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Episode Description

Hear how Billy Catching, Matt Fowler, and Dustin Brown leverage repeatable processes, workflow automation, and efficient communication to complete more work in less time and drive profitable growth for their shops

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Episode Transcript

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

Tom Dorsey (00:00:06):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey, and today we’ve got a great show for you. We’re talking TVP to TVPX transition, and we’ve got a great group of shop owners and shop operators here today to talk to us through that. So what I’d like to do is welcome first back to the show and look at Billy Catching coming in right on time like a true professional. Matt Fowler, you guys might remember him. He’s from Airport Automotive, been on several times, always full of information and knowledge to help us transition to that digital shop operation. Welcome, Matt. Great to see you buddy.
Matt Fowler (00:00:43):
Thanks, Tom.
Tom Dorsey (00:00:44):
It’s been a while, man. Stranger
Matt Fowler (00:00:47):
Overdue. Been busy, but glad to be here.
Tom Dorsey (00:00:50):
Good, good, good. Thanks for, and this guy that’s over here having the fit and doing this cartwheel, that’s Billy Catching. And you might remember Billy, matter of fact, Billy had a couple breakouts at our Digital Shop Conference, been on the show several times. Really excited to have him back from Aaron’s Automotive in Fresno, California. Clovis, California. Welcome Billy. Right on time, brother.
Billy Catching (00:01:09):
Man, I am very technologically challenged.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:12):
Oh, he is not.
Matt Fowler (00:01:14):
I made it. I
Tom Dorsey (00:01:16):
Made it. Pulling your leg.
Billy Catching (00:01:18):
Right.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:19):
And welcome for the first time, Dustin Brown from Dustin’s Automotive Experts, or excuse me, Brown’s Automotive Experts. And I think you’re out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Welcome on the show buddy. Multi shop owner by the way. So you’re going to bring a great perspective to this conversation.
Dustin Brown (00:01:34):
Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Looking forward to
Tom Dorsey (00:01:36):
It. Of course, of course. No thanks for coming in. And of course our brain trust, our expert panel of experts joining us, Bill Connor and Uwe Kleinschmidt. Welcome gentlemen.
Matt Fowler (00:01:47):
Good morning.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:48):
Good morning. And I know this is going to be a good one. I want to dive right in because we’re going to use the full hour. Make sure you got a pen and paper handy. Make sure you use that chat function, the q and a, whichever is your flavor. Either way, we’re going to get your questions answered live. Make sure you follow up on the Facebook forum, right? If you hear something, you think of something you didn’t get, a question, question answered, get on that Facebook form, reach out to these gentlemen because they are here to help. They’ve been through it all, the good, the bad and the ugly. And they are going to talk today about giving you some ideas on why you should be thinking about that switch if you’re new to AutoVitals, what to expect, but also some tips and tricks and some pitfalls to avoid and great stuff like that. And most importantly, the benefits, the results that they’ve gotten from that switch, which we’ve been talking a little bit about in pre-show, but we want to bring it to you today. So let’s jump in if you could. I want to go around the horn gentlemen. Dustin, I think I’ll start off with you if I could, and just kind of introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your operation, what your role is there, and really how long have you been using AutoVitals?
Dustin Brown (00:02:58):
Yeah, absolutely. We have three locations here in Albuquerque. Opened our third location July of 2019. And we’ve been with AutoVitals. I couldn’t answer that question. I cannot remember a time we didn’t have AutoVitals to be honest with you. We might’ve been one of the first stores in Albuquerque to start utilizing digital inspections. AutoVitals has always been the leader in digital inspections and everything they did. People followed suit from there. So yeah, we really have bought into digital inspections. We utilize in all three locations. We’ve been operating in Albuquerque since about 1986. So a lot of good customer feedback.
Tom Dorsey (00:03:41):
That’s fantastic. And how about you, Matt? Give us a reminder who you are and what you do and how long you’ve been with AutoVitals since the beginning. Sure,
Matt Fowler (00:03:54):
No problem. So I’m the service manager here, airport Automotive. And we are a single location, kind of a smaller outfit. We have three technicians, two service riders. So we’ve got just the single spot here in Colorado Springs and we have been with AutoVitals now, this will be our fourth year. And it started, the owner had the product prior to me being here, but we never used it. I mean it literally was tablets on the shelf with dust on ’em. And then I came out to shop conference, it’s hard to remember now what that year was, but four years ago. Four
Tom Dorsey (00:04:35):
Years.
Matt Fowler (00:04:37):
And that’s when I really got exposed to the product and the depth of it. And so when I came back at that point I would say I was the AutoVitals advocate and just put tablets in all the guys’ hands. And it’s now fully our culture and we are now to the point where we’ve been on TVPX since it started, so just about a little over a year ago and we are refining it and doing quite a bit. So I’ve been on that platform since it came out since we were out in California for the last live conference or in-person conference.
Tom Dorsey (00:05:17):
Yeah, no, and he’s going to bring a great perspective because just like you said, he’s one of the first adopters. I mean they jumped right on it, had a lot of input and actually kind played that kind of Guinea pig role as we’re going through this transition. So a lot of the benefits that you receive for those folks that are on TPX now and they know what I’m talking about came from guys like Matt. And it’s always great to have Matt on. Matt’s a service manager, he brings a completely different perspective and operational perspective. It’s one of those things like when I was in the military, right? The officers, yeah, they get all the credit, but really it’s the boots on the ground. It’s the troops in the trenches that do the work. And so we appreciate having the offensive linemen of automotive repair come on the show because it always allows you to hear it from a different perspective, open your mind to maybe reach out more to your team and involve them in a lot of the setup and decision and responsibility for implementation.
(00:06:19):
And you find out that teamwork makes the dream work. Billy Catching, always great to have you on my man. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know that you guys don’t have a lot of staff over there at Arum and it’s always a blessing, Billy, when you can take time and join us to get your perspective. And for folks that don’t know Billy well, I’m not going to steal your thunder, Billy, you tell us who you are, what you do, how you got involved in AutoVitals, and also helping us out in the digital shop conferences teach us some service writer class. So welcome buddy.
Billy Catching (00:06:54):
Good morning gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to be here with you all. Again, my name is again, Billy Catching. I am the service manager slash wear of most all hats at Arum Automotive in Fresno, California. Our staff, I run three techs. I’m the only service writer, parts per procure, parts returner and editor and user of the AutoVitals product
Tom Dorsey (00:07:18):
And runs like a 90% picture edit rate, a 98% cent rate. I mean this guy, he probably has extra arms that hide behind his back. You just don’t see him when he is on.
Billy Catching (00:07:29):
Yeah, don’t give me too much credit. It was actually 97.6 in the last email for my edit rate, but
Tom Dorsey (00:07:36):
Darn
Billy Catching (00:07:37):
What’s plus or minus a percent, right. So we’ve been with AutoVitals, I believe we came on board in 2017. Much like Matt’s situation, when I came to work for Arum, we had a different product that I tried to utilize because I saw the value in that type of information being given to the customer, but I didn’t find it to be very user-friendly and I was never really given any good answers as to how to get the product to work better. I was always just invited to sit down, take time out of my day and attend a webinar that I had to schedule two weeks ahead of time. And then when I couldn’t make it, I just never could use the product very well. So we took a demonstration, Aaron and I told him on the way back from that demonstration with Uwe and the guys down in Goleta that if you got the product, I would make it make money for us.
(00:08:32):
We went live feet to the fire. That’s kind of been the way we’ve worked with AutoVitals. The day we implemented it, Aram had an a TI super conference to go to in Phoenix. So the day we went live, I got the keys to the castle with no safety net. We went live, we made it work, we made sure that we got all our guys to buy into the product and then that’s kind of how we ended up with the new X platform as well. We had an email and I failed to do my job. So when I came to work on a Monday morning, we had X loaded and that’s not the program I was running Friday, but we’ve been with it now. I think we’re going on about our fifth month or so somewhere right in there and really enjoying the new product. A little bit of it’s been a learning curve but it’s very manageable.
Tom Dorsey (00:09:31):
So for you it was like, were you aware of the TVPX before? Was it something you and Aaron had been talking about maybe doing, I mean because if you came in and you just walked in and it was a big switch that had to be a shock, that had to have been quite a day to deal with. Was there any planning involved?
Billy Catching (00:09:54):
Yes. So to answer your question, I’m a member on the Facebook forum as well and I had seen Uwe mention it, drop some screenshots of it. We really talked about it, but not so much as to when we were going to go to it. It was more or less, Hey, have you looked at it? And honestly I hadn’t looked at it all that much. It was kind of in the background for me. And then Shay, Jen, our onboard advisor called and she’s wanted to talk about it and she’s like, I really want you guys to go on board because I think you’ll find benefits to the platform. So she gave me the information, she sent me an email confirming the date we were going to go and she asked me, she invited me to view a couple seminars of what the differences were and kind of how to get your feet wet with the program.
(00:10:47):
But like I said, I get so busy sometimes I got sidetracked and then when I went home on Friday, I should have just watched the videos either after hours or from home. So luckily for me, I come in about a half hour to 45 minutes before my guy start. So on that Monday morning, I saw right away I was going to have a problem. I wasn’t going to be able to dispatch work the way I normally would’ve, so I had to start watching videos for about 25 to 30 minutes and then that was enough to get the guys going and then I continued to watch some more throughout the course of the day when I had time. So it was trial by fire, but like I said, it’s easy enough to use, especially having some experience in the old platform, not that they’re the same, but some of the processes are the same. It’s there’s a lot more advanced features in the new platform.
Tom Dorsey (00:11:38):
Once you get over that visual shock and then you start figuring out what’s what and what things are and how they correlate to the TVP version, it becomes pretty, it’s really intuitive and some of the more advanced stuff takes a little bit of planning, a little teamwork meeting with your crew, making sure that it’s the right time and place and we’ll talk about that today on what those features are and those benefits of those features are and how to get those things implemented as well. Matt, what about you buddy? What made you decide to make the switch? I mean, like I said, you were one of the first adopters. What was the big kind of promise that you were looking for when you guys switched over? Did you just like the new stuff?
Matt Fowler (00:12:25):
Well, I mean, yeah, that was part of it. To be honest for me, I already knew that AutoVitals was how we were going to be doing inspections and I felt like we had the current product pretty well established, refined. And when some of the developing team was talking about TVPX, I actually jumped in on a couple of calls and they showed me some screenshots and just so early on I got some of those little tasters and I was like, man, this looks really good. Kind of that turbo shop label. We had doubled in that before. So yeah, so when we came out to California and I got a little bit more information on it, I really felt like we were a good shop for it, that I had enough familiarity with the thinking of AutoVitals and now to just improve upon it, have a new platform to really then pave the road for the next generation of it to me was exciting. I felt kind of part of that innovative part of the team, even though technically I’m a customer. So
Tom Dorsey (00:13:39):
I mean for both of you guys they built, I know for a fact they went and built a lot of the functionality around how you applied the program, the tool, especially on the legacy version. In other words, we learned a lot from you, both of you. That’s why we had you in Turbos or at the conference helping us to learn more from you. And so don’t shy away from that, pat yourself on the back in all turbo shops, everybody that was involved. And that’s really one of the success keys to AutoVitals is that we are that open and we bring in the operators and we listen to ’em. And that’s why we harp on this show all the time about putting your text together and your staff together and listening to ’em and letting them kind of help you help them. It’s no different. So we like to put our money where our mouth is. Dustin, would you say you were using the legacy TVP for about a year before you switched over? Was that right? And was that in three locations?
Dustin Brown (00:14:42):
Yes. My thumb wasn’t as much on the pulse of what you guys were doing on changes. We were kind of hit with an email by Shady saying, Hey, in two weeks we’re going to move this over. So we’re like, oh, I guess AutoVitals is doing their update. And historically AutoVitals does yearly updates. I didn’t think it was a option to switch. Nice. I talked to Shady and our approaches. We did one of the stores first and then we let them roll with it for a couple weeks and then two weeks later we did the second, two weeks after that we did the third. I really liked that approach because it gave us some internal support. So when we opened the second store got on board, they could contact internally each other and kind of feed off each other and give each other some feedbacks tips and stuff they learned.
(00:15:27):
Made sure everybody watched the videos so they weren’t completely blindsided when this thing came on board. And that really does help, but it doesn’t help as much. It’s just diving in and kind of doing it. But there was some familiarities, as Shani did a great job, we scheduled time for her to call each of the store managers and go over the change so that they could ask her questions directly and get that introduction to her. So all that stuff went pretty smooth and after the first day or two, the first day or two, anything changes. Everyone’s like, are they gripe about it? But then they start seeing it and they start seeing how much time they’re saving and the benefits of it. What I kind of talked to all the managers yesterday about what they liked about it. I mean they all had quite a bit that they liked about it now that they got over that initial initial learning curve.
Tom Dorsey (00:16:22):
Yeah, no, that’s fantastic. And so there’s some pretty cool stories is you got Matt who’s excited about the new stuff and just trusts pretty much anything that falls out of Eva’s head. You’ve got Dustin who just thought it was mandatory, so great job and I want to give you two thumbs up and Billy who says, yeah, I’m going to do this thing. And then, oh, that’s today, bill, how do we, because Bill put a lot of this work together gentlemen, and for folks that don’t know in the audience. And so what I’m hearing Bill, is that the work that you put in is validated as being very helpful and really making that transition much smoother. Talk to us a little bit, bill, about how you came up with that training and that transition material, what the goal behind that was when you were creating that content and how do you feel it went? And also one last thing is when you’re bringing somebody over and you’re preparing ’em for the switch, what are the important things that folks need to be prepared for or looking for before they go live? Unlike Bailey, just remembering to set an alarm on a Monday.
Bill Connor (00:17:30):
Well, one of the interesting things is the process must be working pretty good because from Dustin’s standpoint, he pretty much said, I’m going to do this. He delegated it to his CS trainer to go in and work with the shops individually and then he just got out of the way and made it happen. So the process seems to work pretty well that the information is going to the shop, that this is the date that this is going to happen, this is the material you need to look at, go into the demo shop and go ahead and make sure it loads on all the service writer’s monitors in case the resolution’s not right. They go ahead and tell ’em to get the app on all their tablets, make sure it loads on the tablet so they don’t have some outdated tablet that doesn’t support it. Enter that phone number.
(00:18:15):
And that’s kind of a signal to go forward. And for those that have an inspection sheet that they really love, if they go ahead and get what their trainer and say, Hey, I love the idea to guided, but my inspection sheet doesn’t have that, then if they’ll ask their trainer, they can actually turn on the fields for guided that. If you don’t want to use our inspection sheet, you can use ours as a path to understand what to put in there, but you can go and prepare your inspection sheet in advance so that way you’re ready to rock and roll on day one. So the tools are there, it’s just a matter of asking some questions and taking them phone calls from your trainer and just moving forward.
Tom Dorsey (00:18:55):
And Dustin, we talked a little bit yesterday in the pre-show and a little bit this morning about that transition, right? And what would you say to folks to look out for? What are some of the, let’s say I got to word it in Bill language, what are some of the unexpected opportunities that you ran across that you had to find a solution for to take advantage of those awesome opportunities?
Dustin Brown (00:19:19):
Yeah, absolutely. So with any change, everyone’s attentive to it. All the techs are hyper attentitive to it, the advisors. So I was getting some feedback about, oh, this is different or this is different. And I think some of it might’ve changed. I think some of it was just being more attentive to it, but what it did is it gave us a good opportunity or gave an opportunity to revisit my inspection sheet and update it and really forced my hand to get in and look at each of our inspection topics and what the actions are, what the videos were, things of that nature. So that actually was a blessing to do that. It took some time, but sometimes your hand needs to be forced, you have to make time to do stuff or it just always ends up on the back burner. So it was actually beneficial. The good got turned into no issue. So I had to go in and change a little bit of that, but I just used that as an opportunity to be evaluate my whole inspection process with
Tom Dorsey (00:20:18):
Aot. And so then what’s been the results of that audit? You made some changes, you kind of set it up different from the way you had it before. Have you noticed it from a metrics perspective? Have you noticed improvement in efficiencies, improvement in number of recommendations or anything like that motors research time in your metrics?
Dustin Brown (00:20:37):
Yes, I would say so. Research time is definitely improving. A lot of good positive feedback, not just from the front office but also from customers they really like the better, it’s a lot easier to read the inspection when you text it or email it to them. So the research time has increased, the interaction with the customers have been smoother and easier. They could just click a button on their phone, takes ’em right to what needs service, so what’s good. They’re not swiping through it. So so much easier to read on the customer side. And we have gotten a lot of positive feedback with that.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:16):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And that positive feedback, a lot of times you hear what’s the saying for everyone that you talk to, it’s 10 or a hundred more that actually feel that way. And I’m sure where you see that positive feedback is in the approval rate because when you make it easier for them to interact with the inspection results and to understand and interpret and make decisions based off of them well, the natural result of that is higher approval rate. Yeah,
Dustin Brown (00:21:45):
Yeah, absolutely. The more time they look at it, the more interactive they are with the process, the more they’re going to want to do some of that work. For sure.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:54):
Yeah, so that’s fantastic. So folks, if any of you’re sitting on the fence or maybe you’re in a point of sale, that doesn’t play nice yet with the TVPX, I mean that’s food for thought, right? Is that yes, it’s going to be beneficial for your team and we’re going to talk about that and talk more in depth about what those benefits are and improvements in performance really, which leads to efficiency of improvements, but it’s a big impact on that customer as well. So something to think about when you’re looking at or thinking about making that change. And any of these gentlemen, I’m sure would be happy to share an example of what that new interface looks like with you. If you haven’t seen it, you can find it on Facebook or course reach out to your advisor and they’ll be more than happy to walk you through that and get you a demo set up so you can take a look at that for yourself. So Matt, how about you? You know what? I want to bring you in because your level of restraint today is actually starting to worry me a little bit because I haven’t heard from you yet. Get in here and ask some questions.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:23:03):
Maybe I set the stage a little bit. It was not that we had nothing to do and wanted to fiddle with the software and there were very clear trends and also requirements from shop owners to take care of. And so to give you one of the most controversial, I shouldn’t say controversial, but most discussed feature was the chat we selected in the old system. When you write a chat, everybody gets it right? And some thought, wow, that’s great. Everybody’s up to date and all said, when are you going to stop this? Where is the button to stop the message? Which is not directed to me. So that was a typical I discussion we had. And so we just turned it into a chat system, which hopefully improves productivity because you can create group chats, you get a read receipt, and that’s just what you got used to when you use all those different hangouts, Facebook, messenger, whatever, Snapchat, there’s some standards to adhere to, but there are specific things which in the shop turn a chat into a productivity tool.
(00:24:48):
So you have to add additional information automatically, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to go too much into details, but there were clear trends. You said motorists can read this better now because we are up against any digital format. Whether you buy on Amazon or you do other things online, we have to feed the same quality or better to the motorist. Otherwise I go to my auto repair shop and that stuff looks a little archaic compared with my other online stuff. That should never happen ever. And so were the forces which made us change a lot more. The thing which was really a leap of faith is the task manager because we observed that a lot of service advisors are jugglers of tasks and it’s easy to drop the ball. And so the task manager allows you to not drop the ball. It might go a little bit in the background because another higher priority interrupt comes in, but you will never forget it. It always stays there. And so we did that as a new feature. So it was a lot of stuff and it’s up to our customers to tell us whether we hit the right stride. That is probably the question.
Tom Dorsey (00:26:30):
Yeah, for sure. And it’s interesting too because it seems like those were sleeper features almost, right? And as they developed, because maybe they weren’t as robust when they first released through that interaction and feedback, they became extremely powerful. And I think a lot of people got into TVPX for whatever reason. Its faster is going to look better, it’s new, I’m supposed to do it, I have to do it. But then really found out that the improvements to the editor, the task manager, which is something that hasn’t, I don’t think been available in any other tool really available to automotive repair before really, really improved efficiency and productivity and just organization at the front counter. Would you agree, Matt, tell us a little bit about some of the kind of things that were surprises to you that have been really beneficial for you as you’re running this tool?
Matt Fowler (00:27:28):
Yeah,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:27:30):
Sorry, I forgot one thing and Matt is probably going to talk about it. And there was the photo editor, what used to be called the photo editor. The photo editor was an add-on in the previous tool. So you had to do first your normal stuff with the inspection and then go to the photo editor to edit it. And the feedback was very clear by people like Matt, why do I need to first go through the inspection sheet and then jump to the photo editor? So instead of just taking a off the shelf photo editor, we try to take those features of an off the shelf photo editor, sophisticated things with writing on a picture and combine that with the whole notes editor. So now you can just go into the photo editor and go from topic to topic and not only look at pictures, but the whole impression to the customer and look at the notes and so on and so forth. Sorry Matt, but that was really something I want to point out.
Matt Fowler (00:28:41):
Well, I was going to take a half hour on the other two things you mentioned, but since you’ve got, so going back to that, early on they were like, Hey, we want to do this. Hey, we want to do that. And the execution of it now it’s really a struggle for me to think about using the service without these areas that AutoVitals created within TVPX, the message center, he mentioned that. So now I can communicate individually, I can communicate corporately or I can communicate on a topic or a vehicle. So in that same little section of AutoVitals, I can do a lot more, I have a lot more diversification. And so kind of like Uwe touched on, the culture has moved into these messaging platforms within other products and now AutoVitals has that, that’s much more natural. If I use AutoVitals or I’m not used to it just with how other things in my life that I interface with from a messaging standpoint are.
(00:29:49):
It also allowed me to increase accountability because before it was the tablet is the process. Well now the tablet is gospel because if I messaged you that that work was approved and you’ve been updated and now the order of your tiles and I’ve messaged you specifically on this vehicle, those spark plug are here. I mean I have, not only do I have the communication, but I also have it stamped and I also have authentication of when that message was checked. So there can be a lot of let’s work as a team, but from a managerial standpoint where the team members specifically maybe drop the ball and then I can go back to the service owner and say, Hey, well you didn’t even let the dude know his brakes were here. Or dude, your brakes were here an hour ago and you acknowledged that message. So there’s a whole nother accountability piece that’s within that that helps the management side of it. So that’s the task manager. I can go on, but there’s other people or the messing.
Tom Dorsey (00:30:54):
Well, that’s fantastic and it’s probably, so Billy, how about you? I mean was there something where you got in it, you saw it on Facebook, saw it in the forum, had some expectation, watch the videos, but then is now have you found some new function that you really love and now rely on similar to Matt, where couldn’t even imagine going backwards. And we’ve done that twice now, Eva couldn’t imagine going back to paper now. Couldn’t imagine going back to TVP. That’s pretty impressive.
Billy Catching (00:31:24):
Yeah, so kind of to just piggyback off of what Matt said and Eva’s line of,
(00:31:34):
Sorry guys. Sorry guys. I’m working with my iPhone and I got a 20-year-old trying to get her driver’s license. I’m sure she’s got questions, but she’ll have to wait To piggyback off of that messaging system, we never really used that very much because we’re a smaller formatted shop. Only three gentlemen, I’m not too far away from it at any time. But now that we’ve started using it much more in the X platform, it’s so easy to use and was been pointed out on a couple of different occasions. Now there’s all kinds of accountability that comes with it now because now I can tell you as an individual, I can tell you as the entire team, Hey, we’re going to stop and eat at such and such time, or I need you guys all to work a little bit longer. And then everybody acknowledges that they saw it.
(00:32:23):
So you don’t get that, like Matt said, from the management perspective, I don’t make a promise for a delivery on a time or something where normally the guy who might be clocking out for lunch, but I told him, Hey, I promised this car, he doesn’t just out on me anymore. He knows because he knows I’m going to call him on the mark on the mat because he read that message. So now that we have that ability to get the read receipt, I couldn’t imagine not having it anymore because it just brings a whole nother level of accountability to each interaction you have with your techs.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:02):
Yeah, well, and that was a critical component to keep you at the desk, right? Because before you sent it and you’re like, oh, well the thing still hasn’t happened, now I have to go out there, I can’t help myself, I’m going to go out there, I’m going to ask them, yeah, I saw it. And then you’re like, ah, I didn’t need to come out here. But now with that read receipt, it really is, I think the critical component to make it truly like we’ve always been saying is that it eliminates the need to run back and forth from the front counter text to the front service writers to the back in your shop operation. Dustin, how’s that working out as a multis shop owner? I mean, you have some other unique opportunities that I’m sure you had to cover and apply, and how is it from a communication perspective, not just internally in each shop, but also across your network?
Dustin Brown (00:33:51):
So we haven’t seen much enterprise setup on the AutoVitals side. Maybe that’s something I’m not aware of that it has where the guys could communicate from shop to shop. If it is, that’d be fantastic. Right now we utilize Slack to do a lot of that store to store communication, but a lot of good feedback. They do like the chat function, they like that it can go to individual specific people. It’s not so cluttered. They can talk to just the one guy they need to talk to and not everyone’s seeing it. So yeah, that’s been a very, very well received thing. And one of our locations, the office is literally in a separate building than the shop. They’re two separate buildings, so they utilize the chat function quite a bit. So being that everyone’s tablet’s not beeping all the time, whenever there’s something going on, it helps prevent distractions and it really goes directly to who needs it. So they have been utilizing that quite a bit.
Tom Dorsey (00:34:48):
That’s actually how we got Bill, right? Bill used to run back and forth from across the parking lot from multiple buildings. And I remember when Bill first got signed up over there, that was the first thing Bill said was that he didn’t have to run out to that shop anymore. Remember?
Bill Connor (00:35:08):
Yep. So one of the interesting things is we talk about the note and image editor, but there’s some other functionality that’s been moved there to go ahead and save time. So the ability to go ahead and change the status or change the condition or change the action is all there in one place. And for shop that if you’re doing some editing and you’ve got some great pictures and stuff in there, you’ve marked up the ability to go ahead and download them and save them and use them for your social media posts. So for continue that customer interaction with content you’ve already created, it’s all there in one place. So I’d just like to go and point out some things that maybe these guys haven’t discovered, but they were put there to make their lives a lot easier.
Tom Dorsey (00:35:49):
Do you got a graphic? Are you able to show the before and afters on that?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:54):
So
Bill Connor (00:35:55):
Yeah, let me share my screen. Let’s see what we can go ahead and come up with and we can go through a couple different things.
Tom Dorsey (00:36:02):
Yeah, just to give a good
Bill Connor (00:36:03):
Idea, see why we got this on
Tom Dorsey (00:36:04):
Considering maybe they haven’t seen it yet and really give you an idea of the difference there. Because when Uwe, while bill’s loading this up, I mean what was kind of your main goal of, I know we had piled up a lot of feature requests and the need to do kind of an overhaul at that point, but I think one of the big takeaways or one of the big benefits that came that was so noticeable was the speed and performance increase. Was that what you were setting out to do or was it something different?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:36:39):
No, that was one of the goals and one of the really tough to accomplish, especially when you scale and add more shops to the system them because I mean, I don’t know how often we discuss on Facebook, can we save this one click And it turns out into a lengthy discussion where you think it’s just one click, so what’s what the fuss and, but if you do that over and over again, it’s really important to look at the process to service advisor especially is working on it and then save that click or even more clicks. So we really took a closer look at how service advisors work and every shop is different. It’s probably the most quoted statement by shop owners when you talk to them, but we really try to establish a best practice. And I believe with the image and notes editor draw is a perfect example where we were successful in accomplishing that and with guided now, which we are probably going to talk about later, we took it to a whole new level to save tons of clicks. Yes.
Bill Connor (00:38:10):
Tom, can you verify? You can see my screen now.
Tom Dorsey (00:38:12):
Looks beautiful.
Bill Connor (00:38:14):
Awesome. So what I wanted to do is just go ahead and go through here a little bit and for people like Matt and Billy Catching that have been doing this for a while, we probably need to go ahead and remind them what things look like. So this is the TVP from the past and now when we went ahead and changed it, now this is what we have to work with today. So if they want to go ahead and comment on the tools that they see on the screen here that we now have that we didn’t have before now would be a great opportunity to go ahead and have them kind of speak up.
Matt Fowler (00:38:45):
Well, I know just the aesthetics was a big campaign at the beginning of TVPX as far as how it’s easier on the eye, it’s a little bit easier to kind of decipher what’s being looked at as you just glance across the page. So I know there was a lot of intention with color choice and button size and a bunch of things there. So as you showed that first screen, it took me back to you kind of get lost in the sauce on this one, whereas on the current one on the X, there’s easier ways to get to some identifiable places. And that was a big goal that I do believe TVPX accomplished very well L just that top, that task manager up top there. We kind of touched on that. I mean that’s kind of the hub for communication for the individual that’s at that workstation. So that is specific to the person that’s logged in and it will show things across the group depending on settings or it will just specifically speak to that person. So I’ve got mine set up to where I’m looking at not only my individual communications but also the other service writer and anybody interfacing with it. And it gives the service writer a place to constantly check in or be alerted that there’s something that’s waiting on them from another member of their team. And that’s a big thing
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:40:20):
If I may add to it because that was, I don’t know, we changed the implementation quite a bit because there is not just one process. So in general you can basically say there are two schools of thought. One is everybody has their job gets task assigned and there is something like a foreman or production manager was later the term service manager where that distribution of work is being kind of centralized. That is what you see there. Bill, if you go back to your Zoom, in this case it would be the 13 tasks for me assigned by either a configurable algorithm in TVPX or by a person who is in charge of assigning tasks. The other school of thought is we’re so busy we don’t want to have a manager distributing tasks. We are all working off of a pool of tasks, especially smaller shops prefer that kind of work. And that is where you see the shop version. You just say, oh, I mean 91 for shop, something needs to be investigated, right? So many. But in general in the concept you say, oh, there is pending stuff, it doesn’t really matter. Who is it assigned to? I take it and do it. And everybody can see the progress on that just by clicking on that button. So we really wanted to support both kinds of schools of thought.
Dustin Brown (00:42:21):
Can I just ask a clarifying question on those tasks? Are those tasks that you would assign through the business control panel, who creates those tasks? Where do they
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:42:31):
Come from? Very good question. So there are automatically configured tasks. So for example, if the inspection is done by the tech, the service advisor on the work order gets automatically a task or the production manager if that role exists, right? So that’s automatic. If you
Tom Dorsey (00:42:55):
Remember before, I’m sorry to interrupt, if you remember before on TVP, right there was the big yellow box and it would just fill up with all of the process steps that happened, right? Tech A submitted an inspection sheet, right? Yes.
Dustin Brown (00:43:08):
Okay.
Tom Dorsey (00:43:10):
And that stuff would become almost unusable. It was nice to have it posted. But what this does, Dustin, is 90% of your tasks, probably 95% of ’em will be automated, right? They’re a process step. This got done. So the next step is now assigned to Dustin to review the inspection and edit it and mark it up. And so what happens in there is now it’s actually a very interactive list of tasks. And then anything that’s going to be custom created, I want to give you a task to, Hey, make sure you pick me up a burrito on your way back from picking up those parts. Then I’m going to create that manually. But the vast majority of those tasks are automatically created. And once you actually do the step, so I edit the inspection sheet and I move it into the next workflow step waiting for approval, guess what happens? That task is automatically completed as well. Because that’s one of the things I really wanted to point out is a lot of people look at this and they go, ah, it’s going to be so much and it’s more work. Well guess what? It does so much more for you, but it’s actually less work. And that’s where we’d like to explore that as well.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:44:18):
Somebody go ahead. I want to give a few other examples. When a tech has finished all the work, the service advisor gets an alert, a task that this tech doesn’t work on this vehicle anymore. So you can assign the next vehicle if you have done or you can at least check the workload for that tech and take the next action. Or when a vehicle goes into waiting for work finished, some shops redistribute work to optimize the technician’s load. So it’s not one technician going to all the work on one vehicle from beginning to finish. There’s a specialization going on and the distribution of the work takes precedence over ownership of a vehicle and then the production manager can see, oh, this tech is overloaded, this tech is available. Boom. And that’s another reminder. So the time for doing that is when all the inspection results came in, all the approvals have been done, it’s very clear what the scope for the vehicle is and so you can configure there to getting a task as a reminder to read, distribute work.
Billy Catching (00:45:54):
If I may just throw something in there too, I didn’t even think about this. Comparing the old to the new, there’s also some features as for your service writers to give themselves reminders on specific tiles here that we’re looking at. The one that’s marked Al Harris to the upper right hand corner, that service writer has physically marked that that customer is called by that arrow with a circle around it. So that’s a way you can kind of keep an internal note to yourself that counter when the timer stops in that component, you can either go to the tile for Bill O’Connor to over, that’s a voice message that was left. So you can leave notes to yourself that, hey, I called that person or that person’s called and maybe I couldn’t take the call, I need to call them back. Or if you weren’t able to leave a message, there’s also an icon for that you’ve called.
(00:46:56):
It seems to be any more that I run into it every now and then where I’ll get a voicemail and the voicemail mailbox is either full or hasn’t been configured and then it says goodbye and it hangs up on you. Well, at least I know I left a message. And then from this same tile, I’ll actually send a text message to that customer letting them know that, hey, I attempted to reach you, give me a call when you’ve taken a few minutes to look through your inspection results. So those are some things that I don’t believe the old system had and if they did have it, I didn’t use them, but now I find myself using these little things as notes to myself. And then on a secondary note, if you don’t necessarily like the way that this is formatted right now, let’s say everything’s been done on a car, the work has been sold, the tech is currently working on it, and you want to be able to take some of the clutter out, you can minimize these tiles as well where the little down arrow, up arrow next to waiting for work or what have you, can actually close those.
(00:48:07):
And there’s not actually a display of that on this picture, but then that way it’s a mental reminder to me that everything is going smoothly on that car. The tech doesn’t have any notes for me. I’ve got authorization, everything’s going smooth. And then when something comes up in the task manager, I usually open it there and then I can open that tile back up if I need to as a reminder, okay, there’s something else I need to do. Do we have the wrong parts? Do I need additional parts? Do I need additional time to be sold for that technician? So those are some more features that the X platform has that I don’t believe the old product had.
Tom Dorsey (00:48:51):
Exactly. And that was an expansion of those special markers, right? In the past you’re dealing with three of them and now they’re special markers not just for service oriented or custom special markers, but also for the customer as well as the vehicle. So you’ve got a lot more of those kind of easy, fast image-based kind of reminders and communication tools to help your service riders and your old team stay on the same page. Thanks Billy. That was brilliant. I mean there’s great observations right there. That’s why we love having you on the show.
Bill Connor (00:49:28):
Moving right along, this is the antique note and image editor. So just so we go and remind Matt and Billy, and then when we get down to the new one, then we’ve got some additional tools to go in and work with. And this is actually in the guided mode. So basically it’s going to walk somebody right through it, but here’s the different note areas and then up in the top here, this is where you can actually modify the conditions, status and actions. So lots been added there. And then also we get down to this section here. Now we’ve got the image caption on the bottom. If they’re in a guided inspection sheet, they come through automatically approved. So that saves the service advisor step. They can damn near go ahead and mark this up any way imaginable and also be able to go ahead and save and download for their social media. So if they want to go ahead and talk about the difference of the usage here and having everything all in one spot, they talked about a little bit earlier, but now they’ve got a little bit more of a reminder of what it used to look like versus what it does today
Matt Fowler (00:50:35):
For this one, this is more with that service writer hat on as far as having all of that edit ability in one screen with clicks around it as opposed to jumping into the photo, making some alterations, jumping out, jumping back to the notes. Jumping back to the topic, this right here is kind of an efficiency, incredibly efficient with how you’re able to modify and edit that inspection to get it presentable. So there’s significant improvement in here from jumping the notes from the tech right over doing a quick edit to make it presentable for the client. Again, like Bill said, a lot more versatility in how you can edit the photo, that little green check mark, you can drop that on because our process is we want to have pictures of the good and the bad. And so I may have a photo of a perfectly good looking belt instead of one that’s cracked and I can just put a little check mark on it, put a quick note that says belt looks good, and then I’m off to the next one. So if you have that environment where you’re asking your service writers to be in the photo editor, which we all know, the more that get edited, that increases customer engagement, that’s a metric that’s measured and can be verified. And if you have someone that’s fallen off, again, the accountability piece, but there’s a lot of gain and benefit and streamlining that occurs in the photo editor now versus the legacy one.
Bill Connor (00:52:09):
And so with your permission, what I’m going to do is also remind you of what the work order popup used to look like and then we’re going to go forward to where it is today. And now you can see that you’ve got a lot more tools at your disposal here also to save time and add some clarity.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:28):
Yeah, that’s one of the biggest improvements just from a usability perspective that I really liked personally. You just have everything at your fingertips now to make those edits and adjustments.
Billy Catching (00:52:41):
And you might also point out guys that even from this screen, let’s say you’re looking at it here and you decide that something needs to be altered if you rolled over to the topic on the far left. And so if you were looking at the cabin air filter, if you click on cabin air filter, it will open that again and you can actually make modifications again right from there. So let’s say the picture was in the wrong space, maybe the tech comes in or leaves a note, Hey, I accidentally marked something as good and it’s really not. You can do it from right here in this screen too. You don’t have to necessarily go back into photo
Dustin Brown (00:53:24):
Editor. Yeah, that’s the feedback I got from my guys as well is just how much more user-friendly this system is compared to the old one. We had hired a new service advisor just a week after switching over. So now we got the manager who just learned the thing and now he’s teaching someone else within a week. And just the user friendliness has just been, they’ve been really giving a lot of thumbs up on that and then hovering over the cursor over little paths and tells you what it is. That’s huge. Also, back when we started, we had a reference sheet. What does this little tab mean? You pull out the sheet. Okay, that’s what that is. So those are a couple of things we were talking about it being user-friendly that yes, it is a lot more.
Tom Dorsey (00:54:19):
Yeah, and that really helps with training new hires because then if they have the question, instead of going and trying to find you and stopping doing what they’re doing, like you said, they hover over gives information, hit that question mark and you’d go right in deeper and actually watch a video that bill’s created in that library and give you a training on that segment. And so we’ve broken it down by segments. You need to know about this piece of the video editor or this piece of the workflow page and what to do with it. Boom, you’ve got that help right there on board and it really, I think expedites ramp up and training for somebody who’s new. So all those tools are built in folks, if you’re not switching yet or you’re not looking at maybe even switching point of sale since you can take advantage of this.
(00:55:03):
That’s exactly the reason why. It’s nothing to fear everything. Thanks to Dustin, thanks to Matt, thanks to Billy, thanks to all those turbo guys, everybody else who’s gone in and kind of went through that initial development and giving us that feedback has packed this thing full of the tools to help you to succeed. So thank them. Get on the Facebook form and give ’em a couple of thumbs up and thank you. Get the demo and get in there and just get it going in your shop so that you can take advantage of those that we’ve been talking about. Billy, what are we looking at?
Bill Connor (00:55:36):
So this is the legacy chat, and now we’re going to switch over. And now here’s the toolbox that is now the different type of chats along with the task manager we have here. So when a message comes in, the first thing they’re going to do is get this ghost chat and it’ll hang around for a minute. And if they miss it, they’ve still got a reminder over here when the chat comes in. Anything that’s got a number here, I let some know it hasn’t been looked at. They have the ability to go ahead and tap on any of these to send a read receipt. And then there’s certain things like this that are going to create task that’ll be in this number count on the top, and then they’ll appear in this task list. So really it’s almost damn near impossible for something to go ahead and get missed because a lot of these automated tasks, they’re created for review notes or reviewed inspection or browse topics or even send a doggone payment request to the customer as you do it. And they’ve stepped through there and you do individual parts of them. They basically will go ahead and actually clear the tasks. So again, service writer, we all know they spend like a top all day long. This is going to go ahead and help them make sure nothing gets missed.
Dustin Brown (00:56:50):
Now is this customizable bill as to how many tasks you want to hit?
Bill Connor (00:56:57):
Well, the ideal situation is that the tasks are going to be automatically created all day long. So the goal for everybody is to go ahead and have no uncompleted task. So the higher the number is, the further behind you’re getting. So big zero and no red marker there anywhere is really a good thing.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:16):
Great question. Yeah, you can always use the filter function, Dustin, to keep it lean and mean, right? You can tighten it up so you can view everything or you can really tighten it up to an individual or a vehicle depending on how you filter that view.
Dustin Brown (00:57:29):
Okay, thank you.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:30):
Yeah, sure.
Bill Connor (00:57:31):
So this is all about good clear communication without interrupting the wrong people. Or even in cases where you have to send a message to groups of people, that’s all possible within here. So next time one of your technician needs to get all the monsters together to go ahead and push in that one ton truck. Basically just hit that group check and get all your bigger guys together and push away. So again, these are all here. Now, this is a comparison of the legacy inspection sheet that you could tell how long a customer has been with you by looking at the size of their thumb. And now over on the right hand side you can see that this has expanded, but everything’s a nice clean interface ready to go for the customer.
Billy Catching (00:58:14):
Yeah, your customer feedback with the new platform is going to be significantly better. We’ve had nothing but just really great compliments about how much nicer and how much easier it is to read from the customer’s viewpoint. And then I think Matt had mentioned it earlier, the ability for the customer to switch between good, bad, and ugly without reading the rest of the report. Everybody’s time becomes more and more valuable as we keep going forward. And some people, they don’t care to know what’s good. They don’t care about anything other than what needs to be done right now. And then maybe that might back up and look at what you left for future recommendations. But their primary focus is, Hey, what are you telling me what my car needs today?
Tom Dorsey (00:59:05):
And you have the ability to do both, right? You can set it to do either. Gosh, we’re at the top of the hour. So folks, we wanted to get a little bit I think more into some of the other functionality. Talking about guided The good news is two weeks from now, mark your calendar. Two weeks from now we’re going to be doing a how to segment on digital shop talk radio, and we’re going to be talking exactly about TVPX, how to set up some of the things, how to use some of these tools, how to get that guided going so you don’t want to miss that one. We know we’ve kind of really piqued your curiosity if you’re not already looking into it now, but you really want to get into the segment that’s coming up in two weeks so you can really get under the hood and it’s for folks that maybe you’ve already been using it and you’re looking for some help or you’re new or you’re about to transition.
(01:00:00):
If you know anybody who’s in that, make sure you send ’em the link, get registered folks. It just takes a minute. Hit that registration button so that you get the emails and the reminders and notifications for the show so you don’t miss ’em, and you can send ’em out and invite some of your friends that this is going to benefit as well. Gentlemen, I can’t thank you enough for coming on. It was great discussion, really, I think a great diverse panel that has different kind of path to making the switch different use model, different application of how you’re using the tool, but really at the end, if you noticed everybody geed together in the same type of benefits and really those things are very noticeable, not just from your team, but also even from the customer. And so really can’t thank you enough for coming on and sharing your experience and taking some of the fear I think out of making that switch. I mean, we had some pretty interesting stories about just waking up and having 20 minutes to get prepared to get it done, and thank you enough. Thank you, gentlemen.
Dustin Brown (01:01:06):
Thanks for having Thanks, guys. My pleasure. Yeah, it’s a pleasure. Have a great day.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:10):
Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. And always Bill, thank you for taking us through that trip down memory lane. That was pretty awesome, seeing the differences and just really, I mean, it was kind of shocking even to me what a big change it is to be able to see that visually. Uwe, of course. Thank you for taking the time to come out. Thank you for being so open and helping us to develop this program with these folks to get to the level that it’s at. A lot of places don’t do that, and so really a big thank you to you.
Bill Connor (01:01:40):
Oh, unlike the jingling kind of change that’s in your pocket, this is the kind of change that’s actually going to go ahead and get that folding money, so just dive in there and get her done.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:49):
Yeah. Oh, and next Wednesday we’re talking with Frank Scandura. We’re going to be talking about the role of production manager, shop foreman, whatever you want to call it. And it really ties in because I think when you’re looking at it, and we will talk to you about, and you have the opportunity to ask those questions about when it’s the right fit from a volume or shop size perspective, but really when we’re talking about this digital shop and we’re looking at this process and you heard all three of these gentlemen talk about it here today, and they all have different size operations from three multi-locations, Billy with a couple of folks cranking it out for Arum over there. It really is, I think something that’s so copacetic with this program, with this tool and this solution. Next week is going to be a can’t miss episode.
(01:02:37):
Frank Scandura, same time, same place, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. Tune in and like I said, hit register. So you get those reminders and you’re able to invite more folks because we’re here to help. And if you’ve got show ideas, you want some specific topics, feel free to reach out to us through that Facebook forum. We’ll be more than happy to build some shows around that for you in upcoming episodes. Until then, get out there and make some more money. Looking forward to talking with you next Wednesday. Thanks. Thank you guys. Good job. Thanks guys. Thank you.

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