software solution. By leveraging Tekmetric, Joe and his team were able to enhance performance and delight customers with a modern experience. 

The right shop management tools are key to create an efficient process that keeps cars moving and provides a modern, frictionless customer experience.

Combine the right tools with the right mindset, and you have a real recipe for success. With 30 years in the financial industry under his belt, Andy Bizub knew that running a successful shop required more than just the technical knowledge of fixing cars, but also the operational knowledge of running a business.

That's why Andy took ownership of Midwest Performance Cars. As a new owner, Andy wanted to refresh the shop’s processes to make it as efficient as possible – and in turn, grow the business. He knew that the old pen and paper method had to go to make way for a powerful software solution: Tekmetric Shop Management System.

Efficiency is Key to Success

Before Andy bought the shop, Midwest Performance Cars was in a bit of a rough patch, and still relying on an older server-based software system.

Already familiar with how technology revolutionized the financial industry, Andy knew there was a better solution that could make his team’s daily operations far more productive. 

"I’m always looking for efficiency," Andy said. "I’m always telling our people to work smarter, not harder; we can do better without setting our hair on fire." 

With Tekmetric in its toolbox,  Midwest Performance Cars has been able to create a streamlined, consistent, and most importantly, frictionless experience -- both behind, and in front of the counter. Being a modern cloud-based solution, Tekmetric takes out all the roadblocks and speed bumps from before, serving as a stable, reliable, streamlined shop management system that simplifies processes at every step for an efficient flow.

For example, between the two shops, Andy's team has configured over 2,100 canned jobs for a variety of repairs. Because at least one canned job is used on each repair order, they can build estimates in just seconds.

In 2014, Matthew Carlson and Jeremy Jenson founded Fix It Forward Ministry, a non-profit that focuses on providing free cars and auto repair services to homeless and other at-risk individuals in the Morehead and Fargo communities.

A few years after founding Fix It Forward Ministries, Matthew left his job at Microsoft and focused his time on his non-profit work. Matthew and Jeremy soon realized they needed funding to sustain their work, so they opened up Fix It Forward Auto Care, an extension of their auto repair shop that allowed them to help more people than before. As of today, Fix It Forward ministry has given away 225 vehicles and has done more than 600 free repairs.

Tekmetric is proud to assist shop owners like Matthew in growing their business, especially when they can bring it back around to helping people in need. We had the opportunity to talk to Matthew about how both sides of Fix It Forward came to be and learn the secrets to his success.

Coming Together

I'm a car guy at heart. I own old cars and collect cars. My dad's a car collector, so I've always loved cars. But I was actually a computer programmer by trade. I went to school to be a software engineer, and I worked at Microsoft for 15 years. Cars were a hobby.

I have a bunch of friends who are also car guys, and we're working on these cars, and it's cool, except it seemed like, "How many cars does one person need?" We recognized that there were a whole bunch of car guys who liked to work on cars, and there's also a lot of people in homeless shelters who can't afford to get their cars fixed, and without their cars repaired, they can't get a job. And if they can't get a job, then they can't get out of the shelter. So they're stuck.

If you talk to the local women's homeless shelter, they'll say transportation is the number one barrier towards self-sufficiency.

We started our non-profit side, Fix It Forward Ministry, as a way to connect the people who enjoyed working on cars and the people who desperately needed their cars repaired. We started that out of a garage, and we would bring in volunteers, both mechanics and hobbyists, to help out. We'd work on fixing these people's cars and getting them on the road so that they could get a job and move on in life. And that kept growing. As we found out, when you give away free things, it's really easy to grow.

We kept getting more and more people who wanted to be a part of what we were doing. We kept getting more and more requests. We started raising money. We started giving away cars. People would donate cars to us, and we’d fix them and give them away once we got our 501(c)(3) non-profit status. And it really just grew and grew.

A Turning Point

There was a turning point that happened for me. When I was still splitting my time between Microsoft and the Ministry, I got a call from a woman who needed her car repaired. Long-story short, her life was in potential danger and she needed a car to move her family to another state. I thought, “Wow. That's a pretty big deal.” So I said, "Okay. We're going to prioritize this."

But then I went back to work at my computer. I sat back at the desk, and at the time my task was to fix a typo in some obscure warning message on a screen that no one really uses. It was going to take hours to get this meaningless thing fixed when my head was just spinning with how I was going to be able to help this woman in this situation.

Why am I spending this time doing something that just seems to be so unimportant when I have so many opportunities to do something that is huge and life changing for people?

I told myself that I need to do this stuff full-time. It still took a little while after that to leave Microsoft, but that was the turning point.

Sustaining the Ministry with a Business

When I started to dedicate more of my time to Fix It Forward Ministry, we started to hit some growing pains. First of all, our shop wasn't big enough for the number of volunteers we were getting in. We really could only fit four cars in our shop at a time. We had limited tool sets. We needed to get better equipment as we were getting more and more work. People were donating cars to us, which was really cool, but we needed a place to store those cars while we worked on them and waited to get them to the people that needed them.

There became a lot of administrative work to do this, and we had no place to do that. I do most of our documentation stuff sitting in a car on my phone. So we couldn't really get other volunteers to come in and help with that because we didn't have an office or a computer and a file cabinet for them to sit down and process that.

The biggest problem we had is that we learned that our entity as we designed it was uninsurable. If you want to get garage keeper's insurance, the first question they ask you is: "How many ASE certified technicians do you have on staff?" and "What's your projected monthly revenue?" And the answer to both of those questions was "zero" because we're all volunteer run, and we didn't charge for anything. Without having any information right for that, they were unable to assess our risk and nobody could touch us.

We also went to places that specialized in insuring non-profits, and we talked to them, and they asked what kind of work we're doing, and we said, "we're fixing cars", and they just hung up the phone right there. They wanted nothing to do with it because, again, they didn't know how to assess risk, and they just viewed us as a giant liability.

What we learned is that we needed a way to solve all four of those problems without drastically increasing our overhead. So we needed a bigger building with land and office space. We needed a way to get insured, but we don't charge for any of our services on the ministry side, so how do we pay for all that without having to spend all of our time fundraising and no time fixing cars?

That's when we came up with the idea of starting a shop and letting the shop pay for all those expenses. Then the non-profit can use that space after hours and really have no added cost to the shop. So that's what we did. I went out. We found a building. We hired some skilled technicians and some service advisors, and we started a shop. So that's how I got into the auto-repair business.

Making It Run Smoother

When we started the Fix It Forward Auto shop, we needed some sort of shop management system. There was a lot involved in starting the shop, so I delegated that off, and we ended up with an older piece of software that my service advisor was comfortable with. But it had a lot of limitations. It was difficult to use. It was difficult to find information in. And it was difficult to enter information in.

When we started with Tekmetric in 2018, it still had the same foundation and a lot of the great features, but every month it just keeps getting better and better. The thing that really impressed us right away with Tekmetric was the ease-of-use—the ability for anybody in the shop to see what's going on and be able to use it. Because it's cloud-based, everyone in my shop has a computer, and they know what’s going on.

I've heard people say that you'll hate whatever software you use after six months. We've been using Tekmetric for a year-and-a-half, and that hasn't happened because it keeps getting better all the time.

The big thing for us with Tekmetric was the texting. There are a lot of shop management systems that let us text quotes at some level, but Tekmetric lets customers approve the quotes, and that would automatically go back into our software. And that’s really useful because we have a lot of clientele that work in an office environment. They're in a lot of meetings, and they're very difficult to get a hold of. And now they didn't have to talk to us. We get rave reviews, still, from people saying how awesome it is that they're able to just get the repair order and hit a couple of buttons to approve it while they're in a meeting or some place where they couldn't talk on the phone. We’re able to quickly get their car repaired, and the more we can keep our customers happy at the shop, the more we can grow the ministry.

Exactly What We Want

The interesting thing is that Microsoft actually wrote business accounting software for larger scale businesses. And I was also a part of moving that software to be cloud-based. So I have a lot of background in this area. What really stands out with Tekmetric—and I'm so jealous of them for what they created—is they're so connected with the customers. When I worked at Microsoft, I would have given anything to be able to get customer feedback like they do, and develop features that actually do exactly what the customers want. We would spend so much time trying to come up with a great feature, and we'd get a chance to talk to two customers about it, and we'd get their feedback on how they think it should work, and then we'd write it and release it and find out it really wasn't the right fit for most of the customers.

Tekmetric has a user group with a voting system where shop owners can vote on features they want to see they want to see. Tekmetric’s team looks at that, and they'll come up with an idea, and they'll make screenshots and have people tell them how that would work with them, and they'd get that feedback. So when the features are released, they meet our needs. As a software developer, I am so jealous of that customer feedback loop that they have created. They built their support group with a clear intent, and it really is one of the key things that ensures shop owners get a lot of great features.

The Reward of Giving Back

Because we have given back to the community, the community has really supported us a lot, too.

We did over a million dollars in our second year of business, so we started from nothing and grew really fast.

We do more for the community than just fixing cars. That's by far our number one priority, but we also help with other things. We're working on having a blood drive. We donate to other charitable organizations. We did a Car Care Cruise where we actually had about a hundred cars drive through nursing homes and assisted living facilities because, with this whole COVID-19 situation, those people were stuck in those facilities with nothing to do, and so we actually brought a parade through those facilities. It was one way that we were able to use our cars to help brighten their days. That was a lot of fun. We have annual car shows that we use to raise money and raise awareness for things. A lot of organizations that support us, we support them and their projects and fundraising stuff that they do, too. And by being a part of the community like that, the community has really supported us.

Our shop has only existed for two years, but the word of mouth out there is just tremendous. We're getting to the point where a very large percentage of the people in our community are taking notice. People talk and share our stories on social media. It helps us build what we're doing, faster. We've given away so many vehicles and done hundreds of free repairs. Vendors like Tekmetric have enabled us to grow so much faster than we would have been able to otherwise.

When you give people that car, it gives them hope that good things can happen to them. It makes them want to make a difference. If they can get a car then they can get that job and they can get that housing and they can become self-sufficient. There's hope that these things can happen. It gives people hope that things work out, and having hope is the first step toward a better life.

For more information about Fix It Forward Ministry, visit fixitforwardministry.com

For more information about Fix It Forward Auto Care, fixitforwardautocare.com

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About Mike Wiggs Auto & Fleet Service: 

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Founded in 2015, Mike Wiggs Auto & Fleet Service started through Mike and Beth Wiggs. From the beginning, the operation was as chaotic as any automotive repair shop – and without the right shop management system in place, the team relied on handwritten tickets and manual entries into QuickBooks.

The process was time-consuming, prone to errors, and had no way to efficiently track parts, labor, or vehicle history.

"Initially, we were just running handwritten tickets... Everything had to be typed in after it had been handwritten. Looking back, it was just crazy."

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The Challenge:

Mike and Beth were extremely hard working and were stewards of customer service so naturally, the business grew. There came a time where it was clear that their system wasn't efficient or scalable. Invoicing was an extremely manual process, and tracking customer history was nearly impossible. They tried other software solutions and systems, but they all fell short of their needs.

The shop needed a change—especially when they would hear what results other shops were attaining. Something needed to be implemented that could help them operate smoothly and grow as they put more time and effort into the shop. A friend of Mike who was a commercial rep at NAPA asked them if they had hit $100K in revenue per month. They answered no and were surprised by the question.

“Before Tekmetric, we couldn't even imagine doing numbers like $100,000 a month. I remember getting so angry thinking, ‘Nobody does that in a month'." - Beth W.

The limitations of their previous systems kept them from reaching their true potential.

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Discovering Tekmetric:

‍Everything changed when Mike and Beth discovered Tekmetric in late 2019. It instantly stood out, offering the kind of integration and scalability they had been searching for, and with a very simple user interface. Back then, revenue was right under $500K annually.

“Mike and I were both absolutely blown away at all of the features. It brought organization to everything in our shop. Managing operations, tracking parts, viewing vehicle history...everything has become easier.” - Beth W.

Results Matter - Impactful Transformation:‍

Since implementing Tekmetric, the impact on Mike Wiggs Auto & Fleet Service has been profound, thanks to Mike and Beth’s diligence and hard work.

- Revenue Growth: The shop's revenue skyrocketed. What was once unimaginable—hitting $100,000 in a month—became routine. Today, they’re on track to achieve $1.7 million in annual revenue.

- Operational Efficiency: Tekmetric streamlined daily operations, from managing customer data to creating repair orders quickly with Smart Jobs. “It saves at least a minute or so every time, and those gains made in the margins add up,” Beth shared.

- Enhanced Customer Experience: With Tekmetric, Mike and Beth’s team can now provide a level of service that sets them apart, ensuring every customer receives top-notch care based on accurate and timely information. A testament to their 4.8-star rating on Google.


A Game-Changer in the Industry:

What truly sets Tekmetric apart is its ability to grow with its users. "The responsiveness of the company... that is a game changer," Beth emphasized. Tekmetric listens to its customers, continually adapting to meet their needs and refine the software based on feedback.

Conclusion:‍

For Mike Wiggs Auto & Fleet Service, Tekmetric was the key to turning chaos into control. By providing the tools needed to operate efficiently and effectively, Tekmetric helped them not only meet but exceed their goals.

“Tekmetric is a game changer for us. I highly recommend.” - Beth W.

With Tekmetric, Mike and Beth have proven that with the right system in place, there are no limits to what a shop can achieve.

The story goes that Stephane’s father left this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in France to chance another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—love. In the early 60’s Stephane’s father moved to the United States to be with the woman who would end up becoming Stephane’s mother.

Because Stephane’s father didn’t speak any English, he started working basic oil change jobs. By the time Stephane was born, his father had picked up English and became the operator and manager of a large chain of service stations, one of which was where Stephane got his first taste for auto repair.

After working for his father, Stephane worked at several BMW dealerships, acquiring skills that would mold him into the shop owner he is today. Stephane became the manager of Excluservice in Rockville, Maryland. At the tail end of 2012, the original owner of Excluservice retired, putting Stephane in the driver’s seat.

As owner, Stephane has grown Excluservice by adopting new technologies that strengthen and complement the relationships between himself, his team, his staff, and his partners. His focus has been on streamlining operations. Stephane teamed up with Tekmetric as his new shop management system partner to help Excluservice reach new heights.

‍Less Costs. More Uptime.

We were originally running our shop with two systems; one was for digital inspection and the other was our shop management system. They were both reliant on a server, so I also had an IT team as well. When I added it all up, I was spending $1,000 a month between the software companies and the IT support. And if the internet connection blipped for a split second, my digital inspection went down for about an hour.

Now I’m paying a fraction of what I was before switching to Tekmetric, and I don’t have to worry about downtime or maintenance. We saved a bunch of money, and the estimate writing process is much faster because the labor guide is built into the system.

An Easy Transition

Nobody really likes change. You just have to sell the vision. Once you get buy in from the team, they will be more inclined to embrace change.

I showed my team how this system is going to be easier for them to write estimates. The turnaround time from estimate to selling work has drastically reduced, which allows us to sell more; if I give my guests an answer quickly, they’re more inclined to buy.

So after researching and thinking about it, we decided to give it a shot, and I’m glad we did. It paid off big time! Our total revenue has gone up by about 20% since we switched.

The system is very intuitive, so training wasn't that hard. I think it depends on how tech-savvy the person is. Most technicians are pretty tech-savvy already, so for them it was not difficult at all. I had been letting them play around with it for the month prior, so once we went live, we were pretty much ready to go.

The time it took to write the estimates was drastically reduced. That was the biggest thing. That then allowed us to sell more because time is of the essence. If you take three hours to write an estimate, the customer is thinking, "What have you been doing for the past three hours? I dropped my car off. What's going on?" And then if you call them in the afternoon and they dropped the car off in the morning, there's less likelihood of selling the work that you're recommending that you found. If you get them an answer quickly, the customer is more inclined to buy. Because of that, our average repair order and our total revenue went up.

Transparent. Measurable. Efficient.

One of the new features that Tekmetric added this year is the Gross Profit Dollars per Hour at the bottom of every job. Now service writers know what our target Gross Profit Dollars per Hour is, and they know that they can't go below that. They also know that if it's above that, and if there’s push-back from the guest, they can lower the price as long as it stays above our GP Dollars/Hour target. They now have the autonomy to do that without requesting my permission.

More Connected

Our shop layout isn’t conducive for the service advisor to walk all the way back to the shop to talk to the tech. Tekmetric is working with us to create a more connected shop. Whenever a repair gets approved, everyone is made aware of it. When a customer authorizes a repair, the parts guy knows, the technician knows—everybody knows. Even when the parts arrive, everybody becomes aware.

Tekmetric is constantly improving because they're always listening to customers' feedback. And that's one of the biggest things—they listen to us. They have a user group, and when somebody has an issue, we help each other and come up with ideas, and then Tekmetric will surprise us by implementing one of those ideas in a clean, easy-to-understand manner. If we have an issue or a question, they're always there to answer it—and pretty quickly, too! They've always got my back.

Life is about relationships. It doesn't matter if it's business or it's personal. If you make a million dollars, but you have no friends, what's the point? What value can we provide to others? That's what's important to me. Not necessarily what they can provide for me. I feel that if you connect with people who have that similar philosophy, things just work themselves out.

For more information about Excluservice, visit bmwexcluservice.com

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Bill gave him a piece of advice that stuck with him for years to come, “We’re in the service industry, not the sales industry. Focus on relationships, not on sales”. In 2015, Bill expressed that he was ready to retire, and Bryan was ready for a new challenge. Bill Casey decided to leave his company in the hands of someone he could trust to grow the business and stay true to his values, his mentee, Bryan Jewett.

In 2017, Casey’s Automotive opened its second location. Bryan continues to invest in Casey’s and everyone who relies on it—his family, his team, his teams’ families, and the good people of Chantilly and Sterling, Virginia.

Creating a Culture for Achieving Goals

This field is a tough field to be in, especially as a technician. The absolute truth is that nobody wants to buy the product of automotive repair. It's not a fun purchase. People want to buy new iPhones. They want to buy new running shoes. They want to buy things, toys, stuff they can play with. Automotive repair is kind of like one of those things where it's like, "I have to buy an alternator because my car doesn't work, and if my car doesn't work, I can't go pick up my kid at soccer or go to my job."

If my team can’t enjoy the place that they're at, and they are at that location for 8 to 10 hours a day, it's a huge part of their life that they’re just not enjoying.

Now, I'm not saying that we're running around here playing tic-tac-toe all day. What we try to do is make it a better environment. So, we got everybody's input about what they want to get out of their job at Casey's, and we built our motto and our mission statement around that. They wanted an opportunity to grow. They wanted the opportunity to have job security. They wanted to enjoy the place that they worked at. That's really where that culture change came in.

I was like, "Alright. Well, how do we do this?" The obvious things, giving someone the opportunity to have job security and to grow, that's not rocket science.

You need to grow the business so that the individual can grow. The business can't grow without having that individual, so the two kind of go hand-in-hand.

Just trying to meet the needs of my employees and listening to the basic things that they wanted was how we changed the culture.

Every January, we do a goal-poster day. Every employee that works for us writes down their goals, no matter what they are—professional, personal—and then I go out and buy a hundred different magazines. They get poster boards, cut out pictures that represent their goals, and they glue them to their poster board. That way they can track their goals. But to get a bunch of grown men around a table to play arts and crafts and then kind of break down the barrier of that personal drive that they have, it really creates some camaraderie between them.

The neatest thing is when they cross things off their goal board throughout the year, and then when we do that first meeting in January about the goal posters, and they stand up and say, "Hey, listen. In 2019, I never thought I'd end up buying a house that has a separate garage and a nice patio. Me and my wife completed that in 2019." It's awesome to be able to see that. And helping your employees define their goals and then maybe even complete their goals, it goes right back to our mission statement about growing as individuals.

Fun With the Off-Road Community

Our main customers are local families. 90% of the work we do is on Toyota Camrys, Honda Minivans, F1-50 pickups—you know, the normal, everyday driver stuff. And then we have some specific niche customers that are kind of your off-roader type customers: big wheels and tires, Jeeps, and lift kits. Off road vehicles are kind of our specialty, the fun stuff that we do. I've always been like a five year old at heart. I've always liked trucks. The bigger the truck, the better.

About four years ago, we hired a guy who worked at an off-roading shop and, naturally, he brought some of those customers over with him, and we got more into that market. So just as a team building thing, we'll do some off-roading events and bring our team out there, try to meet up with our customers out there on the trails.

What we'll do is set up at a place that usually allows camping and trail riding. We'll rent a campsite, set up trail riding, grill food, cook breakfast, and just kind of get together outside of work. We'll reach out to our customer base, people who have done some of that off-roading work on their vehicles, and of course our employees and our families.

People spend a lot of money on these rigs, so it's great to be able to help them set something up and get together some type of event where they can actually use that Jeep or truck or SUV with their lift-kits and their wheels and tires and their wench upgrades, or whatever it might be. We get them out on the trail and have some fun.

Now, when we do an event, Casey's will sponsor the event by doing giveaways, setting up the event, and making sure that there is insurance for the event. We gave away a winch at our last event. It was like an 8,000 pound winch. We'll give away light bars all the way down to like, toe straps, D-Rings, just off-roading accessory type stuff. But it's really just meeting the people and supporting the local off road community.

"The Most Awesomest Car"

Every year we do Casey's Automotive Spring Fling and Car Show, which benefits Ellie's Hats. Ellie's Hats is a great organization that supports families of kids who have been diagnosed with cancer. Contestants pay to show their car at the event. We have a lot of free family fun activities, and we hold a silent auction. All the proceeds go back to Ellie's Hats. We raised $4,000 the first year, $6,000 the second, and $8,000 the third. We’re shooting for $10,000 this Spring.

We build the trophies for that car show out of motor parts: pistons, bearings—stuff like that. We'll pick children from the crowd and have them pick their favorite car to give out awards for stuff like “The Most Awesomest Car” or “The Super Duper Truck Award” .It's cool! It's a really neat event. Really fun. A lot of music and food. We open up the shop so that people could go in and out of the shop. People flood the parking lot with just the most unbelievable cars. It really brings a lot of people together and makes everyone happy.

Getting the Support I Need

What really matters when you're running a business is: do you have clients? Are you making them happy? Being there for my team and my community is a big part of that because my guys have personal things they want to accomplish. And the truth is, if they can do their job better, that means that they can prosper more at their job, be there for our clients, and in turn, make more goals for themselves. A big part of supporting my team is having a shop management system that supports us.

We knew that we wanted to change from what we were using to a cloud-based system. The system that we were using for our courtesy inspection and our pictures never really played nicely with our operating program.

One problem we found with many newer systems was that the courtesy inspection was not a separate function within the program. A huge benefit to the customer is to be able to go through the inspection and then the estimate. When you provide pictures and the estimation and dollar amount, the only thing a customer sees are the dollar amounts. I don't care how beautiful or ugly the pictures are. I don't care what description you have in there. They see dollar amounts.

And if you're focused on helping the customer, you need to put an emphasis on, "Here are the conditions of repair. Here are the conditions of maintenance." and providing that in a separate function—the courtesy inspection—allows them to digest that. Then you can go over what things cost, what is important, what they can hold off on, and what they need to do now.

The fact that Tekmetric had a courtesy inspection and the estimate as two separate functions was a game changer. It was really a no-brainer. The support we got from Tekmetric was another great thing for us. If I had an issue, one, there's a community, and two, somebody from the company would reach out to us immediately for assistance. The system that we were using took weeks to get back to us.

One of the coolest things that happened when we switched to Tekmetric was that immediately, our long-term clients were like, "Wow. I really like this new system you're using. I've never seen it before!" It was separating us from our competition, making us look like we're from 2020. Their ability to decipher what's going on with their car, dissect that and understand it was very transparent. They could say "approve, approve. Decline, decline" right from their cell phone. Our customers love it. They think it's awesome.

And my team loves it, too. Hour one, everyone was resisting change, and it was the change that they didn't like. Now? The speed at which it allows my counter to write service, price parts, talk to customers, interact there, approve jobs or decline jobs-- that speed has doubled. It has improved two-fold. So if it took them 20 minutes to write an estimate, it's taking them 10 minutes.

And my technicians, the system they were using made it hard for them to talk to my advisers. When their tablets were crashing, it was harder for them to write up a vehicle for the issues. Not now. Now, with Tekmetric, that part is easier for them. They get to look at more cars. They get to interact with the car and with my advisers quicker. The shop, across the board, loves it. And we haven’t had to deal with a single crash of the system, which was always something that would happen with our old systems.

Tekmetric supports me by giving me a window into my shops to see what's going on. I can open that up from my phone, whether I'm in Arizona or Starbucks or upstairs. It allows me to be there for my team and have the confidence that I can open up a third location.

The Shop Overview immediately gives me the car count and the average repair order. It shows me what is a work in progress, what cars are completed, what estimates have been given out. I can pretty much see if it's going to be a busy week or a slow week on that page.

You gotta remember, auto repair is not a product people want to buy, so they don't care if you have a sale on auto alignments. But they do care if they're past due for an oil change. With Tekmetric, I can reach into our database, see who’s due for an oil change or repairs, and basically reach out and touch my customers on the shoulder and say, "Hey, listen. The last time you were out for an oil change was 3 months ago. We have some openings. Come on in and make an appointment." It ensures that I’m always looking out for our clients, and that we’re always helping people.

I'm not the best mechanic. I'm not the smartest businessman. I've just been able to help my employees grow. Help them provide. Help them have the opportunity to get the things they want professionally, and naturally the business just grows around that.

For more information about Casey's Automotive, visit caseysautomotive.com