Unlocking Success With Effective Task Managers

Production management is crucial in a repair shop. Join us to learn how two shop owners found the right combination of staff and systems to get more work down in less time, and grow their business by millions along the way.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why specializing roles in the shop not only increases productivity but enables staff to work on tasks they enjoy and are good at
• How shop owners John Long (Schertz Auto Service, Schertz, Tex.) and Adam Bendzick (Pro Service Automotive, Prior Lake, MN) use task management strategies to streamline shop operations
• Digital tools and techniques shops like theirs used to generate and perform more work than ever before
• The story behind two incredibly successful shops and how they were able to turn their shops into multi-million dollar operations in just a few years

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:00:03):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey, and this is episode 10 of our 10 part series we’ve been having on transitioning from paper-based shop to a digital shop. Oh, come on. Now, unfortunately, we have some production manager in the background who likes to put up distracting graphics and make fun of me. Oh, it must be Uwe welcome, Uwe Kleinschmidt and my expert panel of experts including Bill Connor. And we’ve got two great guests on today. You probably recognize these folks, John Long from Schertz Auto Service, and Adam from Pro Service Automotive. And Adam might be having a little technical difficulties today on some, he’s working on some microphone issues. I think he’s doing a lube oil filter change on his headset or something like that. But we’ll get ’em on soon. And we’re going to be talking today, if you’ve been following the series, we’ve been talking kind of in baby steps and incremental steps producing a how to guide for you on how to transition from a purely paper-based shop up into a full digital shop.
(00:01:10):
One that’s not only taking advantage of the digital inspections and how great that transparency is to your customer, but the efficiency and productivity gains at the workflow management and some of the other digital shop best practices give you. And so we’ve been taking it kind of on a step-by-step. If you haven’t, today’s your first day or you caught half the series, don’t worry, just get over to help AutoVitals.com/podcast and all of those recordings are there and you can get caught up on your free time. But you’re going to have a great show today because we’re taking it to the next level and we’re going to be talking production manager and how we can use roles, specific roles in the shop to kind of maximize your ability to basically raise your productivity and your efficiencies at the same time. And of course, really increase that profit margin at your stuffing into your pocket.
(00:02:08):
Before I introduce these awesome guys, real quick, I want to give a shout out to my brother-in-law. Hector Palino gave me this awesome hat from Figueroa Break in alignment right here in downtown Santa Barbara, California, and we lost Hector’s, Hector’s mom last week. We put rest. It’s my kid’s grandmother and Hector, I just want to tell you, brother, I love you and if you need anything, I’m right here for you. And we miss Marta every day, brother. I couldn’t help but notice the little Raider logo influence there, the shield you got there. Hopefully your team gets to play this year and thanks for tuning in buddy. Talk to you soon. Okay, on a brighter note without further ado, welcome John Long and let’s see, Adam, do we got audio on you buddy? Nope. We got lip reading, so I’ll go ahead and read what he just said. Pleasure, Tom. Thanks for inviting me back. John, how about you? You got some audio for us?
John Long (00:03:14):
Yep, yep. Thanks for having me on again, guys,
Tom Dorsey (00:03:18):
Always brother. Test, test, test, test and of course, yeah, beautiful. We got you
John Long (00:03:22):
See, right, we got Adam.
Tom Dorsey (00:03:24):
Guy would pull it out. And that’s how effective a production manager can be for you is really that’s he was down there putting the duct tape on the wires. Happy to have you guys on and let’s get right into the nuts and bolts. Uwe, if you want to kind of kick us off. Oh, and one other thing we’re going to be giving you today, we’re going to be giving you kind of a live walkthrough, a live demonstration on how that process would look like in your shop so you can help implement that. And of course these guys are on Facebook ready to help you. If you got questions you need help with implementation, it’s just a couple of button taps away. Alright, I’m done. I’m going to shut up and let’s dive right into it. uv, you want to kick this
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:09):
Off? Sure. Can you guys hear me?
Tom Dorsey (00:04:11):
Yeah, we should. Yes sir.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:12):
Awesome. Hi Adam. Hey John.
John Long (00:04:16):
Hey,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:16):
How are you doing? Good. You have an impressive backdrop there. Did
Tom Dorsey (00:04:24):
You spot yourself?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:25):
No,
Tom Dorsey (00:04:32):
Thank you.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:34):
So the first thing I have to say is John is late on a review work order task in his task manager.
John Long (00:04:42):
Yep. Yep. I am.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:44):
Seven minutes.
John Long (00:04:47):
Well that’s because I’m not production manager anymore. Bill turned me on earlier this morning. I started getting all these notifications. I’m like, what is going on Bill?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:56):
It’s probably for demonstrating here. So what I wanted to say about this for the audience, I have complete visibility in John’s shop through the task manager on what’s open and what needs to be done. So transparency is a big deal and that allows the shop owner, the production manager, any role which is in a managerial responsibility to actually check what’s going on and what’s behind and can start reshuffling responsibilities if that’s needed. And we are going to demo that a little bit later, but maybe we start with the very simple fact, and I think I need to share my screen for this. Let’s see whether I can master that technology here.
Tom Dorsey (00:05:57):
Oops, we’re all on a world of hurt.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:06:01):
Can you see it?
Tom Dorsey (00:06:02):
Yes sir.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:06:03):
Yep. Maybe I make it a little bigger for everybody. Oops. And so in a traditional shop, the service advisors really, I mean I cannot stress this enough, to me they’re a superman. I mean this is unbelievable what we are asking service advisors to do and he is just a small list of the things. And what I noticed pretty quickly, and I remember the talk radio episode 10 when Adam talked about his friends who work in the bank and wanted to split jobs. I don’t know whether you remember that, Adam.
Adam Bendzick (00:06:59):
Absolutely. Yep.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:07:01):
And it comes down to the fact we are asking a service advisor to also have skills which are extremely rare in one person sales skills on the one end people skills, outgoing sales type, and at the same time be meticulous, build an estimate is a meticulous work and mistakes can be expensive and that all needs to be done in an environment in which you get constant interrupts. I mean, just imagine that’s a really tough thing to do.
Adam Bendzick (00:07:44):
You can almost say it’s like finding a unicorn, right?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:07:47):
Yes, correct. There’s
Adam Bendzick (00:07:48):
Just not a lot of us
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:07:52):
And so the question is now does it need to be this way? It has been this way for, can I say centuries now? But the question is does it need to be this way? And so by people like John and Adam spearheading other ways and us helping with the tools, we are now convinced there is another way and maybe that’s the right time. John, if you could summarize and Adam, your way of how you came from left to the right and what were the biggest findings? That would be awesome.
John Long (00:08:42):
Yeah, I mean for me had, like you said, the service advisors were supermen and they were having them do everything and we had a backlog of our technicians were sending in work or sending in the inspections and we just had a backlog of getting them written up and getting everything to the customer in a timely manner. And it was just slowing down our technicians because our technicians weren’t staying busy because they’d send in the work and then they’d twiddle their thumbs for a while until they can get another car or get something approved and it was just taking forever on that end. So I had to figure out a way, how can I split up the tasks and then I took away the wrong things from the advisors at first things that they should be doing, talking to the customer, cashing ’em out, answering phones, that’s what they’re good at. And I failed and I took that away at first and it wasn’t until I gave that back to them and then took away all the estimating stuff and the parts were ordering. That’s usually what they’re not good at. And so that’s why I took that away and created the production director role and we’ve gone that route and we haven’t looked back from that.
Adam Bendzick (00:09:58):
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s pretty much the same thing for us too. Initially you think about these particular roles and you think about the ability of the team individually and although I joked about the unicorn thing, it is realistic that there is an outgoing personality that’s great at sales and everything that way, and then you have somebody with more technical background to estimate jobs and keep workflow going and it’s hard to find that one person that can do that from start to finish with everything and get the ARO and the sales and stuff that you want. It’s difficult to get that. But for me, what I am fortunate is that I got John and Nick here that are both capable of building estimates and everything and selling to customers, people like them. But even still with that, we talk all the time about this particular role and the production manager and the service manager and Nick does the production managing and John does the service advising.
(00:10:55):
And even though that they’re both capable of doing everything, they still like it better that they can distinguish their roles between who does what. It just shares the overhead on your busy days where you have two technicians that got maybe five vehicles, then two technicians that got 15 vehicles amongst them. Now it’s not like 15 vehicles for just one service size or in five for the other, and one’s got a cake day and one’s got a really busy day. They share that role and no matter what’s on the schedule, it’s equally divided for the most part. So even in a situation where you have service advisors that are capable of doing the whole thing, it’s still worth looking at changing to just so that the workload’s divided equally
John Long (00:11:38):
Well. Not only that, they just have also more time to spend with the customers and actually educate them as well. So that was the biggest thing for us is allowing our advisors more time with the customers. It took off for us on that customer service end because of that,
Tom Dorsey (00:12:00):
That specialization also leads to inherent efficiency gains. I mean, if I make french fries all day pretty soon I make pretty good french fries and I can whip ’em out pretty quick consistently all the time. And so you make less mistakes. I mean, are you noticing that in the results and how are you tracking that hey, there’s more consistent and more complete information being communicated, it’s being handled more consistently and the results are paying off either through higher approval rate or more return visits?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:12:36):
Go ahead.
Adam Bendzick (00:12:37):
Without a doubt. I mean it’s a very good point that the mistakes and everything like that are minimized. You can focus on that one thing like the french fries point that you’re making. Without a doubt, they’ve definitely said that makes things better. The only thing is that since we’ve been switching, we went to it and then we went away for it and then we went to it and it was about three six months segments. The only thing that I’ve been looking at and trying to improve upon is the motorist research time that’s been potentially affected by this setup. It’s gone down a little bit and it’s not because of anything with inspection edits and everything. Our inspection edit percentage is actually gone. It’s been the highest it’s ever been with a production manager and service advisor because of that specialized role and because of that focus on, okay, this is my job, this is my task, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability every single time because I know that task was designated to me.
(00:13:33):
So if it’s not done, it’s pretty much just on me. It’s not a distraction that caused it or this and that. That’s just their responsibility. So giving distinguished roles has helped with the organization of who does what. For sure. There has been some with every change that you make, I mean there’s positives without a doubt, and I wouldn’t probably switch away from what we’re doing, but at the same time there is going to be some other things that are affected by it that you need to be able to track and see why is those things being affected by it. So for us, it’s that motorist research time.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:04):
Interesting. So can I paraphrase what I heard through specialization? There’s a formal complete ownership now split.
Adam Bendzick (00:14:16):
Yes.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:17):
And it has an effect on, might have an effect on results and you have to measure religiously where that split ownership leaves things out and are not covered. Is that a fair way to say it?
Adam Bendzick (00:14:38):
Make sure I’m explaining it right. So the vehicles, no matter what are going to be taken from point A to point B through the whole process. So the steps aren’t changed if anything helps is if there’s 50 steps along the way, and realistically their variable could be between market authorization amounts and everything like that. So let’s say there’s 50 steps. If one guy’s doing 25 and one guy’s doing 25, they can harness in and focus on those individual things. However, the handoff of the responsibility along the way is the only times that we see hiccups. So if we have one guy that’s estimating the job, but then the other guy’s waiting on God, I want to send that inspection to the customer, I want to send that inspection to the customer. They’re waiting out in the waiting room, I want to get it to ’em.
(00:15:23):
I want to start talking about the vehicle. Even if I don’t have the dollars of what the work order is going to cost me in hand, I still want to start talking to ’em about it. I want them to have time to review it for five or 10 minutes before I even start talking to ’em. And sometimes those handoffs along the way will slow the process down to get the final product to the customer, and that’s the part that I’m trying to focus on to make a little quicker because I love the setup. It’s just a matter of the handoff along the way and making that quicker. I was thinking about it last night, prepping for the show with notes and everything, and I kind of compare it to a quarterback release time. If you ever watch NFL football, they talk about it over and over and over and they show Tom Brady compared to Jimmy Garoppolo and this and that about their quarterback release time, Aaron Rogers, everything, the best quarterbacks. They talk about how fast that is and then how the play develops on account of how fast they are getting rid of the football. Everything is aligned with that. And right now that quarterback release time is the handoff from Nick to John and then back from John to Nick. And then how that affects what the customer sees in between there
John Long (00:16:34):
Makes total sense. Interesting. And we ran across that problem as well, especially with waiters because when you’re doing a waiter, everything’s got to be done pretty quickly and you’re under a lot of time constraints and it’s a lot of pressure from both the advisor and even the production manager or estimator or whatever you want to call that position because the inspection gets sent in, the person’s got to be on the production manager’s got to be on that right away. And then like Adam said, the advisor’s sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting and wanting it, and then as soon as the production manager sends it to ’em, they’re immediately trying to talk to the customer on it and they’re not giving the customer that time to review the inspection. So in us you’re motorist research time on that is going way down or it’s next to nothing because they’re not looking at it. They’re looking at the inspection on a tablet that you bring over to them or a laptop or a screen that you have up in your waiting room. So we’ve started to limit some of our waiting appointments just because of that aspect a little bit so we can be able to send it to the customer and have them review it a lot longer versus them trying to be rush, rush, rush in the office about it.
Tom Dorsey (00:17:48):
Well, I mean you want to verify that too. I mean if your approval rate’s growing, your build hours per inspections growing and your mrts dropping, it may just be also part of that process of setting the expectations with your customers paying off, right? They’re looking at it longer because they’ve already been pre-educated and they’ve gotten themselves prepared and they know what to expect and they’re just proven more with looking at it less, and that’s, I think, a good thing. You just want to make sure that’s the result that you see in the metrics.
Adam Bendzick (00:18:25):
Yep, absolutely. Yeah, for example, Andy’s our tech that works primarily with the waiting appointments, the oil changes, the inspections and all those things is his primary responsibility. I would say it’s probably 50 50 of whether he is dealing with the waiter or drop off appointment, but nonetheless, his schedule is pretty tight throughout the day with back-to-back appointments like that. Just some numbers that I split up into six months, it was basically like the prior six months, so February to August, September to February, and then February to today’s date, so about roughly six months time frame in between. And his inspection edit percentage that the service sizes are doing for him has went from 18% to 27 to 45. So it’s steadily inclined every single six month segment. But his ARO has went from $199 to 178 to 159 literally. Honey actually helped me put together this information, so shout out to her, but basically we were talking about it, we were putting the information together yesterday and literally as we were talking on the phone about it, I had a waiting customer here from oil change.
(00:19:37):
It was about 3 35 or so, and they had been here since three o’clock and John had just gotten the inspection and the estimate and everything from Nick, and it wasn’t because Nick was slow, it wasn’t necessarily the tech was slow, it was just a vehicle that had a lot of stuff on it. So a lot of stuff for Andy to mark off and take pictures of a lot of stuff for Nick to estimate. So once John got it from that whole process, it’s 35 minutes into it, well, he sent the inspection, so the inspection sent percentages good, but the time that the motorist researched it, he pretty much went straight to the monitor and started talking to him about it himself. So now instead of that motorist getting their own information kind of being ready and talking about it up at the service counter, he had no time to react to the information that he’s seeing.
(00:20:25):
So it’s kind of like that deer in the headlights look that John’s getting from the customer, but it’s because the process was rushed. So what Uwe and I were talking a bit yesterday through Messenger is trying to break it down by tech and it’s not necessarily that I want to see there’s a tech issue with why that isn’t getting to the customer, but at the same certain situations of waiting appointments, drop off appointments, oil changes versus diagnostics, all those things influence how quickly the information gets to the customer. But then that motorist research time without a doubt throughout everything that we looked at affects ARO. You can definitely see it within the information. So I am a true believer in that motorist research time is huge. If you don’t have the motorist research time, the service advisor almost has to overcome a little bit of that and sell their ass off to still get the sale, which John is great at. He’s great at talking and selling and everything like that, but at the same time, I just want to make it easier for ’em with this setup. Is this setup actually making it harder for ’em in some cases? So that’s what we’re kind of looking at
Tom Dorsey (00:21:34):
And I mean it’s just a better process. I mean, letting them self-educated is just going to be a better process and he can be the greatest at it all times, but it’s going to be inherently inconsistent because it’s a sales process versus compared to an education and leave me alone and let me get myself sorted out before you start trying to help me. Right? Because kind of how we’re all trained to research and make purchase decisions. Now
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:22:07):
I’m thinking while you’re talking about what features we can implement to help you with that, and I see three already, should we not allow the service advisor to open the inspection results while the motorist research time is ticking up? So you have to wait until it stops
Adam Bendzick (00:22:28):
Open the kind of anything I think that would probably make it difficult for the service advisor, but at the same time, yeah, those things are important.
John Long (00:22:38):
Well, I mean it’s just very difficult for waiters on that instance. You really can’t do that on a waiter because they’re waiting. They want to try and get in and out as soon as possible, but then sometimes you can actually still sell ’em stuff and then give ’em a ride home, give ’em a loaner car, do something. But if they’re sitting there waiting 50 minutes to get the inspection because you haven’t allowed your service advisor to open something up and talk to them about it,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:23:05):
That’s kind of tough. That was half jokingly said, and I know we actually went back in the TVPX away from prompting stuff to the service advisor and making them do stuff. We give more control to the service advisor and just remind us and alerts, Hey, this is still open. But a more serious proposal would be it looks like the service advisor has exactly that urge to still educate the customer. We could count the motorist research time also for shown inspection results on the counter at a monitor. We could or we could separate the motorist research time for Wado. So you can clearly differentiate the two. So there are several ideas we can implement. So this can be measured and addressed.
Tom Dorsey (00:24:03):
So I mean, how would you do that one’s in edit mode? So you wouldn’t count it while it’s in edit mode, but when it’s in preview mode or display mode, then the clock’s running regardless of where it’s in display mode at?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:24:17):
Correct. We wouldn’t limit it to the motorist cell phone or desktop. We would also, so as soon as we see there’s a waiter, you have to use a special marker for a waiter, then we know it’s a waiter and we would separate that out. I mean, we should discuss it on a Facebook form maybe as a feature request, but can we go back for everybody in the audience who has not actually heard about any results from you, Adam and John, could you quickly recap the gains in service advisor, confidence, revenue, whatever you’re willing to share?
John Long (00:25:03):
Yeah, I mean for us, for revenue, before we did this move, we were, I think the year prior we did 1.6, if I’m not mistaken. Last year we did just shy of 2.7 on it and the biggest thing we changed was that taking that away, so the estimating parts, estimating, building the estimate, editing the inspection, sourcing parts, we took that away from the service advisors, created a new job. That way the advisors has more time to spend with the customers and obviously if they can build and develop those relationships with those customers, they’re usually going to buy more and that’s happened. The other thing that also allowed us to do by creating one person for that is they’re estimating everything on the job. They’re not picking and choosing what they want to estimate, which sometimes service advisors have a habit of doing unfortunately. So you’re presenting now a hundred percent of the findings from your techs to the customer, and obviously you’ve got a better chance of selling a lot more. If you’re presenting $2,000 worth of work, you’ve got a better chance of selling six, $700 on it or whatever.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:26:20):
That’s awesome. So to do the math, right, the addition of one role which you didn’t have before, enabled more than $900,000 annual revenue.
John Long (00:26:31):
Yes.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:26:33):
That’s incredible. That’s
John Long (00:26:36):
Incredible. No, I’m not saying that’s going to happen with everybody, but Right,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:26:39):
Right. Of course
John Long (00:26:41):
It did help us tremendously. Like I said, the advisor has more time to spend with those customers and develop those relationships and they have more time to sell.
Adam Bendzick (00:26:51):
Yep. Awesome.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:26:52):
Adam, do you have similar?
Adam Bendzick (00:26:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So things that it creates is consistency in pricing, consistency in customer experience. You don’t have two people you think like all data or whatever you use for your lookup program has specific timeframes and everything, but I can also tell you that, okay, how does one person price out a strut timeframe for replacing struts when there’s a quick strut? Do you use book time? Do you go above book time? Do you go less because of quick strut? Because all that is only showing you a strut time, but I know that Nick is consistent every single time with how he prices it out, so that is always going to be the same for every single customer. There’s not going to be this variable of what did I charge the customer for? What did I charge that customer? Do I have to look up history and everything?
(00:27:41):
So that’s one huge thing. Another huge thing is just the teamwork part of it is that they’re constantly working with each other and they’re constantly building that bond and instead of being like, Hey, you’re doing this and I’m doing this, it’s, it’s a complete sense of unity, which we’ve been trying to promote quite a bit in previous episodes obviously. So that’s huge for us. As far as numbers wise goes, I can definitely tell you our two highest months that we’ve ever done, our highest month is $217,000. That was back last August. Our second highest month was actually last month. It was 207 amidst COVID-19 and everything like that. So we’re hitting great numbers and I don’t honestly don’t think that the staff would enjoy their job as much if they were distracted with so many different things, didn’t have specialized roles and I’m not sure that we could achieve those numbers.
(00:28:34):
Is our ARO skyrocketing and making those numbers possible. It’s growing, but it’s not consisting huge leaps and bounds growing, but our car count is going up and the ability to take on that car count with literally one production manager and one service advisor and then our director of first impressions upfront, I don’t think it’s possible to do what we’re doing if we had individual roles and then still keep the staff happy within their job and within their role if we just had separate service advisors. So that’s huge for us is definitely how much they enjoy their job and all those things. Just like the Wells Fargo thing that I talked about back in episode 10,
John Long (00:29:18):
And that’s key for us too is keeping everybody happy and not having everybody stressed out because everybody has just got so much over their heads and trying to do so much. I know I talked about that at the digital shop conference in my breakout, but yeah, it’s just keeping everybody happy and not having everybody stress out and
Tom Dorsey (00:29:40):
That’s what keeps you consistent for the long term, right, is yeah, sure you guys can put big peaks up and then it’s usually followed by a big valley because we’re getting burnt out and another big peak when everybody gets out there and says we got to do it. But if you just have, like you said, if you just have a happy motivated staff that’s managed and does a lot of the same specialized tasks, the repetition makes that an enjoyable place to work. I know what I need to deliver on how to deliver it and I can do it at a much higher rate more consistently for a longer period of time because I’m not just always looking for the exit.
Adam Bendzick (00:30:18):
And also the quality control aspect is that hopefully whoever you have in the production manager role has, why they’re in that role is probably because they have more technical experience or knowledge or whatever than the service advisor might have. Even though service advisors definitely have to know mechanical things and everything like that to do their job and educate the customer more than what the inspection might do itself. You still have to have knowledge in both roles, but hopefully the production manager role has more knowledge so that a ticket comes through. Not that a tech is going to whip through a diagnostic and not do a thorough job, but it happens. I mean they get busy just like service advisors do, so they might not take it on that extra test drive or whatever. So you have that production manager there to say, I know I didn’t drive the vehicle myself.
(00:31:04):
I know I didn’t put my own eyes in the vehicle, but I’m not sure this makes sense. Can you take it for another test drive? Or in Nick’s case, he checks it out quick himself and it’s not to micromanage the text that he’s overseeing, but it’s helping with that quality control and I don’t think they get offended. They actually come to him and say like, Hey, here’s where I’m at with the diagnostic, can you come take a look? If Nick was service advising and had to make a sales call and this and that, how quickly is he now going to get off the phone with the sale that he’s trying to make? If he gets a message from his tech saying, Hey, I need some help. Hey, I need some help. And it might not even be his tech that’s asking for the help, but because Nick has more technical experience, one of John’s techs might be asking Nick for him the help. So you end up directing a lot of traffic in some cases one person’s way where now it’s more of the specialized role. So now just send all of that traffic there and then divert some of the other stuff to somebody else that might be either more capable or as capable to take that burden away from them.
John Long (00:32:06):
Yeah, it’s really good checks and balance system on it
Tom Dorsey (00:32:11):
Works on nuclear submarines, right? One hand washes the other. Hey, by the way, real quick for folks that might not be falling in the chat with this lunatics made this background here, we
Adam Bendzick (00:32:25):
What’s your favorite picture, Tom?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:32:30):
I know what his favorite is. Can I point it out?
Tom Dorsey (00:32:33):
I don’t even,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:32:36):
That’s the one
Tom Dorsey (00:32:40):
Because Lucille says she’s found the other because here’s the trick, you got to find the hidden Uwe. It’s like where’s Waldo? Except the Eastern European block version, right? I got this awesome fleece right here for giveaway. I don’t know what this is, but I’ll give it to you and I’ve got a plastic and so chat in your findings there. Who else we got Jean? She knows where you are too, buddy. I see you too. You’re up in the upper right hand corner above Bill’s sombrero for me. But yeah, that’s the game text chatting your findings and Dustin will announce some winners here. I think you got another couple of tickets to the upcoming digital shop conference and stuff like that too. Yeah, sorry guys, but I just wanted to because people were starting to find Uwe, so I want to make sure everybody else, Chad is finding them too. So
Adam Bendzick (00:33:50):
We always want to bring some fun of those show, right?
John Long (00:33:53):
We got to have fun. It’s Adam and I, everything’s always fun with us
Adam Bendzick (00:33:58):
Up in the game every single time.
John Long (00:34:00):
That’s it.
Adam Bendzick (00:34:03):
We may not be asked back for a while after this one.
Tom Dorsey (00:34:10):
No clue where you found them pictures, but
John Long (00:34:13):
It was all public information, right?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:17):
But somebody’s cheating, right? I’m getting hidden and show up again on your picture. So anyway, I want to go live in Schultz’s Auto Service a little bit.
Tom Dorsey (00:34:34):
Yeah, let’s
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:35):
Do some, everybody
John Long (00:34:36):
Ready Bill’s driving on that, correct?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:39):
So I have it up here and Bill, you are now a technician of Schertz’s Auto Service and change the stats a little bit.
John Long (00:34:53):
So I’ve been promoted again.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:55):
Yes.
Adam Bendzick (00:34:57):
How are we doing
John Long (00:34:57):
Bill? Glad that I’ve been hired on.
Tom Dorsey (00:35:02):
Yeah, and I want to give a shout out to Chris Maggard and honey, they’re both in the audience too so they can jump in here and we can if they’re going to contribute.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:14):
Can everybody see my screen?
Tom Dorsey (00:35:16):
I can.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:18):
So let’s talk about production manager in role, which in the previous world almost managing interrupts is really tough. So everybody has a different way of remembering if possible, the things. And we implemented the task manager where even if you don’t have a production manager, you still have reminders for tasks which are extremely important and can fall through the cracks rather quickly. And those are currently, but we expect a lot more additions. Review inspection, results, review work order, confirm an appointment, tech notes, and those are all automated. So I give you an example here. We are now going to shirts and you see, let me close that first. You see here on the right hand side all the communication amongst the team in the shop vehicle alerts as we call them, and then communication with AutoVitals support and here are six vehicle alerts pending. So let’s just click on them and the first one is for this repair order for this Ford F-150 and Zag submitted the inspection, we detected that automatically in the tool because he pressed the button and then we automatically create a task which is review inspection results and it has been assigned to the production manager.
(00:37:20):
If you don’t have a production manager, it gets assigned automatically to the service advisor on the ARO and then he will see here you see zero tasks, but if you don’t click on it and finish them and they have been finished, as you see there’s a check mark already, you will find them appear in the task manager. And so John, because he’s on the show, has a clean slate, there’s nothing pending. Maybe in real life there will be a little bit more pending here. And then you see the number of tasks pending up here. What John is also is the production manager. So he’s not only seeing his own tasks, he’s seeing everybody’s tasks and what the original assignment was, right? So he can now see man, Randy is behind, let’s just reassign that task to somebody else. So not only a task reminder, it’s also a management tool for the production manager or admin to make sure all the tasks are actually taken care of.
(00:38:50):
Last but not least, you can create your own tasks If you are the admin manager or you’re sitting in your office, you don’t want to interrupt anybody, you just create a task and see here the ones which have been used in the past will stay here as a selection dropdown. So call customer is a very often used one, right? And you just enter it and say what customer is have an optional no to sign it if important at their O and then you say when the task should be started and done. So this way, no need for post-its no need for any particular yelling across the shop. Did you forget? Did you remember you? All the interrupts, which normally lower productivity cannot be eliminated, but they can be managed or most of them cannot be eliminated, but they can be managed. They’re sitting now in one central place.
(00:40:12):
See what just happened here. That’s a typical alert where David did exactly the same. Here is now a new task automatically generated and what I forgot to mention is you don’t even need to check them off when done. You just need to use the tool. So the moment for example, review inspection results is actually four tasks. It’s not just one. It’s browse the topics, edit the pictures, create the estimate, and send the inspections to the customer. Once the fourth task is done, this task gets checked automatically in your term. If not, it’ll still show what’s open. So you might see tasks which are on number three of the four, right? The estimate is being built but the motorist has not received it yet. So you will still be reminded there’s something open,
Tom Dorsey (00:41:20):
That vehicle gets reassigned. Does the task automatically reassigned to the new assignee?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:41:28):
Yes. Yes. So if the service advisor is configured, let me show that. So you can basically in the settings say what task assignment goes to the service advisor and what stays with the service advisor and what goes to the production manager. So in this case, that is what John has elected to let the production manager do, whereas the call customers and the confirm appointment requests stay with the service advisor. It makes total sense.
Tom Dorsey (00:42:17):
Real quick, we got a question from Carlos Contreras real quick, I’m sorry and you guys can answer this form actually because it’s directed towards y’all. He says, I agree with one person dispatching the work, but when it comes to delegating work to the techs, how do you keep it even so that everyone can book enough hours or do you pay them hourly with a team bonus or some form of different compensation?
John Long (00:42:40):
This is actually a good question because Adam and I are set up differently. We run our shops differently in that aspect and I’ll tell you how I run mine and then Adam can let you know how he runs his. For us all my techs are hourly and they do have production bonuses. I reassign jobs like crazy to keep everybody, even for me it’s all about getting the car out and it’s who can work on that car right now and if I have a tech that can work on that car right now, they get the job. It doesn’t matter if they didn’t look at it, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s all about getting the car out as quick as possible and that is what I have found works best for us. It may not work best for you and others have found other ways that it works best for them, but for me we could have David, most of the time David is what I call our diag tech.
(00:43:33):
David does all the diag stuff and that’s what he does all day long. It’s another specialized role, so he does that. Then I’ve got three guys right now that do what we call the vehicle health inspection and my two Zachs and Gary, that’s all they do pretty much all day long is those vehicle health inspections or at least for the most of the part of the morning that’s all they do. Then in the afternoon they can get some other assigned work to them that we’ve sold if needed. But then my other techs, all they do is do the repair work, they can do diagnostic work, they do do that sometimes, but for the most part all they do is just actually repair the vehicles and get ’em out and it doesn’t matter who does what it is just about getting the car done. And sometimes I’ll have two of them working on different aspects of the car depending on specialties as well.
Adam Bendzick (00:44:29):
Yep, exactly. So John and I talk about this quite often actually and compare operations and such his shop, correct me if I’m wrong, John is kind of set up with the production manager, service advisor role. How that works upfront is how he makes everything work in back with the specialized roles. We have not currently changed the back to do that. Definitely been looking into it, but the tough side of it is you have to have a specific shop culture, which we are growing into that the guys do work as a team and it isn’t like how is somebody else affecting my paycheck? It’s difficult if you have a rockstar tech that’s used to making flat rate and they’re making six figures plus and this and that and then they go to a team structure and now they’re not making those dollars and cents, they’re probably going to get frustrated with it.
(00:45:18):
So what we’re trying to transition into is everybody who works underneath flat rate as far as assigning jobs, that’s pretty much handled by Nick. We don’t have it where we have 20 vehicles on the schedules throughout the day and they just wait for everything to come here and not be prepped for it. Every technician has their set schedule going into it. If I take a phone call right now and a half hour and it’s for a Friday appointment for a diagnostic, I’m going to look at the schedule and I’m going to put it on Ryan’s currently or I’m going to put it on Ronnie’s. It doesn’t mean that that won’t change before we get to Friday, but we are actually assigning it to a technician before the vehicle even gets here so that they can look at their schedule ahead of time and know what’s coming in.
(00:46:02):
They give us feedback if their schedule, if their schedule has changed, if they look at tomorrow’s schedule at five o’clock and then we change it before close at five 30, they’ll come in and be like, what the hell did you switch on my schedule for? I had my tools prepped and everything like that ready to go for what I was going to be working on. So we just assign the work according to who it’s going to go to ahead of time and not just have a bunch of tickets on the wall and first come first serve and chaos and oh, why did this guy get this job and then I got this job and so on and so forth. So it’s set up off a flat rate system, but we do assign work ahead of just them grabbing it on their own.
Bill Connor (00:46:42):
So there’s two things there. One is when you’re dispatching using that labor inventory on the top of today’s vehicle page and the tech view to understand who’s available that has the skillset to do the job and also be able to see their pace for the week, that makes it really easy to go in and balance out what goes on in the shop and a lot of shops that get hung up on, well my guys are flat rate, they’re not flat rate. And really if you think about it, flat rate is great, but it’s even more important if your guys are hourly to go ahead and manage that inventory because every penny that is coming out of your pocket, regardless of whether you keep ’em busy or not. So that is one thing and the other thing is when we got this dedicated mindset here, it really helps to go and take a service advisor as a really great people person and that really has the tendency to have an issue or some people call it selling from their wallet. If you take that away from ’em, you’re going to find out that your estimates are going to be a lot more profitable. Also,
John Long (00:47:39):
Going back to signing the work, Adam touched on something, it is a shop culture that you really have to institute to where the techs say, Hey, why is that guy got this job and I don’t have this job that job. Why am I doing these valves and lifters on this dodge truck instead of all the gravy flushes? I don’t have that in our shop just because it’s the shop culture that we created on it and the techs have one common goal and that’s what their production bonus is, is one common goal as a team and that’s to get that work out so it doesn’t matter to them who has what it is just all a matter of getting it out and getting it done.
Adam Bendzick (00:48:20):
I’m also, currently as we speak, we’re going through this PPP stuff and we didn’t want to change payroll up and everything like that during that timeframe or how we did it, but after that was all completed, we are looking at going to a team structure of sorts where they will be kind of based off of flat rate and dollars produced and everything like that. But two of my guys in back, we have four total techs. Three are what I consider and one general service type tech. Two of the ATECs are going to combine and we’re going to kind of do our own little in-house case study to say, alright, how efficient were they before now? How efficient are they working together? How are they producing, how is that affecting their paychecks and everything? They see the peaks and valleys of their schedule as well where they’re busy, then they’re busy, then they’re not, and all of a sudden the job sells at two o’clock and it’s like, God, I didn’t have a lot from noon to two, but now I got to rush, rush, rush to finish this thing up when I could have been helping the other guy out with his vehicle.
(00:49:17):
And they do, they are good about helping each other out, but it’s not the same. If you have a true team aspect and you’re delegating work like John is, there shouldn’t be those little gaps in the schedule that we in a lot of ways have to make up because our guys have such a strong ability to get worked out, work cranked out really quickly.
(00:49:37):
We’re fortunate to have that, yes, but at the same time the ideal setup would be to have a group of technicians in back that you could assign work to. It didn’t matter about anybody’s feelings or this and that. They just said, Hey, we got 20 vehicles to get done day. How can we do it together? How can we all leave here at four o’clock and go be with our families? So that is the ideal setup. The tough thing is just making pay structures work around it because no matter what, there’s always going to be that feeling of I’m doing more work than that guy, why is he making as much as me? So you have to balance that out quite a bit.
John Long (00:50:15):
Yeah, you do. You do. And I wouldn’t say we have that a hundred percent because we do. Occasionally somebody will grumble a little bit, but it’s not much. But the way that we have our structure set up, it’s set up to where everybody, even as an individual, if they produce 120% and somebody else only does 80 but the team does a hundred, they’re going to get more because they did 120% than the person that only was at 80%. So I’ve got it set up that way. So the more they do the individually, they’re still going to get paid pretty well and if they do well as a team, they’re going to get paid well as a team. But before any of the bonuses that get paid out is we have to do well as a team first if we don’t hit a certain level as a team, no bonuses get paid out. I don’t care if you, you’re 150% proficient for the week, if we didn’t hit our minimum as a team, nothing gets paid out.
Adam Bendzick (00:51:16):
Absolutely. Notice on the comments a few people ask. Thank you. Would it be okay to reach out? Absolutely. Both of us are, I mean we not live on our phones, but at the same time messenger’s always up. So we’re always talking about stuff and if I can’t answer it, I might even delegate it to John or I might be like, Hey, I got this message from so-and-so shop, here’s what I’m thinking about replying back to it. So a lot of times when you ask us questions, we’re probably talking about it from shop to shop to give you a better answer too. Sometimes your questions actually improve our shop. It’s stuff that we don’t even think about, so we’re like, it just hasn’t came up ever. So it’s like, God, that’s a great question. Let me look at how I’m doing it within my shop. Oh, I’m not doing it a great way. Let’s improve it for our stuff. So without a doubt that networking back and forth, we were absolutely available for stay on it if for some reason I have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old and John has his family and everything like that. If we don’t get back to you, it’s not because we don’t care. We’re always going to care and we’re always going to help.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:52:16):
Thank you Adam. I would actually, if that’s okay with both of you, encourage everybody to ask it in the Facebook forum because I cannot imagine that most of the questions are of really more interest than just one particular shop. So if you could go in the Facebook forum, ask you question tag John and Adam, that is a guarantee for a lively discussion.
Adam Bendzick (00:52:46):
Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (00:52:48):
I’m sure they’re the type of questions
John Long (00:52:50):
I’m sure we’ll make it fun in the process as well. Right,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:52:52):
Right.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:54):
Awesome. Yeah, they might even find pictures of you on the internet and put them on the background and stuff like that.
Adam Bendzick (00:53:00):
May have happened before.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:53:04):
I give
Tom Dorsey (00:53:05):
Real quick too, you guys saw what you put in the chat, right? They’ve got a large shop, three service advisor, nine techs and a general manager. The GM oversees the entire operation and they’re currently trying to implement in the middle of implementing three teams and they’re having a few little hiccups, but implementing a great plan is unique with each shop and she’s willing to get help to make it smoother. So yeah, definitely join in that conversation. These guys would I’m sure be more than happy to help you out and probably learn some stuff from what you’re doing. And then hint, Dustin, we probably have a pretty good case study on an upcoming show we’d love to get Gina on and talk about that implementation and give some people some help on how to avoid some of the pitfalls that she’s discovering for us.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:53:52):
I would really love to add to that discussion because we used to have a team support in AutoVitals and it really uncovered a lot of, how do I say, complex issues which come with the team, which eventually led to not do teams and maybe we’re going to revisit that. So I would really be interested to be part of that discussion and happy to share why it didn’t create this big benefit. I want to still use the remaining time, John, and ask you a question about a certain technique using or used to use, I don’t know whether you still do it, but I see it in the task, so I assume you still use it and that is you do not approve the jobs once they come out of estimate building out automatically, you have a review work order task which goes to the production manager which allows for reassigning text or assigning text. Could you elaborate what that helps with?
John Long (00:55:10):
Yeah, that actually goes back to the whole team thing and assigning work to whoever’s available, less busy or not busy or is available. And that’s what that step is for is once the advisor approves the work, they’ll move it into approved work and then send the production manager a message saying, Hey, this is all approved. They’ll order parts and they’ll either put it into an approved parts or they may even go to waiting to assign to tech and that’s just kind of a holding bin for us with all the available hours that we have that once a tech starts to free up or the production manager know that tech’s going to free up by them completing their jobs on the tablet, they’ll sign that to that tech and it doesn’t matter, like I said, who looked at the vehicle first. For us it’s just those are holding patterns until we can see who we’re going to assign it to, who’s free and who can get the job done in a timely manner. And who has the most skillset for that job?
Adam Bendzick (00:56:10):
Absolutely. Yeah. We have that same type of thing. Ours is called order parts now and that’s that next step after estimate approval and everything. And that just triggers the production manager to say, okay, the job was approved and so on, so now I need to order parts for it. I need to assign it to the appropriate tech. Usually for our setup it stays with the same tech. There are some instances where just a vehicle needs to be done by that certain day. So one day Ryan might gain a job from Ronnie the next day, Ronnie might job from Ryan. So they are good about that giving up work if they just physically can’t get it done because they know there’s going to be another day that something like that might help, it might happen in their favor. So that’s a good thing too with the flat rate.
(00:56:50):
But one thing is, and maybe John has the same thing, is that phase almost always needs to go back to the production manager in some way. Even if the job isn’t approved, the technician might have something torn apart or whatever and the production manager needs to say, Hey, that job was not approved, go ahead and put it back together so that the customer can come pick it up or tow it out of here or whatever it might be. So no matter what, there needs to be some phase that triggers that next step whether job’s approved or not.
John Long (00:57:20):
Yeah. The way we do it is our service advisor to send the production manager a message and saying, oh nope, all worst decline. And then the production manager says, okay, well let me, I got to get it put back together or I already know it’s put back together, one of those two. And if it’s not put back together, they’ll message the service advisor and say, okay, it needs to be put back together. I’ll let you know when it’s put back together. I’m going to get the tech on it as soon as he is available to put everything back together on it.
Adam Bendzick (00:57:47):
Yep, for sure,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:57:49):
For sure. And John was there, assuming before you had kind of a rule what a lot of shops still have and that’s basically there’s a default technician on a vehicle which gets by default all jobs assigned. Was that a transition which was difficult for you? It’s still
John Long (00:58:09):
Something we’re working through a little bit on it because as soon as we move the job or the tile from waiting on parts or assigned a tech into waiting for work finished, we have to assign those, the new technician right away, because other words, it could show up on the default technician’s tablet. And we have had it in a couple instances where we’ve had two or three techs waiting on a job and we signed something to him and it really wasn’t supposed to be assigned to him, but he kind of starts on it right away. So we got to kind watch it sometimes. I haven’t really found the best way, maybe you could help me with this Uwe to try and get that assigned to the proper tech before we move it over because those jobs aren’t approved so you can’t assign them or am I wrong on that until you move it to that workflow stack? That’s
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:59:02):
Correct. Yeah. They have to be approved, otherwise tech cannot work on it. Or you want the risk of losing money and get reauthorization.
Adam Bendzick (00:59:13):
Just for clarity’s sake. John, you’re talking about assigning it within AutoVitals, not assigning it within your shop system? Correct.
John Long (00:59:22):
You’re signing within AutoVitals? Yes. Okay.
Adam Bendzick (00:59:26):
So we’ve only assigned work through Protractor is what we use. I love that. AutoVitals, you can change the tech and then it writes back and forth between the two. Our just practice right now I guess you could say is that we’re using it through protractor. So that’s one thing we haven’t changed or really implemented. It was going into AutoVitals and signing it. The guys are just so used to doing it in Protractor. I like that it’s there, but that’s just the way we’ve been doing it on the, sorry to back up, but when you’re going through the task manager and there was the task and such like that the vehicle lurks and everything. I sent in a request and now I’m going to publicly ask.
John Long (01:00:10):
Of course you would,
Adam Bendzick (01:00:13):
And I think you guys gave it the proper attention to it or whatever, but the techs, to give you a tech perspective is I think from being a former tech, I think, okay, I got an F-150 to work on. I got a Dodge near to work on. I got a Honda Odyssey to work on. I don’t know what the customer’s name is. I just see those vehicles from a service advisor part of it. I’m working on Mrs. Jones. I’m working on Mr. Long. I’m working on Mr. Kleinschmidt’s vehicles. So right now those tasks come through there. They’re showing a work order number and they’re showing a vehicle name. Can we get the customer’s name in there just so that the service advisor sees that even when you’re assigning tasks, if you go to the dropdown ro, it comes up with just the ARO number. I can’t memorize those numbers enough to know who was where. So the name would help a ton.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:01:04):
Sure. Should consider done. If there’s a request already in, we’ll take care of it.
Adam Bendzick (01:01:11):
So can I be on next week’s show so we can just keep on putting these requests through?
John Long (01:01:16):
I’m always here to be there too, so I’ve got a few other things in the pipeline I like to get moved along.
Adam Bendzick (01:01:24):
No, with respect TOT VPX, we switched to it I think two-ish weeks ago, two and a half-ish weeks. This is the start of our third week. I’m pretty sure for anybody that was or is still considering not switching, it’s not an overwhelming change by any means. Some people might see the task manager and how you assign stuff and this and that. You can still make the program function like it was before without necessarily doing those things. But I’m sure Uwe and everybody else would encourage you to start looking at those things and how they can help you. But don’t feel like you can’t switch to TVPX and still function pretty much the same way you did before. What I think you’ll instantly see is there is certain features that will right away make your job easier. Whether it be a service advisor only setup or whether it be a service advisor, production manager setup. There’s stuff with the image and notes editor that’s way smoother, way quicker than it was before. Way easier to use. I know it looks different and I know there’s new features that you’ve never used before, but there’s so many things that are going to make your job easier that you should just make the switch and not look back.
John Long (01:02:30):
That sounds awful familiar, Adam.
Adam Bendzick (01:02:31):
Yeah, whatever.
John Long (01:02:33):
For those that don’t know, I’ve been prodding Adam for the past, probably a month and a half, two months to do the same thing.
Adam Bendzick (01:02:39):
Moving on. Moving on. No, but realistically, you did a great job.
John Long (01:02:44):
You obviously drank the Kool-Aid.
Adam Bendzick (01:02:47):
No, I mean there’s a lot of things that hold us back. I mean, I had a whole show on things like talking about things that have held me back in the past and if I just jumped in or I took somebody’s advice, even still, obviously in this case I didn’t take somebody else’s advice and do it right away, but hopefully we’re all stubborn in our own right. You always think like, oh, I’m going to wait, or there might be this bug that might impact how it functions. And that was some of the things that John was talking about. To the best of my knowledge, John has done quite a bit with the protractor and TVPX integration and getting that stuff working and everything. So to his credit, he’s done a ton. Some of those things that he talked about slowed me down from making the switch, but that was almost kind of selfish on my own part. I should have been there helping him, but I appreciate it.
John Long (01:03:40):
Don’t worry. I remember,
Adam Bendzick (01:03:41):
Adam, if your ARO dipped a little bit and mine just kind of stayed consistent. I appreciate you doing what you did.
John Long (01:03:50):
Don’t remember. I remember this. I always do.
Adam Bendzick (01:03:55):
I sent you a care package.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:03:58):
I think John got the $900,000 we just mentioned earlier. That was pretty good.
John Long (01:04:05):
Yeah,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:04:06):
Right. A pretty good payback for the investment I’d say.
Adam Bendzick (01:04:10):
Well then I guess I should have maybe brought up a more embarrassing picture of you for that.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:04:18):
Ah, look at him. How did you get your fingers on this?
John Long (01:04:26):
That
Adam Bendzick (01:04:26):
Was all John. Actually I did the Photoshop
John Long (01:04:28):
Of you from the picture. That was from a TI.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:04:35):
Yeah, it was from a T. I remember that. A TI SuperConference a few years ago. So to Adam’s point, I put in the chat for everybody, the demo shop link where you can basically play around with it without, it’s a wheel. TVPX. You can chat with each other. You can send inspection results to yourself and check this all out. So we highly recommend before you switch, make yourself familiar using the demo shop.
Adam Bendzick (01:05:13):
Can you demo the tablet Uwe?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:05:16):
We thought maybe that’s good feedback for you. We thought the tablet is so much more intuitive and very similar to the previous one that there was no need for it.
Adam Bendzick (01:05:28):
Okay. Only reason I ask is the process of like, Hey, I’m going to send you a vehicle to your tablet. Can you go through there and just make a fake mock inspection and send it back to me? That part of it might give the service advisor production manager more of the feel of how it’s going to operate. I agree with you from feedback from Texas, it’s pretty much very similar or almost the same. So it’s not a big difference on their end, but just the functionality instead of editing your own inspection that you just took a, I was taking pictures of stuff on my desk and everything and editing that. It would probably be better if I had a picture of the air filter or something random in the shop. Yeah,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:06:06):
Makes sense.
John Long (01:06:07):
Yeah, and on that aspect, my text actually like the TVPX version better than the old version anyway, they think it’s easier to use.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:06:17):
Good. Cool. Absolutely. Wow. Time and flu.
John Long (01:06:24):
So what happens when we’re having fun?
Tom Dorsey (01:06:27):
Yeah, we can go two hours. These guys easy.
Adam Bendzick (01:06:29):
I’m
John Long (01:06:29):
Sure we probably could.
Adam Bendzick (01:06:31):
So thinking about this, I think what kind of not slowed things down because it’s great that there’s questions, but have you guys considered doing just a q and a segment where this is supposed to be all about with the effective unlocking success with the effective task managers. We maybe touched on that for 15 minutes of it. So the q and a part of it just to somehow have just an episode that’s generated towards that, sending your questions, we’ll be back on X date to answer ’em or whatever. So we’re kind of prepped on it.
Tom Dorsey (01:07:05):
Yeah, we sure have. We actually have some episodes coming up. Some are point of sale specific, some are solutions specific. And so part of that is we’re going to be doing some kind of survey goes out for the, so that’s another reason why get registered, hop over to AutoVitals.com/dst and register because then that way we can get that feedback. We will collect a lot of that input on those questions and then open it up live during the show to have that type of back and forth and how to, so anybody who’s got some ideas like that, something you’ve been struggling with or you want more info, Adam could help you out and you’d love to have that ability to pick his brain a little bit through that q and a. Let us know, give us topics, give us if you like to come on and contribute and help some of your peers, we’d love to have you on. So let us know if you’d like to do that as well. Thanks, Adam. That’s awesome buddy.
Adam Bendzick (01:08:07):
Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure John, whether we did it together or whatever, it’s been kind of fun doing these little segments actually
Tom Dorsey (01:08:16):
We have good times
John Long (01:08:17):
Always enjoy and
Adam Bendzick (01:08:18):
We take ’em seriously. When it comes down to it, we’re actually like, okay, what are we going to talk about based on the topic that’s coming up and everything. So it’s not just not prepped information. I print out a little Excel spreadsheet every single time I come on here. If I’m going to do it, we’re going to take it seriously. We’re going to do it right. So anytime you have that
John Long (01:08:41):
And we want to see the next background image.
Adam Bendzick (01:08:44):
Exactly.
John Long (01:08:46):
Really looking point out, Adam, you want to point out where Uwe is in your picture?
Adam Bendzick (01:08:52):
Not the middle one that we showed.
John Long (01:08:53):
Yeah, this is hidden
Adam Bendzick (01:08:54):
One. It’s a mirrored image
John Long (01:08:57):
Right there. Here you go.
Dustin Anaas (01:09:00):
Yeah. Congrats Gina and Lucille for our two big winners today. So they’re going to be getting some AutoVitals swag here to reach out to ’em. So good job guys.
John Long (01:09:11):
So
Bill Connor (01:09:11):
You want to be like John, you want to go ahead and build a well-rounded shop through dispatching and by feeding them on every Wednesday.
John Long (01:09:19):
I’ve had guys come in the whole time while we’ve been on getting lunch.
Tom Dorsey (01:09:24):
Yeah, shout out to the crew. The special John Barbecue.
John Long (01:09:32):
Let’s see. There’s lunchroom there. It looks like somebody’s got a plate ready to go. And let me see, take my camera down here and see. There is somebody else weighing over there, getting himself a plate. I had some brisket, mac and cheese and broccoli salad today. Some ice cream cones for dessert. So
Bill Connor (01:09:56):
This is John’s way is sending everybody a digital lunch.
John Long (01:09:59):
There you go. Low calorie. There’s Angie. Angie.
Tom Dorsey (01:10:08):
Hi Angie. I am hungry. Cool.
Dustin Anaas (01:10:13):
In John’s next shop. We got to build him a studio and I’ll just move to Texas and just go there on Wednesdays in his place.
John Long (01:10:19):
Well, in the next shop I actually have an office so we can do something in there and then I’ll have a separate lunchroom as well.
Tom Dorsey (01:10:25):
Yeah,
Adam Bendzick (01:10:26):
All the hands on. They tried to tell you something like kicking you out of there or weren’t you just on a sabbatical at your house for the last two months?
John Long (01:10:36):
Well, I spent about a month there I think in March, April
Adam Bendzick (01:10:42):
Because they first kicked out. Mark, right? And then now are they? Well,
John Long (01:10:45):
Mark was never here. He was Are
Adam Bendzick (01:10:46):
They maybe doing the same? He was never
John Long (01:10:47):
Allowed to come here and now I’m kind of being kicked out. But that’s also just because we don’t have space for me. So that’s why I got an office set up in our break room. And then Angie, I had to move Angie right next to me just because we’ve grown so much and I don’t have space and now we’re opening up the second location and Monday I’m going to have a total of 12 techs here and five advisors and three other different office personnel all in a spot that does not have room for all of that, that’s for sure.
Tom Dorsey (01:11:21):
Very cool problem now buddy. Congratulations on all that success. If anybody deserves it is John Long.
John Long (01:11:27):
Thank
Tom Dorsey (01:11:28):
You. Not only are you doing it smart, but you’re helping others. That’s what happens, right? You give and you receive. That’s the name of the game and you guys are pretty awesome. I can’t thank you enough for coming on and sharing the feedback in here has been huge. I’m sure that conversation’s going to get took to Facebook, your phone’s going to be ringing, you’re about to meet a lot of new friends and it is just really, it’s just heartwarming to see folks following that lead and starting to develop those specialized roles in those teams and having those questions. And we really look forward to sharing those stories as well as you achieve that same success. So thanks again guys.
Adam Bendzick (01:12:04):
Absolutely. And thank you guys for adapting to it and making it more of a priority to allow us to have those roles within setting up tasks and the production manager and the teams within that. It’s been nice to have a software company that helps align to what the shops are looking for.
Tom Dorsey (01:12:23):
Well, that’s always been our mission. Who’s mission is not just do what anybody else is doing and do. Number two or 2000 is innovate. And the way we innovate is by finding out what the users and the experience that you’re having and your direct needs and then addressing those. And in some cases, hey, when the data and the results point to something that’s crazy or really outside of the box, well I mean that’s how, that’s the true nature of innovation and that’s the type of guy Ula is. I think every morning when he wakes up his eyes open, he thinks of a different way to get out of bed. So he can’t do that same way twice.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:13:06):
Everything else would be boring.
Tom Dorsey (01:13:10):
Somersoft, you have
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:13:11):
To change it up a little.
Tom Dorsey (01:13:13):
I’m just looking forward to when he launches out with the bungee, see if he lands in the shower. But now, tune in same time next week, right? Wednesday 10:00 AM 1:00 PM Pacific. And we’re going to do it again and again if you didn’t catch the other parts of the series, if you’re new to AutoVitals, thinking about AutoVitals, looking at make some transitions and adopt more digital shop best practices, get over there to help.AutoVitals.com/podcasts and you’ll find the library there and all those recordings and you can get caught up. Until then, we’ll see you next week. Get out there and make some more money.