Episode Description
From time to time, every shop will have hurdles to overcome, but it’s up to you to decide how you’ll proceed. Will you stop and give up? Or will you overcome those hurdles?
10 weeks ago, Jamey Whitlock (Whitlock Automotive) came on the show to share the hurdles his shop faced implementing the Digital Shop process and received great recommendations on how to overcome those hurdles from Matt Fowler and Bill Connor to reach the goals he had set out to achieve. (Watch the previous episode here)
This week on Digital ShopTalk Radio, we’re getting an inside look at how Jamey has grown as an owner and the outcomes of their new Digital Shop process implementation.
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):
All right. Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Digital Shop Talk Radio. It’s episode 23, believe it or not, time flies when you’re having nothing but fun. And July 10th, 2019, and we’ve got a fantastic show lined up for you today. It’s the follow up show from with Jamey Whitlock, right? So if you’ve been following along, you know that, gosh, it’s probably been about two months ago, we had Jamey on with Matt Fowler and we were talking about best practices for digital inspection, digital inspection process. And we said, Hey, Jamey, why don’t you go and give a couple months to see how those best practices that Matt Fowler shared with us implement into your shop and what the results are. And so today we’re really excited to have Jamey back to give us an update on how that’s been. Jamey, thanks for coming on, buddy. You still with me?
Jamey Whitlock (00:56):
I’m still with you.
Tom Dorsey (00:57):
Awesome. Welcome man. Thanks for coming back on. And it seems like it was just yesterday, but how’d those last couple months go for you?
Jamey Whitlock (01:07):
Yeah, it didn’t seem like six weeks. It seems like it’s been a few days, but I think it’s gone well. I’ll start off by saying that the last show and then the follow-up conversations we had afterwards about what to change, what to look for was extremely helpful. So my first advice would be take coaching and use it. I was able to go in and make some big changes to the notes section to the actions, make it easier on my texts so that they could select the actions and whatever point of that. So sign savings there. That’s probably the biggest thing that we may talk about today when we talk about pushback from anybody in the shop, whether it be upfront or in the back. It’s always time, time, time.
Tom Dorsey (02:05):
I asked you, Jamey, are you able to take that time and reallocate it? I mean, are you selling that time now?
Jamey Whitlock (02:10):
Absolutely. So by making it easier on the tech, all of a sudden I got more pictures. All of a sudden I got more information from them and I got more input from them on the inspection report, and they were able to give ’em buttons to push and they want to push ’em, right? If you make ’em type on the thing, it’s going to be kind of tough. So by putting some of that stuff on there, they were able to interact more and be a bigger part of the inspection. We also had a number of shop meetings where we talked about what we were trying to accomplish as a shop, and when they push those buttons, when they select those actions and those conditions, what does that really mean for the guy up front? And I had all my guys in there and flip the monitor around and let them take a look so that they know that they’re being a part of the entire process and they’re actually the lead on it.
(03:11):
They’re the point guy. So if they don’t do that, then it forces the service writer or whoever’s up front going through these just have to spend two and three times more time to make the inspection effective. So you have to make ’em feel like they’re a big part of it, which they are, but they need to know how it works. So a lot of improvement there. I think the technicians definitely got to feel like they were a part of not just, Hey, I got to take some pictures and the boss wants me to do that, or he’ll fire me. It’s like, Hey, we’re trying to accomplish something here. And I don’t know, a lot of shop owners out there may have hourly guys or salary guys, but if they’re flat rate guys or if they’re hourly plus commission or something where they’re getting time, they’re feeding their own checkbook here. So definitely advantageous for that On the inside upfront, we definitely made a lot of steps in the right direction, and that is us actually going in and editing the pictures.
(04:22):
It may seem redundant sometimes there’s a note there, there’s an action there, there’s a condition there. But if you take this picture, for example, we’ve all taken this picture a hundred times, but if I just sent this picture without the arrows on it and no note, that customer wouldn’t know what that was unless they were a mechanic. Okay, it’s, it’s not doing anything without that note that says what’s going on, what needs to happen, and some indicators that point right at what we were talking about. And that’s a pretty elementary picture. There’s some other ones we can also use. I mean we probably should have put another set of arrows on the other side of that rotor. Circle that fifth picture there if you can. So kind of got both sides there, right? We’re like, Hey, we’re slow on both sides. Brake from metal to metal.
(05:20):
So we talk about, or when we talked about before, and Matt was really good about it, Bill, my trainer has been excellent help. I mean, I can’t say enough nice things about him. The thing is, is that we’re giving the customer all the information they need to understand what’s on this picture and what needs to be done. So that really the thing that we want is for the customer to call us and say, how much is it? We don’t need them to ask us a bunch of questions. If they’re calling us and asking questions, I’m kind of writing notes down like maybe I should have put that in the inspection report.
Tom Dorsey (06:01):
Exactly. That’s the way you do it, right?
Jamey Whitlock (06:03):
We’re saving a lot of time. I mean, we’re taking a phone call from a customer and getting work authorized in under 60 seconds rather than trying to explain that hopefully four or five, six things on an inspection report that takes four or five minutes. You do that 10 times a day and that adds up. That’s an hour of your time that you could do something else. Exactly. So the tech putting the condition, us creating extra time for us to be able to edit the picture, add notes to it, make some more effective report.
Tom Dorsey (06:43):
So that’s fantastic. So then, and that really parallels on what Russ Crosby was saying when he was on talking about giving the big picture to the team, giving them they’re critical to the project, they’re critical to the objective of what you’re trying to accomplish. Let them see their role in it and then they can achieve that and they’ll do the best job that they can do at that if they have that full understanding. So that’s fantastic that you were able to make that change and get that buy-in from the text level with the improvements in the picture editing and kind of more the consistent delivery of those pictures. Jamey, what have you seen from a motorist perspective? I mean, you said you’re starting to have those conversations in under a minute with the buying conversations. Is that a consistent across the board and is it resulting in higher approvals?
Jamey Whitlock (07:38):
Absolutely. Resulting in higher approvals, I’d say across the board, sure. If you do a good inspection, if you get, that’s a learning situation there for you as a service advisor is like if they’re asking me a question, how could I have done that better on that report? So they didn’t have to ask me that, give them all the information that they can need. Now of course, you can’t always be perfect. You’re not going to be, but I would say that that conversation is across the board has gone basically like this, Hey, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen with all those pictures. And how much is all that stuff in the red?
(08:23):
I know that sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m really not. I get a lot of that and I get a lot of customers that call, or when we call them after the timer goes off, of course I get a lot of customers that beat me to the timer too, which is fine, but when I call ’em and I say, Hey, did you get a chance to look at my, oh man, that thing is awesome. I’ve never gotten that before. I didn’t even know you could do that. Because we’re telling ’em when they leave, Hey, you’re going to get a text opt in. And this goes back to the basics part of AutoVitals. When the customer leaves, tell ’em what’s going to happen. Hey, you’re going to leave. You’re going to get a text message opt into it when you opt into it, that gives me the ability to text message you a report about your car.
(09:12):
The technician’s going to find, so they know it’s coming, but they have no idea when they get this thing. I mean, customers are going crazy. And I didn’t really think that I was going to get that many reports back. I thought every once in a while somebody might say, oh, that was kind of cool. But I get a lot of people, and I mean, I even showed some Google reviews that customers actually went out of their way to put Google Review and say in the review that we text message them the results from their car
Tom Dorsey (09:48):
Man.
Jamey Whitlock (09:49):
So they’re not doing a great job of explaining what it is, but the fact that they even mention it has to make us feel like the value in that inspection and the way that we’re delivering it through AutoVitals. I mean, it’s worth every penny, right?
Tom Dorsey (10:07):
Yeah. That’s awesome. And that’s the thing is that’s what people like to talk about. They want to be the first. And if you run across something that’s new, I mean, I just did it the other day, went into some place and built my pizza while I was standing there. It was like subway of pizzas and wood fire and bang, it was done. And I was like, wow, I’ve been left. I don’t know how long it’s been since I left a review about some food joint. You know what I mean? Right. Something about that because it was different. You know what I mean?
Jamey Whitlock (10:35):
Well, and that would be the best point honestly, is the reason why you even went out of your way to do that is because the experience changed.
Tom Dorsey (10:44):
Exactly.
Jamey Whitlock (10:45):
And so what experience do people have in the automotive world taking their car and to get repaired? Not this, not everywhere. If you can change the experience for them and give them something professional, give them something that is tan and hold that they can understand. How many times do you call a customer? I have no idea what you just said. Just tell me how much it’s where here they’re actually a part of the buying process. And notice I said buying, not selling. Customers are buying now. We’re not having to sell to them anymore. We’re telling ’em what’s wrong. We’re giving ’em all the information and they’re buying. That’s a way different process than trying to sell somebody some services.
Tom Dorsey (11:30):
You noticing? That’s a great point, Jamey. So are you noticing that because they’re in the buying frame of mine, not in the, I have a big wall built and I’m playing defense and do I really need that? So do you notice that, hey, here’s what my budget allows today, and then they start to plan the follow-up visits to get the rest of the work done. Are you starting to get some of those on the books?
Jamey Whitlock (11:55):
Yes. Yeah. And so realize six weeks, that’s not something that you see the week after, but of course we’re starting to get a lot of people who, I mean this will blow your mind. Maybe it won’t, but it didn’t me. I had a customer walk in the other day and go, Hey, I need to drop my car off for service. And I was like, okay, what do you need? He goes, I don’t know. You texted me and told me I needed something. I was like, perfect. We’ll get that done for you. Make sure I got all your info correct. It’s
Tom Dorsey (12:26):
What’s common buddy.
Jamey Whitlock (12:28):
It is. And so what you do with the CRM portion, deferred work and that stuff, it comes right back around. So I call it recapturing a customer. That’s the phrase that I’ve always used. But how do you recapture that customer? Well, you got to do a really good job on the inspection report and whenever they
(12:56):
Have that much money, okay, no problem. Let’s get some things that we can defer to a later date and then let’s reschedule you back in and let’s spread this out a little bit. And that’s, that’s always been part of our business. But now you have a great tool because that customer is going to leave knowing they need it. They saw the picture, they saw the note, they know they’re going to get an email or a text message back from us, and when they get it, they’re going to remember that picture, man, I really need to get that done. Oh man, I forgot about that.
Tom Dorsey (13:27):
Yeah, Katie said, I only had a couple more months and it’s been a couple.
Jamey Whitlock (13:32):
Yeah, that holds everybody accountable too, right?
Tom Dorsey (13:35):
Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly. And then it allows for planning so I can plan that stuff out because like you said, I’m sure you could break down, especially you run some of these and you might have 20, 30 recommended actions, and I’m sure you could break that down into three or four visits over the rest of the year really from a critical or from a priority perspective. And so just having that peace of mind, because that’s what I’m saying is that if you look at other industries or other experiences that we have through service businesses, we’re coming to expect that it’s like, well, you said come in, so do what you need to do and then tell me when to come pick it up. And then I have my handy little Google Pay and bloop and I don’t have to do anything. I’m off back to work or thinking about what I want to think about. And it’s just part of my routine. And like you said, there is no more selling, it’s educating, building a plan together and then just executing the plan.
Jamey Whitlock (14:35):
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And that CRM portion is a part of it, A big part of it. Recapturing that customer has always been hard, but when you have a tool that’s as sexy as this, it makes it easier. I mean, this is something most people have never seen before and you do it well, and they’re going to take a lot of value out of it. Now I think that we can talk about the trials and tribulations that come up. What are the challenges? Yeah, the challenges. So em and I were talking about this, man, I can sit here and we can sit on a whole bunch of seminars and I can go to a sales seminar and they can tell me how easy it is and it’s going to work like this and everything’s going to be perfect and you’re going to make all this money.
(15:33):
And that’s true, but it’s not without hard work and it’s not without some roadblocks. And so overcoming these roadblocks have definitely shown up. So some of the things that we’ve happened is I talked about time earlier, time being a big, big problem right now in the automotive world, all of us are probably pretty busy, at least down here in Texas. We are. It’s hot cars break. I got tow trucks showing up three, four times a day with a car on it. I got people coming in, walking in, making appointments. So my shop is really busy. It’s really easy for us to, and I’m going to use this word abandon, but that’s kind of a strong word for us to abandon the process. And that means we start short changing these inspections. Maybe we just put on there what they came in for or we run through all the green pictures and don’t really make any notes when we all know that that’s just as important as anything else.
(16:36):
We want to build value in that vehicle with a good section. We want to still make notes there. We want to say, Hey, your car is good. It’s worth fixing Now, here’s the things you need. But we start to abandon those things. And that’s been a big challenge for us is trying to find time. Now in the middle of that, I trained a service writer, he quit, and now I’m trying to hire another one. And now I’m off to train another service writer, and I’ve got one service writer up there handling five texts with me, kind of filling in when I can. So big, huge hurdle to jump over, but that’s a real world problem in the shop world. We are always going to have some turnover that we have to handle. Now, silver lining and the whole thing, I’m a much better teacher and trainer of how to do this process than I was six weeks ago.
(17:30):
Much better. And I can take an employee and get him up to speed way faster than the last six weeks looked like. And that is, that’s a huge step in the right direction I think, because anytime you can get your employees up, your service writers, if you lose somebody or promote somebody or demote somebody or open another shop, if you’re going to open another shop and expand, getting this process down, making it better, you become a better trainer. So even though you jump over a lot of hurdles and right about the time you feel like you’re firing on all cylinders and somebody quits, you can’t abandon the process. And then you got to look back and go, Hey, I can do this and I can get this guy up to speed and get back to where I was. So those are some real world challenges that
Tom Dorsey (18:20):
I’ll tell you what Jamey, that was solid gold though right there. Because folks, if you’re listening, if you’re not the implementer in your shop or you don’t know what the implementer’s doing, you’re in trouble. You need to take that lead role and even if you have an implementer as an employee, but if that employee turns over, you have to be able to pick it up. And exactly what Jamey said is that through the implementation process and the training and ramp up of new employees, you learn to structure training in manageable pieces in goal oriented type of a ramp up, which becomes more effective. So in other words, it doesn’t just work for the digital inspection part of it. It works for everything that you need to ramp a new employee up to do in your business because they become goal oriented, they become structured in their methodology on how they approach their job.
(19:13):
And so what that means is they learn faster, make more money, and because they have a better experience, they’re easier to manage, they’ll turn over less as long as you keep ’em busy, and that’s what the digital inspection should be doing for you. And it helps them lead by example. And it helps. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Nima. It helps ’em to lead by example. And that’s a great, if you can’t do it, but you expect me to do it, you always run into that cutting corners and that kind of thing and dragging their feet. And like you said in the beginning, Jamey, is if you get that buy-in and they see the big picture and they’re committed and they will, and you let the rest of the team hold each other accountable, they need to set big hairy goals and go for it,
Jamey Whitlock (19:57):
Right? And we’re always going to have those challenges. And I wish that my shop was perfect and I could put it on 60 minutes and everybody would tell me how great it is. But Neil, I face the same challenges every other ShopRunner does. And overcoming those is great. Now I’ll say I’ve gotten a lot of support from Bill and he’s helped me out a lot. I said that earlier, but accepting that training and not being like the tech are buying into it, the owner’s got to buy into this thing. You’ve got to
Tom Dorsey (20:32):
Buy into it too,
Jamey Whitlock (20:33):
Or your implementer as you put it. And so
Tom Dorsey (20:36):
That’s not so easy to do sometimes, right? I mean because
Jamey Whitlock (20:40):
We’re special kind of stubborn, lemme tell you in general, right?
Tom Dorsey (20:46):
It’s hard to say, I don’t need any, this is my business. You know what I mean? But Bill’s a persistent fellow.
Jamey Whitlock (20:54):
He is. He’s been really good. The nice thing is that he holds me accountable and I hold him accountable and together we make difference. It turns around. You said lead by example earlier when you’re the implementer. Well, in this case, he’s my implementer because now I take the accountability that he holds on me and I go do it to my guys up front too.
Tom Dorsey (21:15):
Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, I can’t say enough good things about Billy. He’s got a great style, he’s got such a depth of experience and he’s got a huge heart. And that’s what it is, right, is because sometimes it takes the patience. You got to see that, you know what, this guy’s really just trying to help me and maybe I need to kind of let down my guard a little bit and accept some of that help because hey, you know what? There’s a good result comes out of it. Jamey, we got a couple of questions from folks in the audience, and the first one is asking, have you developed a digital employee handbook?
Jamey Whitlock (21:55):
That’s a good one. I have not. I’m still in a growth process, but that’s actually a pretty good idea. Now I’ll say I do have a policy in place. I won’t quote unquote handbook, but whenever we first started changing how we did the digital inspection, usually anything in the shop that I feel like everybody needs to have direction, I’ll either write a policy or a procedure. Usually I call it a policy, even though it may just be directions on how to do something. I did write a policy on how to go through the entire inspection from all the way from take the customer in dispatch it, technician sends it back. What do you do with that? Go through every picture notes, make sure actions are there, push it back to Protractor. I use Protractor push Protractor back in for deferred services. So I had to have a policy there. I don’t have a digital handbook if that answers that question.
Tom Dorsey (22:53):
That might be a fun thing to build out on Facebook or something because I’m sure a lot of people would have some input. I mean, it would be a great asset, we’d just post it up on help AutoVitals or something like that. I mean, we kind have pieces of it already built, the picture policy, the pickup and drop off scripts and kind of the 12 days to paperless or some best practice guides. But it would be neat to have collaboration and because we got another question actually from the audience to say what would be in that digital employee handbook and what best practices could we put in there to make it more, in other words, a tool for you to give your new hire something and help with that ramp up and make it even more streamlined than what you’re experiencing now. Go ahead and start that conversation on Facebook and get that.
Jamey Whitlock (23:51):
Yeah, that one’s probably longer than a couple of minutes, but I think that would be determined on a few factors, how many guys you have, how many techs you have, how many cars you have, and then build a process around one that makes you productive and kind of flow really nice. Because the deal is is that if you start dispatching a bunch of work out in the shop and that little yellow bar fills up with a hundred messages, then you’re just scrambling. Then you’ve turned into a service writer and now you’re a fireman. You’re just trying to put out, you’re just trying to get it handled. So I would say that it would require some extra information. It may be different for some different shots, but
Tom Dorsey (24:26):
Yeah, no, that’s great. And it is, right, and we should probably think about structuring that to say some operational things because what do you do when you get busy? Who was it? Was it Neil that was talking about crack? That throttle being able to, from a dispatching perspective, not to overwhelm them because then they start to cut the corners. That’s where the process starts to fall apart. You don’t get as many pictures the sales start to drop. And so it’s almost like, gosh, let’s push ’em in the front door, but then ah, we’re not making as much out the back. And it’s really a fine balance. And I know as we develop and we get a lot of input from operators on best practices on how to manage that, it really becomes much more efficient from a process perspective. And then efficiency just gets you better profits. So I think it’s a great discussion to have on Facebook as far as what that SOP should look like and the best practices for ramp up for new hires. And there’s another thing, another thing that I’ve been noticing is that digital shop technicians go look for digital shops now. And we’ve had several recently AutoVitals customers that have picked up technicians from other AutoVitals shops. And so it almost becomes its own little marketplace, its own little recruiting niche that we should probably take advantage of.
Jamey Whitlock (25:56):
Well, absolutely. And anytime you’re looking for a technician, everything from the way your shop looks outside to inside to your other text and your operating system, how we dispatch work, how we keep the shop flow, Hey, we have this. This is how we generate extra sales, keep our average ARO up. That’s how you acquire a great tech. You have to have all of those things. It can’t just be, Hey, I’m going to pay you X amount of dollars a flag hour. They want to work at a place that’s nice, that has nice equipment, has good customers, long
Tom Dorsey (26:28):
Term value.
Jamey Whitlock (26:29):
There’s got to be a bigger picture. Technicians aren’t old change funky anymore. They’re professionals and they make good money, but they only make good money at a shop that can do that.
Tom Dorsey (26:40):
Yeah, it was funny, I was listening to a guy, I think it was at ATI super conference one year I was out there and it was a futurist guy and he was talking about how really, if you think about it, your technicians are almost computer science majors. There’s how many onboard computers on the average car and they have to do so much training on computer systems and flashing and all this reprogramming stuff that eventually it’s like you’re going to be recruiting out of four year colleges with computer science degrees.
Jamey Whitlock (27:09):
I mean, I don’t know why we’re not already there, honestly. I mean, just think about some of these cars on an oil change reminder light. I mean, if you don’t know how to work a scan tool, you can’t do it.
Tom Dorsey (27:18):
Exactly.
Jamey Whitlock (27:21):
Even your guy, that’s just your oil change guy. You still got to be able to work his way through a few tools. And you’re right. I mean right now we’re in a weird balance because cars have so much computer controlled diagnostics on it. They’ve got to be a computer whiz, but they also have to be able to beat the book on labor time too. They have to be able to do both. They got to be both right now and maybe one day they’ll all be electric, but right now they have to do both. They got to be smart.
Tom Dorsey (27:57):
And that’s really, I mean that’s one of the things that we’re always looking at at AutoVitals, right? Is how is that going to play out and what can we do to help you guys to be prepared for that when it does come, right? Is that foresight and you leverage the technology to benefit you and not to become just another weight that you have to hang around your neck and manage all day is really the goal of what we do. And it really takes that type of input, Jamey, from guys like you to help us to see that and to be prepared and develop those tools
Jamey Whitlock (28:30):
For you. Take my current situation. I’m about to hire a new service advisor. When I was hiring techs, what do I do? I take ’em over and I show ’em AutoVitals. Hey look, is how we dispatch our work? This is what happens when the technician inspects the vehicle. We bring it back in here, we look at these pictures, we do editing, we send this to the customer, customer calls us back and approves the work. And I tell you what, it’s impressive to look at if you’ve never seen it before, impressive when you have seen it. But if you have a guy you really want, it’s another one of those ingredients and hey, I’m the best shop around here. And so hiring somebody and then like you said earlier, retaining that good guy because it gives them an opportunity to find ways to make more money, right?
Tom Dorsey (29:16):
Yeah. Well it like from a text perspective, hey, I actually get kind of a say here in how my work gets sold because a lot of shops in the paper process, you don’t get that necessarily, right? It’s you tell the service writer, the service writer talks for you. You don’t have a direct connection to the customer in this way. You do actually. You don’t have to go out there and meet ’em and shake their hand. But your work, your words, your pictures, your perception of the issue is conveyed that way. And that’s empowering really for a technician, especially when it’s going to work flag and want to really get out there and put up big numbers.
Jamey Whitlock (29:58):
So with that being said, I’m going to give you another little hump in the road that I’ve run into. Maybe somebody can open up a dialogue on this on Facebook or something. We may not have time for it. I don’t know. So if I take in a vehicle that’s a drivability issue, I take one in, that’s an air conditioning issue. Only people are coming in for something very specific’s wrong with their vehicle and we’re going to have to do some diagnostics to figure this vehicle out. A lot of the times we need to get back to that customer pretty quick with, Hey, this is what we need to do to get to an end result. Or if it’s air conditioning, we need to get back to them and tell ’em, Hey, your car has no Freon. We need to evac recharge this system. We need to find the leak.
(30:38):
We’ve got to get them back a small amount of information in a reasonable amount of time. But what’s happening is we’re utilizing our inspection to do that and push that information back to the customer. But what happens this not touch because we’re not doing that. So one of the things that I’m trying to work out now is when I hand a technician, when I A tech that diagnostic and that car is sitting there after he’s diagnosed it or he’s put something up and see I’ve just got just this air conditioning thing on here, but that car is going to sit there, that evac recharge. He is going to sit there on the machine for an hour. Why am I not taking that time to go back over the vehicle and complete that inspection and just send the customer the rest of their car and utilize that time to generate extra services or just educate the customer on their car.
(31:36):
Hey, this is the health of your vehicle. This is what it looks like. Hey, I bet you didn’t know that your tires were wore out or that you have an oil leak or something. So we’re having a struggle with get backed up on this type that we’re trying to get back to the customer fast with a small amount of information. And so trying to put in a process where maybe I utilize some of the other guys in my shop to come over and take over doing that inspection so that they can continue working and they can stay productive. I don’t want to stop a guy from pulling a motor out to do an inspection that it doesn’t make any sense. So again, going back to your digital handbook, right? This would be one of those things where if you wanted to change that process, Hey, if I hand a guy a diagnostics on a vehicle, he’s going to do this short. We send it back out. How do we re-dispatch that inspection back out to the shop and get somebody to go gather all that information so that I can give it to the customer? And they get the experience that we were talking about earlier, which is this is who we are, this is how we do things, and here’s your vehicle. And heaven forbid they might call back and go, Hey, I didn’t know I needed all that extra stuff. How much is that?
Tom Dorsey (32:53):
No, I mean, that’s brilliant man is looking at segmenting that inspection based off of the vehicle availability and technician availability. Doesn’t really matter. Who says that it has to be, Hey, I’m in the inspection stage. Let’s do a comprehensive 72 point inspection right now for an hour and a half. Why don’t I get it if the wheels are knocked off here and then I add the brakes, why don’t I, like you said, if it’s on the recharge and just sitting there, why don’t I go through and detail out that inspection that maybe the guy, the porter or the guy who checked in did an add to it, man. I mean, that’s a great idea.
Jamey Whitlock (33:29):
I’m trying to work that one out in my head right now. Now of course that goes back when you said digital handbook. That would be how many employees do you have? Of course. So that process may change a little bit from shop to shop, but if I can come up with a good way to do it, that still keeps the shop efficient, productive, doesn’t slow anything down. Like I said, it’s always about time, right? But I’m working on that one because I feel like a lot of shop cars are leaving out the door and we just fixed what they came in for. We didn’t do what we set out to do with AutoVitals, which was give a comprehensive report to the customer so that they can make a buying decision or make a buying decision later
Tom Dorsey (34:13):
Today and for the future, for the next visits. Hey, real quick before we wrap, Jamey, Bill chatted in and said to ask you about the, are you the sun story?
Jamey Whitlock (34:28):
I don’t know. So I come from a chain of auto repair stores. I worked for my dad for a long time and now I have my own shop. And this guy came in and asked me if I was the son. And I was like, no, I’m not the son. I’m it. This is it. But it was kind of a weird transaction, but that guy, he was like, Hey, I need you to call me and tell me everything that I need with this car before you do anything. I said, I’m not going to call you. I’m going to text you. And matter of fact, you better opt in when you walk out the door because I’m able to text you if you don’t, and I’m going to text you a report and it’ll have pictures and everything you need to make your decision. And he said, really?
(35:08):
Absolutely. And that guy, he actually went on Google and left me a review, Hey, these guys have a, of course he called it some backend CRM. I dunno. He tried to make it more complicated than it was, but he made a comment. He thought it was cool. And so I thought it was pretty neat. He wanted something, but I gave him something different. Then again, bear back to the experience that we want the customers to have when they leave here. I don’t want ’em to be like what they got at the other shop. Right? So kind of funny.
Tom Dorsey (35:40):
No, that is fantastic. There you go. And you just stand by exactly that. Implement your process, set your expectations, and your customers respond. Don’t be afraid, Hey, just because they might be gray in the beard like me, doesn’t mean I don’t have a phone and I don’t expect texts and I won’t communicate that way and actually appreciate that. And then maybe even say, and probably a high percentage of ’em say, wow, that’s something completely different. Let me go tell my friends. Let me post up on Facebook. Let me leave a nice review and talk about that because it’s new to me and I want to be the one telling my friends about it. Right.
Jamey Whitlock (36:14):
It’s funny you say that. I had a lady in the waiting room the other day and I was like, Hey, I don’t know if you get a text message to your phone. And she goes, oh no, I’m already looking at this report. She’s 83. Yeah. She’s like, oh, I’m already looking at this thing. And she was already in it. I mean, she was in it and I didn’t have to even coach her up. She knew what she was doing.
Tom Dorsey (36:36):
That is amazing. Yeah, man. Well, Jamey, dude, it was fantastic having you back on, buddy. I appreciate it, man. When are you coming back? We got to get another update. Let’s do six more weeks. Are you down 10? Oh yeah, it’s been 10. I’m fine
Jamey Whitlock (36:55):
With that. More weeks we may have a different story or you tell me when.
Tom Dorsey (37:00):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we’ll work it out. We’ll figure that out and then maybe we’ll set some goals, do an announcement and just kind of see as that progresses through. But really appreciate you sharing your progress today and the accomplishments and really excited to hear the next level and really happy to hear that you guys have been able to implement such big changes and get such great buy-in, in such a short amount of time, especially in the busy part of the year. Man, that’s great. That’s great stuff.
Jamey Whitlock (37:31):
Well, thanks, I appreciate that. Hopefully we’ll have some more to show in six weeks.
Tom Dorsey (37:35):
Awesome, buddy. Well, whatcha are you doing? Talking to me man. Go make some money.
Jamey Whitlock (37:42):
Alright,
Tom Dorsey (37:44):
Next Wednesday, tune in. Same time, same place. We’re going to be talking about expansion. We’re going to be talking about, it’s a good show for you folks. You’re looking at, now that you got this secret recipe, the digital shop, you’re making tons of money, what do you do with it? Will you open up more locations and do it again somewhere else? And so we’re going to be talking with some multi owners talking about how to use the business control panel to manage all those moving parts. And it’ll be great for people aspiring to open multi-locations and those of you that already have ’em, and look at a tool that’ll help you to manage ’em. So same time, same place. Wednesday 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern Facebook Live streaming. Tune in for digital shop talk radio. Till then, go make some money. Thank you. Thanks Jamey. Thanks Nima.