Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].
Tom Dorsey (00:00:05):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey and we’ve got a great show for you today. We’re going to be talking about our, it’s actually our third episode in this three part series about best practices to drive a high build, hours per ticket average in your operation. And why are we doing that? Well, because we’re bringing on some shops that have different style of operations, different perspectives, kind of different goals in mind, different sizes even to give you a really good overview and cross section of what’s possible, how other operators are having success in those areas and what you can do to emulate that and how you can bring your operation forward. And so we’re really excited to welcome Bruce Williams from Rivers Edge in beautiful Prince George, British Columbia. Welcome Bruce.
Bruce Williams (00:01:07):
Thank you very much, Tom. It’s great to be
Tom Dorsey (00:01:08):
Here. Yeah, no, I’m really excited to have you on. Bruce is a turbo shop, has been for a long time. I want to thank you right here publicly for that work that you do to help us build the best solution possible and to all turbo shops and anybody who’s ever been at Turbo Shop without people like Bruce and everybody else in your help, we’d be back five years, we’d be backwards five years, and the help that you guys bring is really invaluable. So I want to thank you very much.
Bruce Williams (00:01:39):
You’re welcome. It’s a great honor to be able to help develop, to make it work for our systems as well, all across the country.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:48):
Well, yeah, it’s nice having a guy like our other guests here today, our founder and CIO, Uwe Kleinschmidt regular co-host of the Digital Shop Talk Radio, working alongside you developing some of those ideas you come up with. It’s pretty nice to have a software developer as a close friend when you’re looking, especially for technology tools in the shop. And so we want to talk about that today is how do we take the solution, the AutoVitals solution, how do we take those best practices? Because it’s more than a tool. It really is a process, right? It is a way of doing business that has become proven to be highly successful from data and from best practices that are created and driven by people like Bruce Williams and everybody else out there and then sharing that information through the Digital Shop Talk Radio or Facebook form or other collaborative type events so that more and more people can learn from those successes and have the same type of success.
(00:02:54):
And so we want to talk today, we talked with Christoph Schopfer last week. We talked Brittany Schindler the week before that talking about their operation and how, because these guys, they’re all close to five build hours, even higher than that per ticket. And that’s really incredible when you look at it, especially if you look at it from the industry, average is probably around two and a half, right? 2.6, something like that. So we’re talking double that industry average, and that’s really incredible and we want to be able to bring that with very specific information and kind of a how to guide to you so that you can implement that into your operation. So we’re going to be talking about it and as a matter of fact, we’re going to have Bruce and Brittany and hopefully Christoph Schopfer back on next Wednesday to do a round table and really talk about in depth and in detail how to help you to emulate what it is that they’re doing. So long intro, but on a very important topic and subject, and let’s roll our sleeves up and dig in. And if you could, Bruce, just start us off, give us a little bit of an overview of how 2020 treated you, how’s your shop doing, especially up there in Canada, you’ve probably operating under some different situation than we are down here depending on where we’re at in the United States with the pandemic and things like that. What’s going on?
Bruce Williams (00:04:24):
Well, yeah, I agree with Everywhere you go is a little bit different out there for sure right now and every couple months we’ve got different rules and regulations coming on.
Tom Dorsey (00:04:33):
Isn’t that great?
Bruce Williams (00:04:34):
I’m sure everybody does, but when Covid first hit last March, yeah, it was pretty interesting and scary for everybody. It doesn’t matter what business you were in, no one knew what to do, what was expected, what was going to happen. We actually ended up shutting down for I think three weeks total, right? In March. We didn’t know even what was happening. And then the phone just started ringing again. Everybody started getting a little more comfortable knowing what to do, and we just exploded. And right away we shifted, we followed all the guidelines, we got all the sanitizers, hand sanitizer, masks, stations, fogging equipment for the vehicles. Every vehicle is wiped down, keys are wiped down. And now it’s just a regular practice. We do that with every vehicle all the time. It just became normal. It didn’t take long for all of it to become normal as far as night drops, pickups, and now with the text to Pace system is fantastic. People can just pick up at their convenience later, more contactless interaction, which is great. And tying in with the AutoVitals inspection process, everything’s digital. You can almost now not even have to see the clients except for with all the digital inspections and back and forth communications electronically.
Tom Dorsey (00:05:50):
Yeah, we were talking about that a little bit before the show. We were talking about restaurants and then we of related it to automotive repair shops because it was the adaptability. It was those who adapted throughout this pandemic, especially in the early months. That’s when it was so important, really came out of it. I mean, we’ve had shops on that have grown 30%, almost close to 50% growth year over year in the pandemic. And that’s really an incredible story of success and it’s not easy to do. How was it from internal perspective in your culture and how did that affect your staff? Was that another challenge to overcome, let alone trying to get customers back through the door?
Bruce Williams (00:06:43):
Definitely. It was a bit of a challenge for sure, because again, everybody was scared, didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how the social distancing even supposed to work, what they’re supposed to do outside of work inside. And that’s how we build all of our systems. We sit down and talk as a team and let everybody have some input on the way we want to proceed forward because when everybody’s involved in the decision, they have a vested interest in it and then the culture becomes a real team environment. So we had definitely a lot of roadblocks that we battled back and forth with what should we do? People weren’t comfortable coming in at first, but once the rules and regulations were clear or more clear, I should say, they’re still not very clear. But it really helped. And then we all kind of came together and full wearing masks in the customer contact areas and keeping everything sanitized all the time. And now we’ve actually, I think we’ve grown over 20% since the pandemic alone and just keep breaking records.
Tom Dorsey (00:07:49):
Wow, that’s incredible.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:07:52):
And is that with kind of steady car count or lower car count, or do you see growth also in amount of people dropping off the car?
Bruce Williams (00:08:04):
I think our car count’s approximately the same. It might be a little lower, but is what we’re finding and that’s what we’re going to touch on today is the customer experience. They’re leaving it for more work at the one drop off now as opposed to multiple bringing it back. And that’s what I’ve found. It’s funny, people don’t want to be without their cars. The cars is a little bit of a lifeline no matter what, even if you’re downtown parked and you work at the bank, but if you know your car’s in the parking lot, you’re happy if you dropped it off somewhere and you’re not sure where it is or what’s happening, you worry about it all day long unless you have a really good drop off conversation with that customer and they know what’s expected and what the procedure is of the day, then they’re comfortable and they’d rather drop it once, get it all taken care of than come back in three weeks, their next oil service, and then three more weeks later for tire rotation. So that’s what we’re really finding is the customer communication at Drop-off and the staging process of it, the pre-booked phone call, the going over the deferred work, all the things we’ll touch on today has really created the higher ARO or hours sold per ARO and the average ticket to go way up because customers are dropping it off and saying, you know what? I know it’s not even quite due yet, but let’s get it done while it’s here today and I don’t have to come back for the next three, four months.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:09:34):
Very cool. And did you see a shift in type of customers or was it just an untapped potential all along and kind of the pandemic and thinking about new business processes made you dig deeper?
Bruce Williams (00:09:53):
I think more it was us digging deeper. We found better ways to do it and to ultimately to create a better customer experience and give them more value and more options. So we dug deeper as opposed to just processing people. We dug deeper and really started building relationships and having a lot more communication with them to really understand where we’re going to go and how we can better serve them.
Tom Dorsey (00:10:20):
And we hear that a lot from the shops that we’ve had on in conversations with shops that are really thriving through this pandemic is exactly that, is that they took the time to dial in their process and adhere to their process more consistently each and every time they follow this process. Because like you said, you’re going to attract customers. The customers don’t want to have to go out as many times and potential exposure, so they’re going to get more done with that visit. And so therefore you have to go through the whole story and you have to give all the options and you have to really put it all out there on the table. Well, then you look back and you say, well, why haven’t I been doing that all the time? Right? That’s not a pandemic best practice, that’s a best practice. It’s the way you should be running your business each and every day. And it’s to that realization and yeah, sure, some process things or services might’ve enhanced or changed or you might be offering even more services like pickup and drop off. Maybe you didn’t do that before, but the bottom line is that from the customer service experience, it should have been that way because that’s kind of what the digital consumer is looking for. And Bill’s asking real quick, Bruce, did you modify your drop off script and process to go from that remote customer phone conversation versus a more face-to-face at the counter type interaction?
Bruce Williams (00:11:45):
We did modify the dropoff script a little bit. We had a pretty good dropoff script that we’ve gotten from your cells AutoVitals that’s helped out. But is what we really modified is our practices internally. We had to slow down, take the time, be prepared with all the information prior and actually also prepare the customer that we’re going to have a five minute conversation when you’re dropping off your car. You can’t just drop your keys and go because we won’t be able to discuss everything that needs to be done. So a little bit of both, I guess is the answer. We created our own brochures to go through with the customer of what’s expected on your visit today and the conversation of what are their maintenance preferences, what does the customer actually want, what do they know? And if they don’t understand the maintenance, we take the time to educate ’em all on our maintenance service packages, the whole maintenance plan that we have built into our system, which is protractor, and we go through it and explain that.
(00:12:47):
And our inspection process, every single customer knows a hundred percent that they are going to get either a complimentary inspection, a courtesy inspection or an inspection on say our oil service or whatever else we’re doing. So they’re already expecting an inspection that we’re going to go through. We’re going to talk about the maintenance of the vehicle so it can last longer so they don’t have to go buy a new one and save ’em from costly breakdowns and that they’ll be expecting to get that emailed or text message to them and we’ll go over it. And then we also set up talking about all the deferred work. If they’re a returning customer, they already know that we talked about certain things that are coming up. So when we bring that up at their next appointment, they remember we talked about it and they can choose to, yeah, let’s add that on and take care of a couple of those today while it’s there.
Tom Dorsey (00:13:36):
Yeah, that’s brilliant, right, because it’s expected now. And that really is, if your shop isn’t using that drop off interview process, you need to at least try it out and do it consistently for a couple of weeks and just compare your results to that because it’s so critical nowadays. I mean, it’s when you’re online, when you’re looking at Amazon or something or you’re shopping or you’re trying to make a buying decision online, think about how you do that yourself and the information that you require before you make that decision. It’s no different at the front counter of your shop, and if they’re not there in person, it doesn’t change. You have to use a process that’s going to allow somebody to give you all of that information from and not be required to be standing in front of you and be able to do it on their time and with their defenses down with their guard down.
(00:14:36):
It’s so important. And the way you do that is through managing and setting that expectation. Because just like what Bruce said, when we have that conversation now and we’re saying, yeah, you need these four other things, well we’ve already prepared you for that. It’s not a shock. It’s not. The walls go up and I’m defensive and I’m questioning everything. Oh yeah, that’s right. And now’s a good time because I don’t want to have to bring my car back in two months from now. Let’s get it done. And it really is having that conversation. So reach out to Bruce, look on the Facebook forum and ask your questions, reach out to your AutoVitals advisor, but yet a good strong copy of that AutoVitals drop off script and then customize that for your operation, personalize it for your operation, put it into practice, and maintain it there for a period of time and look at your numbers and adhere to it.
(00:15:23):
Commit to do it fully. And I think you’ll be amazed, and I think your staff will appreciate it as well, because now their expectations, they know exactly what is expected and what they should cover and what they don’t cover and so on and so forth. And it’s like John Long said, it’s that hit by the bus. If you got to replace somebody because they’re out sick or whatever, something happens, you get the exact same customer service experience because the stuff is consistent across employees as well. So get that into practice and try it out. Thanks Bruce. That’s great advice for folks because I know a lot of shops kind of look to that and will mention that change in their process when they go digital is one of the things that brings the quick win. They can put their finger on it, it’s help them to be successful. And so we appreciate you sharing that with folks.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:16:15):
Can I ask about the nitty gritty, Bruce? It seems initially more work for the advisor and if you have a drop of schedule of, I don’t know, five people are waiting in line to drop off their car, there’s some time pressure you go through. So how was the adoption of that new process for your service advisors?
Bruce Williams (00:16:45):
Definitely the initial pushback is we don’t have time to do it for sure, and we can all use time as an excuse in our lives for everything, but
(00:16:55):
So we make the time or we come up with an opportunity. So I understand, Mr. Smith, you don’t have time to have that conversation. When can I call you so we can go over all this before I start working on your car? He’s like, oh, well I’ll be at work in half an hour, lemme get settled and then give me a call. Perfect. So we give that the customers options of what we can do. Either they’re going to talk now or we’re going to talk before we work on your car somehow or else we’re not going to get to work on your car today.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:17:23):
That’s awesome. I think that’s a brilliant idea to relax the situation and still have that touch point.
Bruce Williams (00:17:33):
Tom mentioned something earlier, the commitment level about systems and procedures and until I found that I fully committed to doing it, nothing ever got done completely. And when you stop asking questions and you start actually advising and telling customers what their vehicle needs and they still have the option to do it, yes or no, but you commit fully to the system, this is what our shop provides and this is how we do it. And you might not be the shop for every customer.
Tom Dorsey (00:18:10):
Exactly.
Bruce Williams (00:18:10):
You will become the shop for great customers that turn into basically family and you have a great relationship with them, you’ve built trust with them and they know that when they drop their car off, everything’s going to be taken care of. They’re comfortable, there’s no stress, and when they pick it up, they get greeted with a smile, a clean vehicle, and they can continue on their way and don’t have to worry about it.
Tom Dorsey (00:18:34):
That’s a brilliant point. It’s paying for long-term gain and it really is, it’s a win-win. You’re going to weed the customers out of your database that weren’t really the type of customers that you should be doing business with. Yeah, it’s nice to say you had another higher car count, blah, blah, blah. But really they impact your ARO. They impact your reviews because they’re much more likely to leave you a bad review for something simple or something that could have been handled in a much different way. They don’t get enough stuff for free, the things right? And then they’ll give you bad reviews for that and it’s so impactful to your business and you can’t control that. You’re much better off putting it all out there, being as transparent as possible, not holding anything back and letting those customers make that decision because the ones that stay are going to be the ones you want to do business with. And again, it might be a little dip, but you’re going to grow out of that and you’re going to be surprised at how many more people are looking for that type of service. You don’t want to get the runaround when you go to your doctor, so you probably don’t want to get the runaround when you go and talk to an auto repair shop or any other service business either. And so that’s great. Really appreciate that. And really quick question from the audience is asking, do you work with your service advisors to have staggered drop off times to reduce the bottleneck when you first open your doors?
Bruce Williams (00:19:59):
We definitely try to for sure. We offer that eight o’clock, 8 50, 8 30 the best we can, not with a lot of success due to the fact that a lot of people are all trying to get to work also. So that’s why we option drop it off quick drop off, we will be calling you, we’ll be sending you the authorization digitally, but we’ve got to have that conversation. So we still are committed to following our procedure, whether it’s over the phone or right in person. Definitely if we could stagger it per time slots just like a dentist’s office does, it’d be great. But people want to just drop and go a lot of times. So we do our best to manage that.
Tom Dorsey (00:20:41):
Oh, go ahead, Uwe.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:20:42):
So you were dealing with a challenge every shop is dealing with, right? This is nothing new. So what’s your kind of, I don’t know, three step advice to shop owners who are listening to this and say, I’m inspired that Bruce got this done. So what do I tell my service advisors? So do you have a kind of secret sauce or plan or how to implement?
Bruce Williams (00:21:15):
Well, the secret sauce that’ll cost you a lot of money. No, I’m just kidding. It all comes back to the staging the last time they were here, they understand what to expect next time they come, the pre-appointment, phone call, making sure they’re coming in, making sure, having the workhorse written, having all the stuff that you can do without being in front of the customer ready to go. And it does take time, but you can do that as soon as you get a slow minute. You look at your schedule and you get things pre-written, you make your phone calls. So it does minimize the time the customer is in front of you. It’s just basically when they’re in front of you, you’re just briefly going over it. Yep, yep, yep, we talked about that. You bet. Okay, awesome. Great. What time do you want your car back? Check, check, check. Done. And we’re gone. So it’s really about the pre-staging is what I found that’s really helped us for sure.
Tom Dorsey (00:22:08):
Yeah. And there’s a great solution that’s available, right? Is there’s an opportunity and everything. There’s an opportunity and so many folks are getting used to Zoom now they’re doing Zoom at the school and they’re doing Zoom with their business and their work. And so guess what? Well, you can easily get them to interact through Zoom. And so there’s shops now that are doing a digital solution, I think, and you can go into Zoom, you don’t have to have somebody, you can go in private room and you can record yourself and show screenshots. And so you can go through somebody’s inspection, you can describe just like you would be doing with your drop off interview, and then you can just text a link to that video or email that video to somebody and they can watch it. How long does it take you? It may take you five to 10 minutes to knock out one video.
(00:22:54):
You can do that at the end of the day in preparation of the appointments you got on the books tomorrow and have all those ready to go send those out. And now guess what? A, you’re really scaling your function and we’re talking about staggering at drop off and managing that crush at the drop when the doors open. But now all of a sudden those conversations are much smaller. You can say in your video, Hey, text me the answer to this question and this question and this question. I get all that information that’s already in hand. Now I can respond back real quick. Great, drop the keys, just throw ’em over the crowd, throw ’em over the crowd and we’ll see you at four o’clock or whatever it might be. And so something to think about setting up a little studio area, maybe in your shop to produce some real quick customer interaction videos that you can email and text
Bruce Williams (00:23:45):
A great idea Tom. And to go along with that too, we’re just building now our complete digital diagnostic survey sheets for our customers so they could fill it out digitally before they come in. So we have as much information possible about the symptom they’re hearing, the maintenance are required, whatever. So we’re building that all digitally that we’re going to drop into the website. So they just have to go there, fill it in, send it, so we’ve got a lot more factual information for our texts as well.
Tom Dorsey (00:24:17):
Yeah, that is fantastic. See, in any event, it’s all about convenience and it’s all about in today’s age, it’s about protection as well, right? In my security, I feel secure. And the more services and options that you give me to feel that way, the more likely I’m going to do business with you and then continue to do business with you and probably tell all my friends to go do business with you because hey, you know what? I don’t want them infected by going over here to somebody who isn’t as diligent and then potentially infecting me. So I want to get all my friends to come see Bruce, right?
Bruce Williams (00:24:48):
Yeah. So you got the option of what you just said, which is fantastic. Or you have the option which is just a plain and simple drop off, got the car fixed and pick it up, and you go, which one are they going to talk to their friends about? They’re not going to say anything negative about the regular experience, but they’re not going to say anything about it. It was just something they did. But if they have an awesome experience that you just mentioned, they’re going to talk about it while they’re having lunch with their buddies or with their family at home or something. And that’s why a couple of years ago, I went to one of my conferences for Auto Pro and the guy spoke there and he ran his business with a care philosophy, which is create a remarkable experience. And you do that, you’ll always win no matter what. We can all fix cars. We’ve all got great technicians and the outcome is the same, but if you create a remarkable experience for the customer, they’re going to want to come back and see you for sure.
Tom Dorsey (00:25:45):
Yeah. That is awesome. Write that down folks. That is the name of the game.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:25:50):
Can I turn this in a brief tobo discussion?
Tom Dorsey (00:25:55):
You’re the boss.
Bruce Williams (00:25:56):
You’re the boss. Go for it, Uwe.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:25:59):
So how do you make your customers go to the website and fill out this digital diagnostic sheet as you called it? I’m now trying to process that and put myself in those motorist shoes. And the best idea I came up with, I want to run by you, is I drop off my key. You probably have a Dropbox or something like that, and there’s just like a text X, y, Z to this text message, and then I get invited to fill out this diagnostic sheet, something like that.
Bruce Williams (00:26:44):
Yeah, we haven’t fully developed it yet, but it’s simple as even in which I’m sure working with yourselves, we can make a link for the appointment reminder link right in it. Say
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:26:58):
Exactly
Bruce Williams (00:26:59):
Before you come in, can you please fill out this form, basically the intake process form. And there’ll be a list of possibly 10 different forms depending on what it is. If it’s just a maintenance visit or if it’s a diagnostic problem, symptom problem, we could definitely incorporate that real easy with our appointment reminders through autobus.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:27:23):
Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (00:27:24):
Bill has some
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:27:26):
Go ahead.
Tom Dorsey (00:27:27):
I was just going to say, bill has some verbiage suggestion for you, which sounds like it’s going to work very well in order to save you the most amount of time and money. Would you please fill out this information?
Bruce Williams (00:27:39):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (00:27:41):
That’s a brilliant way to phrase it.
Bruce Williams (00:27:45):
Yep. I know last time I went to the dentist before we went in, we had to fill out a intake process form, and it’s just, again, instead of looking at them as negative, they’re opportunities and positives, but
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:28:02):
I have to tell you, they’re so long that if I could, I would just turn around and leave. We have to be better than that. It has to be short to the point. And maybe leaving a voicemail is more effective than filling out a long form, but let’s explore that. I’m really curious how to make that successful.
Bruce Williams (00:28:30):
Sounds great.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:28:33):
Okay, Tom, what are we going to look at? I’m looking, I’m waiting for the BCP KPIs. Bruce has opened his books for us. Are we going to do that now?
Tom Dorsey (00:28:44):
Yeah, sure. Yeah. And real quick, Jeremy Neff is saying that they offer that in their shop and he wishes that they would’ve started it earlier. It works great. And bill voice call change to text transcription that you can paste into a repair order would be a good thing. Oh yeah, that is interesting. You’re right. And making that. So then it just becomes convenience to the service writer. It has to be done easy and quick and click a button, it automatically adds it in and it’s got the tax conversion. Having to do any more steps beyond that becomes difficult and then you get low adoption. But yeah, if you could definitely make it something simple like that, that would be a great feature to have. Okay. Let me share my screen real quick. We’ll get into some brass acks here, which I know we’ve all been waiting for. Let’s see what screen. Can you see
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:29:39):
Too many
Bruce Williams (00:29:41):
All of them?
Tom Dorsey (00:29:42):
Yes. What happened?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:29:48):
You are in your software running the show.
Tom Dorsey (00:29:53):
Oh, I see. So I did the wrong, I try this again there. How about now?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:30:06):
That is awesome.
Tom Dorsey (00:30:07):
Yeah. So this is the live BCP for Bruce’s shop. And if we could, I just want to kind get started. So this, what I’m showing here is ARO in relation to the inspection rate in relation to average build hours per inspection. And I would layer in probably, actually let me get this one in here. And that’s a number of recommended actions per vehicle. And right off out of the bat, and this is for the last 90 days, just so you know, but right off of the bat, we see some pretty strong correlations and really some behavioral issues and challenges depending on maybe what’s happening, weather-wise or jobs that are already stacked into the shop, that kind of thing. And maybe even people not making it to work or stuff like that that can impact your numbers. But if you could Bruce, give us a little bit of what are we looking at here, really some really high kind of peaks, but then a couple inconsistent areas also that have impacted I think your definitely your build hours and your ARO to some degree.
Bruce Williams (00:31:38):
Yeah, for sure. Looking at this, definitely I can go back and see some of the times when either we got a slow down or we have had a couple of people off, but not that those are excuses. When our inspections get a little lazy, we definitely see it instantly in the BCP, there’s no question. You look back in December, we’ve got average build hours is down. Our recommended actions is half of what we average. So pretty good chance that it wasn’t all brand new vehicles coming through that didn’t need anything. It was pretty good chance that people’s minds were on the holiday season or somewhere just a little bit else from December. But we came back in January and everybody fired up to get back to work and do great things and just look at the shift that happens.
Tom Dorsey (00:32:36):
So in your operation, what are some of the things that might cause a 20% drop in inspection rate? Is it the type of vehicles? I would imagine? So you’re inspecting mining equipment because you get a lot of, you got a varied, I think customer base, right? You’re doing a lot of some ag stuff and construction and things like that. Fleet, I would imagine it is. Do you have the same process for your fleet non fleet or your non-commercial customers?
Bruce Williams (00:33:09):
We do have the exact same process, absolutely. The inspection process is the same. Actually, some of our fleets inspection process is even more stringent,
Tom Dorsey (00:33:16):
Diligent,
Bruce Williams (00:33:19):
So we have the exact same process for sure. We don’t work on anything over F five fifties or 10 and a half type trucks. We just don’t. So really the vehicles are all the same and just sometimes we get an influx of the fleet stuff, sometimes we don’t. And it’s just hit and miss. They’re typically not on our schedule. They’re on their own schedule where our retail customers are more on our schedule because we’ve set them up in the exit process. So like I said, they’re a little bit more spread out for our schedule or fleet might just drop off a whole bunch of stuff one day.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:59):
And actually we got a question they’re asking. So your policy, even your fleet customers get an inspection on each visit question there from the audience?
Bruce Williams (00:34:09):
A hundred percent. Everybody gets an inspection. Only one that doesn’t get an inspection is if we’ve inspected it yesterday and it came back today for the repair. And even then I say you still do a courtesy inspection, plain and simple or no, right? But every single vehicle there is an inspection accounts, whether it’s an oil service type inspection. We don’t do quick lube service at our shop at all. Our cheapest oil change is probably 130 bucks that we do, and we credit our techs 0.8 of an hour for the full inspection and they go through it. But you look at the, we give it up as a company and some of that’s a loss leader, but it’s not a loss leader when you look at the metrics that come out of it, the sold hours per RO because of a really good inspection.
Tom Dorsey (00:35:05):
Gosh, and you can see it right here in this graph. There’s a big swing in some instances, four or $500 in ARO for that period just by being more consistent in the inspection process and increasing the number of recommendations per inspection as well. So what would you say, Bruce, given if you’re giving advice to somebody on how to keep that number consistent, what is it that you work with with your techs and riders to maintain that high inspection and number of recommendations per inspection?
Bruce Williams (00:35:41):
Well, I think the biggest thing is, is the culture that we have in the shop every morning. We have a 15 minute at most morning meeting about how the day’s set up, what we’re doing that we also talk about if we had any negative jobs or something in the last few days and we touch base on all our inspections, what’s going on? Is it everything correct on the inspections? Do we have to change anything on inspection? We’re constantly editing them slightly to fit our customer’s best interests. And we talk about simple things like maintenance. It’s funny, I just came up this week. The technicians are fantastic. They can fix anything. I got some of the best techs I think in the province, but sometimes you find they don’t actually understand maintenance intervals. They understand fixing things. They see something broken, they can fix it, they can diagnose, they can figure it out.
(00:36:38):
But when they see a clean fluid at 80,000, they just think it’s clean. So now we’ve talked about that process just because it’s clean. Let’s also look at the mileage. Is it actually scheduled for the proper interval so we can keep it clean before it goes bad? And educating on the wise and hows of every type of maintenance procedure that we do. They don’t teach you that in tech school. They teach you how to fix things. So we have lots of great weekly meetings and our morning meetings and everybody understands that it’s a win for all of us. Everything we do has to be a win-win, win a win for us, win for the tech, and win for the customer, ultimately for the customer. And when you think of it like that, the rest of it wins itself. It takes care of itself.
Tom Dorsey (00:37:26):
No, that’s a brilliant point, right? There’s a golf analogy. It’s drive for show and put for dough, and that’s what you really do. The maintenance is where the money comes in. That’s the bread and butter. Yeah, sure. You’re going to get these problem puzzles to figure out these big repairs and these involved types of fixes. Those will come along and those are exciting from a tech perspective and it really allows them to challenge themselves. But man, you got to have somebody who understands that they got to grind out that maintenance work because that’s really what pays the bills
Bruce Williams (00:37:59):
Ultimately. That’s right. And quite a few years ago when I started doing business coaching and management training, a light went off and I had to work smarter, not harder because like every technician that started their own shop, small, how many hours did we work? All of them.
Tom Dorsey (00:38:15):
Exactly. Each and every one.
Bruce Williams (00:38:19):
You break your back to get it done. Well, if you work smarter, if I could just go and open a turnkey shop today compared to where I started, it’d be completely different process instantly. It’d be all about managing customer’s expectations properly. Period.
Tom Dorsey (00:38:34):
Isn’t that something? Yeah. And matter of fact, we’re going to have, next week we’re going to have you back and we’re going to do AROund table with Brittany Schindler from Rod’s Japanese, and actually she’s got a second location and we’re going to talk exactly about that because you can really see in their numbers, they just plugged in a successful process into this brand new shop. And they’ve been in business for a long time, 20 plus years I would imagine from when Rod opened it up. And you can just see it’s the culmination of everything they learned and they have it in a can and they just plugged it right in and it just goes. And incredible numbers coming out of a shop that’s been open for a couple of months, lucky them. But really, again, it goes back to it’s not luck. It really is learning from folks like Bruce and everybody else that contributes here and is really kind of blazing this trail and finding out what is possible with this software.
(00:39:34):
There are no real right answers. There’s what works. You really have to kind of, I think, challenge some of your long-term held beliefs and ways that you’ve done business and even some things that have been very successful for you. A lot of people say, Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, yeah, it’s not broke, but there’s a better way and it should be fixed because the result of that is going to bring you forward into this new digital age where expectations are a hundred percent different. Vehicles are a hundred percent different. And it’s really going to boil down to what Bruce said earlier, it’s about focusing on that relationship and building that relationship with your customer. And it’s based around the transparency and honesty that they feel and security that they feel. That’s it in a nutshell. And then all you have to do after that is execute and do it consistently.
(00:40:22):
And why are those people going to go anywhere else? They’re not. People think that in the internet age that there’s less loyalty. It’s not the case. I think there’s greater brand loyalty. Just you do the research to find the one that kind of checks all the boxes for you. It rings all the bells and it covers with a good product and I can rely on it, but most importantly, I can trust it and it’s going to be there when I need it or I’m going to be able to have that access. And once you have that dialed in, you don’t really look to change, especially not over a couple of bucks.
Bruce Williams (00:40:55):
That’s right. Yeah, for sure.
(00:40:59):
It’s a real quick story. We keep talking about the customer experience and I share any customer experience, positive or negative with my staff so we can talk about it. So we make sure our customers never have a negative one. And I had one bought a hot tub years ago when my kids were first born. We were always in the hot tub every month I was at the hot tub store buying chemicals. 15 years later I walk in and they had no idea who I was or what I needed. I went to the other hot tub store just to buy chemicals, never even bought a hot tub from ’em. And they treated me like a person got to know me always when I come in, said hi, knew my name. I just never went back to the other place. And it’s a simple experience. And after 15 years, you’d think that people would’ve known me or something after seeing me every month. And I bring that back. Our customers need to know us like that, and we need to know them when they come in. You need to know their name, who they are, relate to ’em. If they’re sitting waiting, put down what you’re doing. Have a simple conversation with ’em, get to know ’em. They’re not a number. They’re your family. They’re your
Tom Dorsey (00:42:06):
Neighbors. They’re definitely, they’re your neighbors.
Bruce Williams (00:42:09):
And it’s when you start thinking like that and doing it and getting out of your own way, we all have our own ideas when we first start. Get out of your bubble and look at it from the outside and just treat your customers like gold. They will take care of you.
Tom Dorsey (00:42:27):
We got an interesting question actually from Tracy, and it’s probably more for you or Bill or I guess for me, what is the average inspection rate percentage across all AutoVitals shops? And then a follow up question she’s asking, should the goal be 100%? Yes, it should be.
Bruce Williams (00:42:49):
Yes, it should be. That’s our goal for share. A hundred percent. Not really sure why we’re right around 90. There’s got to be some glitches. Some of our fleets we do internal because they don’t want ’em sent to the fleet manager. They don’t want to see ’em to the fleet card payment. So we do it internal only, but it still, I think, affects some metrics.
Tom Dorsey (00:43:13):
Metrics. And it’s interesting to see the correlation between the average amount of number of recommendations in those periods too that really drop some of them down by 30 to 40% less on average during those periods. So it would almost seem like those are periods of time where you were stacked, right? You were overbooked or something and everybody was just kind of scrambling to keep the fires out,
Bruce Williams (00:43:38):
Right? So you start becoming activity based instead of value based for your customers, right? Yes. And that’s you get overbooked, you’re just trying to push ’em in and out to get ’em all out that day as opposed to being able to spend the time with them to really give ’em the feedback they need and want from their inspection, the health of their vehicle.
Tom Dorsey (00:43:59):
And that’s a great point because ideally if you had it and you could control it and select it, you would never select that overbooking or having a big high car count versus a higher customer satisfaction rating and ARO and ultimately weekly revenue, because we’ve seen this throughout this pandemic in the shops we were talking about earlier. It’s amazing. Some of them, 30, 40% increase in revenue with a 20 to some of them, 25% drop in card count. I mean, that’s incredible. And again, you got to kick yourself, why haven’t I been doing that pre pandemic and how do I make sure that I continue to do this post pandemic, right? Because that really, if you could boil it all down into what’s the most important part of your operation, it would be to be able to maintain that, have that proper balance to where you can give that a hundred percent focus to those customers. They feel that, in other words, they’re not defensive, they’re receptive, and then they approve more work, more work gets done, more work is offered or found or suggested through adherence to the process from the technicians and the service writers. And it’s just like it’s Valhalla. It’s the best of all worlds. How do you keep that ball rolling, Bruce Williams.
Bruce Williams (00:45:25):
That’s right.
Tom Dorsey (00:45:28):
How do
Bruce Williams (00:45:31):
What? It’s tough, but it’s about being diligent, sticking to your process. We’re allowed to say no because people will come in all day long and say, Hey, I need this done. I need this done, I need this done. But if the restaurant’s full, you can’t get a table.
Tom Dorsey (00:45:46):
That’s it.
Bruce Williams (00:45:47):
So you get to say, no, my earliest appointment to be able to take care of you the way that we take care of you here at River’s Edge will be Thursday at 11 o’clock. If we rush you in today, we’re doing a disservice to our vehicles that are in the shop today and to you. We’re probably not going to be able to give you the quality of repair and process that we believe in here, and that’s what we’re all about.
Tom Dorsey (00:46:15):
And so that’s interesting. So I really want to see this because kind of how it develops at a turbo with, we’ve had some pretty interesting feature discussion here about how to incorporate that intake questionnaire and things like that digitally, but that really probably is, and how to help stagger that drop off schedule and actually probably how to alert yourself when you are approaching capacity and how to make that information more widely distributed amongst your team so that we can start to put some, because going back to a restaurant reference again is that’s kind of what happens in the kitchen. Some cook back there goes, Hey, stop taking orders. I’m so far behind, we’re not going to be able to keep up. And then it kind regulates. We start, oh, let’s offer some appetizers or give ’em some drinks from the bar first before we just jump right into taking the order and help the kitchen get caught up. How do we put a mechanism in place that allows the automotive repair shop to run in the same way so that everybody kind of shares information on when to crank the throttle and when to tap the brakes.
Bruce Williams (00:47:29):
And that all comes down to scheduling and managing and staging, and really all the service advisors being on top of it all the time to understand where we’re going. We’re setting our own expectations too. We got to know, okay, these five jobs that are coming in for Pat today, they’re all going to have major inspections. We haven’t seen ’em in a while. Those are going to create opportunities. Where can we get these sold? Where can we get these customers booked back in to care of this? And we’re allowed to say, unfortunately, today we’re only doing the inspection process. We don’t have time to do any of the repairs. And that’s just setting up the customer’s expectations. Sometimes if you don’t have that conversation, they expect it just to pick it up fixed. It might be a 15 hour repair job. We don’t know. So we get to set up the expectation, we’re going to do the full inspection, do the estimate, and then call you and then we can schedule you back in at your convenience and our time schedule so we can properly take care of you. And having all the service staff on board and constantly being in communication about that. And that’s where the role is that a lot of shops are adapting is basically like tower operator production manager to oversee that, to juggle that out. Because when you’re processing 30 cars a day or whatever, it can get hectic. That’s where working smarter not harder, slow the process down, drop the car count, and view quality and value on each car and bring up the average ARO and sold hours per ticket
Tom Dorsey (00:49:04):
Because that really is the key, right? And it is like what Bill’s saying in the chat here is everybody knows the 300% rule, right? A hundred percent of cars get an inspection, a hundred percent of the estimate gets delivered to the customer, or a hundred percent of that work gets estimated, a hundred percent delivers to the customer, but we’re going to turn it into the 400% rule as an AutoVitals process, best practice. And that’s 100% of those customers get an exit schedule and they have a follow-up. Right. Can you talk to that a little bit about how do you see that? I mean, what’s the best practice in your shop? How do you train your crew and how critical is that to maintaining that high? Bruce, you’re running close and sometimes six build hours per ticket. That’s incredibly high. How critical is that exit scheduling and having that conversation around deferred work and maintenance to maintaining that high average ticket?
Bruce Williams (00:50:02):
Well, it’s absolutely essential, and that’s what we’ve really incorporated in the last six months, is taking the time to go over all the deferred works printed, and it’s actually, you almost have to have an individual office for each service advisor to do it, right? Sit down, you go over what we’ve done. And now we talk about all the deferred work, which some of it’s just scheduled maintenance, and some of it is things that we noticed while we did the inspection, but we go through it a hundred percent with the customer. And sometimes customers get a little antsy, they just want to go, but we get ’em to stay there and we appreciate their time and make them feel good about it. And we go through it and then we say, so now when we post the invoice, we’ve scheduled you for this date. And in our shop, our practice is we schedule everybody for a Sunday, three months out. So then on the Sunday, two weeks before their potential date, now we start grabbing those Sunday appointments, calling the customers and filling in all our slots in our schedule. That’s
Tom Dorsey (00:51:02):
Pretty good
Bruce Williams (00:51:03):
To block it up, but we tell ’em, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re booking you for a Sunday. It’s not when we’re open, but that still remind us, we’re going to give you a phone call, go over all the deferred work that we talked about and find an appointment time that works best for you in the next two weeks. Make sure you haven’t been using your car, your mileage intervals correct, and we’ll get you in at your convenience and your schedule. And then once you get that process a couple of times, it just becomes the normal expectation. You’re caught up on a lot of your maintenance. The customer already understands what’s going to happen. So now it frees up time for the service staff as well. And you just stay on it constantly. And since we’ve been doing that, it’s fantastic. Our deferred work is ridiculous that we’ve put through because it’s a complete maintenance schedule plus upcoming repairs, including we do everything.
(00:51:55):
Of course, we’re dual season here, tire estimates for summer and winter tires, all that kind of stuff. So some of our deferred work, I think over the last, each month we’re averaging over 250,000 in deferred work alone, let alone what we’re selling. And that’s just money in the bank for the future. And it’s legitimate maintenance repairs that are coming up. And it might be as simple as five years from now when you need your next tuneup and that’s on there, but at least now the customer knows what to expect in the future to manage their money because we don’t spend our customer’s money. We just advise and let them spend their money. I’m not a money manager.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:36):
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, you’re investment advisors because, and that really brings up a brilliant point though, is that is not just that there is an expectation of service in the future, but they have an action that they have to take. You’re going to call them on a Sunday, or you’re going to contact them to move off that Sunday appointment to a right time. So if I don’t want have that follow-up interaction, well guess what? Then I’ll just pick a date. Let’s do it on Tuesday at four o’clock,
Bruce Williams (00:53:00):
Right? I’ll just commit right now. That’s right.
Tom Dorsey (00:53:02):
Exactly. I’ll just commit right now, or I know you’re going to call me and I have some work to do in the future, and I think that’s brilliant. Matter of fact, we got a comment in here that was worth the price of admission with that one thought right there. I dunno. I mean, the price of admission was free. So I don’t know what you’re trying to say there, but No, that was a great point, Bruce. I know that’s going to help a lot of people and a lot of light bulbs went and said, how can I incorporate an idea like that into my operation?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:53:28):
Brilliant. Actually, I would really like to ask you, would you even consider staging on the exit schedule? Because it seems like some people just want to get out the way they want to get to work in the morning. You could just set an appointment for the next day and give them a call. How is the call doing? And then say whatever needs to be set in the exit schedule.
Bruce Williams (00:53:58):
Yeah, we also do that. We do our follow-up phone calls within a week. We could incorporate that at that time. If somebody’s in a hurry, say, Hey, when I give you the follow up phone call this week, we’re going to be going over your next schedule because I know you. But as long as you can have that part of the conversation, then they’re already expecting a conversation to happen, the key call and just say, Hey, I’m calling three months later. We got all this work. We looked at your car and they don’t know what you’re talking about. Now you’re a snake oil salesman and diminish your quality and your value. So
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:54:32):
The key is setting the next step, and it should be soon, right? It’s not out in three months, you call them next week. I love that.
Tom Dorsey (00:54:45):
And that’s actually a critical spot. That’s a potential weak spot if you don’t do that consistently. And so you have to make sure. So what advice would you give Bruce on, let’s say I’m going to adopt something like that and I’m going to do those multiple touches and follow-ups. What advice would you give to somebody to get it adopted, to get their staff to adhere to that and kind of build the muscle memory so that I don’t have an inconsistent application?
Bruce Williams (00:55:13):
Well, first of all, build your system and procedure properly, your operating procedure, exactly how it’s going to be, and then role play it in any chance you get. Role play. Role play your role play. Because the more you can break it down and make it fail, the more you learn from it, the more comfortable you’ll get. People get uncomfortable talking about future services until you do it. And you realize, because we put our own conditions in our heads about what’s going to happen. We presume the outcome, and then all of a sudden you do it and it goes good. It just lights you up. It’s like that wasn’t difficult at all. It wasn’t scary, and the customer actually appreciated it. But we set these opinions first. It’s like, oh, I don’t want to push it on. I feel like they’re going to think I’m pushing sales or something. But if it’s a proper conversation, not about the sales, but the health of their vehicle and how we can take away their stress and manage their time for them, make them comfortable, then it’s a great conversation. It’s fun, customers, thank you for it. And they leave smiling and happy, and yeah, see you in three months or I look forward to talk to you next week with the follow up phone call. And when you start having those kind of conversations, it’s just fantastic. It’s fun to be at work.
Tom Dorsey (00:56:30):
Sure, yeah. Makes sure.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:56:33):
When do you do the role play in the 15 minute meeting or is it specially scheduled? How do you do this
Tom Dorsey (00:56:38):
Or
Bruce Williams (00:56:38):
Live? We try to schedule it, and every time I try to schedule Murphy’s log, we get slammed, but we just find it’s a little quiet. It’s like, Hey, let’s do it. Okay, I’m going to be the customer. You’re going to be the service advisor. Let’s do this. Or let’s role play air conditioning service for the spring. Let’s role play this. And we squeeze it in here and there. Not as much as we like, because we’re a very busy shop, but our service staff is also willing to stay after hours just to go over this to really nail it all the time. So just like our technicians, we fly up a diagnostic trainer once a month through the year. They commit their weekends to do it one weekend a month. The service advisors commit some extra time after hours to nail this stuff because ultimately it’s a win for everybody. The more money, the more profitable a shop is, the more we can pay our employees and the more hours per RO we sell, the less car count we have, the more time we can spend with each customer we’re not just processing people, we’re building relationships.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:41):
Yeah, that’s brilliant. We used to do that here at AutoVitals. We would just walk through the bullpen and we’d say, ring, ring, ring. And a couple of things happen, right? It tells you who your go-getters are, the person who’s going to jump right at it and start to engage with you. And they’re not going to be like, oh gosh, don’t look at me. I don’t want to do a role play because it’s on the spot. But then it also, it really, there’s no preparation. They have to just pick it up in the moment. And it really helps to kind of overcome that initial fear. Overthinking it a lot of times makes it seem less natural and it really just becomes a natural part of the conversation. And they’re really prepared for any questions that come down when you kind of just put ’em on the spot with roleplay like that.
(00:58:22):
So anybody else out there who’s thinking about how to structure that or wants to introduce some roleplay and even some phone recordings and analysis, which I would highly recommend, you don’t have to do it all the time. And it’s not about looking into their privacy or anything like that. It’s really taking the temperature of how your folks are operating on the phone, finding out a second ear. It’s just like second pair of eyeballs. You see flaws or you hear flaws that maybe you don’t even notice that you’re doing. A lot of it has to go around like what I do. You don’t realize you’re saying these things, but just some feedback like that can really help you to tighten up your phone skills and your presentation style. Make people feel more comfortable when they’re communicating with you and improve your results. And so some phone recordings and analysis, make it fun.
(00:59:17):
Buy a lunch and just get some feedback and open it up. But what it really does folks, is it helps your team to realize that I’m not going to hide in this little corner over here and only get the spotlight on me when I do something bad. No, we’re a collaborative environment. We help each other out and we give positive feedback and even constructive criticism on a regular basis. And that helps us all to improve. Think about it. When you’re on your football team or your baseball team or whatever types of sports you played when you weren’t making your block, people went, Hey, you’re not making your block. You should try doing something like this. It wasn’t a negative, it was a positive. It helped you win. And really incorporate that with your team and you’ll see, they’ll pick it up and then they’ll start testing you and they’ll start roleplaying challenging you to role play and bringing in neat ideas and fun ideas.
(01:00:10):
And man, you can’t have a better culture or environment than that when you’re making it work fun to help people out. And along with these best practices that we talked about and stuff that Bruce has been dropping off, I mean, brilliant Bruce today, really, I thought some really great points that you brought in, stuff that I could take away and actually implement. Don’t be surprised if you’re getting quite a bit of follow ups in your email or on Facebook or people calling you to pick your brain. And speaking of that, because we’re at the top of the hour, we got to jump, but we can continue this conversation on Facebook forum. Don’t be shy. Reach out if you didn’t get your question answered. I mean, I really appreciate all the engagement from the audience today. I thought that really helped drive the conversation and uncover some really interesting and really some brilliant thoughts here today.
(01:01:01):
But the other thing is next Wednesday we’re going to have Bruce back on. We’re going to have Brittany Schindler back on. I’m still waiting to confirm Christoph Schopfer, who we had on last week, and we’re going to talk about the same type of information, but with these three at a round table. And really, so be prepared with your questions. Hold their feet to the fire, pin ’em down, ask ’em the tough questions because that’s really what helps us to improve and help other people to improve and makes the show highly successful. So really looking forward to that next Wednesday, same time, same place. Bruce, great show man. Really appreciate you coming on. Looking forward to having you back next Wednesday.
Bruce Williams (01:01:43):
Awesome. Thank you guys very much. I really appreciate it. It’s an honor and it’s a great relationship with AutoVitals that we’ve been on for quite a few years and I love it. It’s great.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:53):
Yeah, we love you. Right back at you.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:01:55):
Right back at you. Thank you. It was fantastic. Lots of gold nuggets.
Tom Dorsey (01:02:00):
Oh, I’m telling you, it’s going to be hard to chop this one up for the post show stuff. There’s too much good stuff, but find a way and we’ll put it into a nice package for you next Wednesday and have some solid takeaways for you coming out of that show. Really looking forward to it. So until then, get out there and make some more money.
Bruce Williams (01:02:21):
Awesome. Thanks guys. Thanks
Tom Dorsey (01:02:22):
Everybody. Thank you. Thank
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:02:23):
You.
Bruce Williams (01:02:24):
Thank you.