Episode Description
All shops should strive to deliver safe, comfortable, and dependable vehicles to their clients. Vehicle inspections, easily understood by motorists, are critical to achieving this goal. Since high approval rates require effort by techs and SAs to produce high-quality inspection results, this can be perceived as time-consuming and lowering productivity. Join Bill, Fred Haynes, Brandon Polhemus, and Uwe as they explore when productivity is jeopardized and what to do about it.
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].
Bill Connor (00:05):
Good morning, good afternoon. I’m Bill Connor and you have reached the Digital Shop Talk Radio. On today’s episode, the panels that I are going to take on while the speed of an inspection is important, do motorists appreciate a fast inspection or as a shop, do we really owe them much more? So joining us today, I got Fred Haynes, I’ve got Brandon Polhemus, and I’ve got our Chief Innovation Officer, Uwe here to join us. And now Fred is really a first class operator and he’s with the Honest-1 Autocare and he’s got multiple shops. So he’s got some insight here and Brandon is his main man at the shop and we’re going to go ahead and use his experiences to help us understand what’s going on. So today’s topic is really important as we understand that there’s a process needed into shop to change from paper or just a DVI to digital vehicle inspections that enable or empower the motorists to make their authorizations decisions without a lot of help.
(01:07):
So get ready to take some notes and we’re going to go ahead and move forward and I highly encourage you as we go along to use the chat feature to chat at any questions that you have. So that being said, what I’d like to do is move forward here and start comparing the process between what a paper or a poor digital inspection might have yielded and what a good quality inspection is. So what I’d really like to do is start with Brandon, if that’s okay. And I’d like you to go ahead and reach back in your memory bank back to when you actually were still doing paper inspections and talk about the process in the shop between the service writer and the technician, how that worked. And kind of lay that out for us if you would, and then we’ll get Fred to go and chime in and tell us as a shop owner of multiple shops, the challenges associated with trying to manage that.
Brandon Polhemus (02:05):
Yeah, so previous to us converting to a digital inspection, we had the standard paper inspection. I think everybody’s familiar with it. And we would print out the work order that would say what the customer came in here for. The technician would take that work, order a copy of the inspection sheet, bring the vehicle in, go through the inspection. Unless we were out there with the technician, it was kind of difficult to tell whether the inspection was good old fashioned term pencil whipped or if it was a good quality inspection. And then that paperwork would come back up to us. We would attempt to decipher the scribbles that were on it into a meaningful estimate for the customer and then present them with the estimate and a copy of the inspection again, if the inspection was even legible, which in a lot of cases it, these guys are very good at working on cars and not very good at their handwriting skills in some cases. So then sometimes the customer would ask for a copy of the inspection and we would either have a carbon copy or just run it through our copy machine and give that to them and go on from there.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (03:22):
Go ahead. How many of those were actually really presented because there is a clear trend from not staying and waiting. So describe a paper inspection on the phone. That must have been interesting exercise for the sales. It was
Brandon Polhemus (03:40):
Right, the customers actually seeing the sheet unless they were waiting for the oil changer for the reason they were here, it was pretty few and far between. And then even when they were waiting again just because of legibility and would they even know what they’re looking at, it very rarely was actually presented to the customer.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (04:02):
So at that particular time, and if I may Bill shut me up if I’m changing your course here, it wouldn’t be the first time. To me when I was looking into this, it was really interesting to find out how then technicians who are normally not paid for the inspection and service advisor used the paper inspection process to locally optimize, which is a mild form and polite form of saying the pencil whipping is not because the technicians are lazy. The pencil whipping is because if the service advisor cannot sell it, they see it as a unnecessary step.
(04:55):
There’s no finger pointing in my opinion necessarily or possible if the service advisor and the technicians are not working together the team and see the transparency given to the customer as the primary goal, you will have pencil whipping, no about digital inspection or not. At least that was my finding after talking to so many and there was a lot of aha and light bulbs going on on my part because I thought it’s an inspection, so what’s the big deal? And it is a big deal because every second counts and minute counts. And if it’s not effective, why do it just because the boss told me, so let’s just pencil it. I don’t get the work bag anyway, and other way around, so it was advisors got used to, I don’t even know how to sell this scribble or what all the documentation didn’t allow me to be immediately effective in educating the customer. So it became a vicious cycle kind. Would you agree with that? I mean that was the paper world as I discovered it.
Brandon Polhemus (06:13):
Yes, I would say it definitely worked both ways.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (06:17):
Brandon, your camera is freezing. I don’t know whether that’s an internet issue or just on my part. Yeah,
Brandon Polhemus (06:25):
All three of you guys are frozen on my screen as well, so I’m not quite sure what’s going
Fred Haynes (06:28):
On. See, as long as we can hear Brandon, I think that’s a positive thing. I mentioned to you guys before the call that we’re having internet issues at that particular location today.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (06:35):
Oh, I see. Okay.
Fred Haynes (06:38):
So it’s good that he can even connect actually now that I think of it. Right.
Bill Connor (06:41):
Awesome. So one of the things is that really the technician really had to spend time to go ahead and sell to service advisor so the service advisor could then turn around and sell to customer. So that was kind of a big time bandit and a lot of technicians and service riders didn’t participate in that or didn’t want to participate in that for maybe pushback reasons or whatever.
Fred Haynes (07:07):
He may have had to drop off and come back in. So I can pretend to be, maybe I could use that filter and put a beard on and I can pretend
Bill Connor (07:21):
You definitely know what he had to go through. So maybe while we’re waiting for him to log back in, maybe you could go ahead and talk about a little of the challenges those paper paper inspections made for you as a multi shop owner when it come to auditing these type of inspections.
Fred Haynes (07:37):
So yeah, I mean it was a part of our process that I had very little timely visibility into. I mean, yeah, I saw the output in terms of what we were selling, but I didn’t necessarily have a good insight into what we were seeing and really had to rely a hundred percent on whatever the perceptions were within the four walls from the service advisors or the store managers. And I think we all see things through different filters, and I think you’re right that I don’t think that the primary reason that people shortcut the process is because they’re just lazy and they don’t care. But there are plenty of things that reinforce that as a way to make it through the day, either because of multiple interruptions, the number of people in the lobby, somebody called in sick, whatever it might be that can make that happen.
(08:36):
And I think it’s very easy to very quickly get out of control. So you start to reinforce behaviors that aren’t acceptable. If you don’t say anything about the fact that there aren’t tire photos or that they didn’t give you tire measurements, then all of a sudden you don’t ever get tire measurements anymore. Or if you never sell, you haven’t sold a strut in your life, you all of a sudden don’t know whether there needs to be struts on cars anymore. So that can happen and it definitely does. But the primary reason that I heard that a digital inspection is the greatest thing and that the guests really love it and the service sells itself. And I certainly was excited by that. But the thing that I actually took away more was is boy, I am basically blind running blind to that part of the process as a multi-unit operator.
(09:31):
And if I was a single guy and I was at the shop working there every day, I’d know firsthand, right? Because hear the conversations, I’d be going out in the back and looking, but that just isn’t something that’s practical in the model that a multis shop runs or as a franchisee runs. And so I really needed to help my guys with what was going on. And that’s what the digital inspection gave me as a shop owner was better visibility into reality and what was actually going on. And that’s how I’ve used it and that’s how my guys use it too, is shop guys, the store manager managers, I have store managers at each location and they have accountability for their shop overall in coaching their people. And so they’re actively, every day they’re looking at listening to a phone call or two, they’re listening to looking at an invoice or two every day. And we’re scoring that as the week goes along with the idea that when they see things that are off our professional level of service, that they can go back and remind our employees that this is important. A service advisor, you need to hold technician accountable technician, you need to hold service advisor accountable. Don’t just accept things that aren’t equal to our professional level service and let’s keep everybody on the same page operationally. And so that’s kind of for me, the nirvana of what a digital inspection can do.
Bill Connor (10:59):
So when we talk about digital inspections, we’re also a lot of shops, they had a poor process when it was a paper inspection, then they moved over to digital inspection and they carried over that same poor process. They might go ahead and click a button and say that this is a pass or fail and they might take a picture or two, but nothing more than that. And that’s where we talk about the process really has to change along with that. So Uwe, you want to dive into that a little bit more or?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (11:29):
Sure. So onboarding shops for the digital inspection, there were simply the replacement of a paper by a digital documentation. And many shops said, and I’m now three, four years ago at least, if not all, a lot early in the process said, oh, I have a cell phone, I can take pictures. Why do I need the digital inspection digitally on a tablet? Why do I need to buy a tablet? So I just take my phone and I do the inspection and then afterwards I determine what is easy to educate and take the pictures of those, let me call it cherry picked, the thing I know can be sold, if that makes any sense. So there was no consistency for each vehicle, no consistency across technicians and no new process. It is still driven by how do I find work I can sell? I would like to claim something here, and it might sound a little outlandish to some of you, but I think you approach it differently when you put the motorist in the center and say, my job is to educate them about the vehicle health of the vehicle. And then you find work as a sideline effect instead of the other way around, if that makes any sense, right? So if you are driven by showing the customer the situation of the vehicle, good or bad, and do that consistently, that yields a higher customer satisfaction slash ao, then cherry picking the things I can sell for this visit.
Fred Haynes (13:52):
Yeah, so we talked about this in the precursor Uwe and what I saw as I got more visibility into the inspection process and we started to do a better job of standardizing and operationalizing those processes with the help of AutoVitals, was that the metric that I was tuned on to by another individual in that’s been on the calls in the Honest-1 from Roswell, Georgia? Was that the average repair order written or basically a sum of what you find versus plus a sum of what you don’t sell plus the sum of what you sell. And I probably saw anywhere from a 30 to 60% increase depending on the location. So I’m utterly convinced that by virtue of going into a digital inspection, that we were doing a better job of inspecting vehicles than we were. And what I talk about with my guys is if you never take the appointment, you’re not going to sell anything.
(14:59):
You’re not going to fix a car if when you bring the car in, you don’t inspect it, what are you going to sell if you don’t present everything to the guest and you do it in a way that’s explainable and understandable and credible, you’re not going to sell. And at the end of it, you have to ask for the sale and tell ’em why it’s important. And so all that these processes do and put you in the best possible position to win the guest confidence, provide their vehicle to them in a way that’s safer, more comfortable, more reliable. And oh, by the way, nice win for us. We’re repair center. We make money by repairing cars. It helps us. And so that is certainly true
Uwe Kleinschmidt (15:39):
And of no offense, but it’s very easy for you and me to sit here in this zoom and talk about how it should be. I think the rubber meets the road when you come from a pencil with paper inspection and now need to motivate team and create a new habit. And so I think that that’s what, it’s less the tool, it’s more the process in the shop to adjust to the new opportunity. And honestly, motorist also change at various degrees in various geographical locations, but there is a point where they demand transparency and the paper thing wouldn’t even be possible anymore,
Fred Haynes (16:35):
Right? Yeah, I mean guests absolutely motorists as you call ’em, absolutely love the transparency. I mean, we get that constantly every day.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (16:47):
So what I would like to do, if you don’t mind, is as Brendan, when you look back or both of you, how hard was it to go from whatever was before with paper then to digital? How long did it take you? What would you do differently if you knew where you landed today for three questions all at once? So let’s just keep it at those.
Brandon Polhemus (17:16):
When we implemented, we did a kind of staged implementation. So the first process was just for our general service technicians, the guys that are doing the oil changes. So got them going on the digital inspection and worked with them for about a week or so until they were comfortable with it and could do it. Obviously I was learning how to do the inspection at the exact same time they were. So we’re kind of learning together. Once I had a really good understanding of how the tablet and how the inspection worked and how it integrated with the desktop website version for the advisors upfront, then I went to each an individual technician and worked with them for a few hours to a day to get them used to it. And by taking it in stages, it allowed, instead of it just being, what’s the best way to word this?
(18:09):
Technicians don’t like change. I guess that’s most of them. They like the old paper way of doing it, but doing it one person at a time, instead of getting a bunch of pushback from all the technicians at the exact same time and making my life miserable, doing it, doing it, one technician at a time helped. And then once they got used to it, then it made it very easy for them to use and they enjoyed it. And then once they saw the outcome of it, of more things being sold for them, they saw the benefit and once they saw the benefit for themselves and they were fully bought in.
Fred Haynes (18:46):
So I went to the conference and I saw your tool. I don’t think it’s been three years ago now, Uwe, that you came to the Honest-1 conference and talked about AutoVitals. And in my particular case, being someone who’s implemented it, the base in the past I’ve, I’ve been an IT person in my past lives, I would say one of the things I learned is that unless you’re the users of whatever process or system you’re going to put in place, aren’t bought in, you might as well give up because it’s got to be them and it’s got to be, they got to want it. So I didn’t come in and say, we’re doing this and everybody go and no. I said, Hey, I think this is something that could really help us out. Showed it to ’em, talked about it with my store managers said, think about it, but I’m looking for somebody that wants to take this and give this a shot and see how it works for ’em.
(19:38):
And of course Brandon stepped up and Brandon has been a terrific advocate. I mean, I think he’s got technical competence, so he figures out what’s going on. He’s willing to put in the time and energy. I think you enjoy it, right, Brandon? I mean, I think you like that part of it. And now you’ve got a scenario where you’ve got somebody who’s credible, who others appreciate, even look up to saying, Hey, this is good, man, look at what I’m doing. His numbers start going in a better direction. Customer satisfaction starts going in a better direction, and now it’s a much easier sell, if you will, to roll it out to multiple locations. Kind of like what he did on a micro level within his shop is how I handled it overall. I didn’t implement all locations at the same time. We focused on his location.
(20:28):
We didn’t just take our paper inspection and take a picture of it and put it into AutoVitals, right? We said, are we doing it in the right order? Are we doing the right things? What should we focus on? And we looked at best practices that were out there and we actually adopted one started with it, enhanced it, and Brandon is our master of our inspection. It’s the same inspection for all of my locations, and he’s the one that manages, Hey, we need this, or Hey, we need that, or what about this? And we do that actively together.
(21:02):
That has made us, I think, more successful at rolling this out. And I also used, honestly, I used this downturn in traffic that happened with Covid, especially in the early parts where traffic was really down. I used that as an opportunity to, I capitalized on it and said, guys, let’s get serious about rolling this thing out now. And so I ran at it, and I honestly believe that us doing that and then having some time to grow into it has really paid off for us because we’re in a better spot coming out of it than we would’ve been. And we’ve been able to capitalize on it. We’ve had better, we had a better first quarter than we’ve ever had in our entire existence as a group. So that’s positive.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (21:50):
Congratulations. So yeah, sometimes you have to slow down to speed it up later, no doubt. So Brendan, bill, again, stop me if I’m, Nope, carry on. Brendan, when was the moment where you knew the team got it or was there several moments when started, did you leaning back in your chair and said Airwork?
Brandon Polhemus (22:18):
I would say for the younger guys in my shop, it didn’t take long. The guys who already use tablets, cell phones, that kind of technology in their daily life anyway, the buy-in for them was pretty quick just because of the cool factor. I get tablet
Uwe Kleinschmidt (22:38):
Interesting
Brandon Polhemus (22:39):
Instead of just, so for those guys pretty much instantaneously for the geezers in my shop, which there really are only one, it took a little while longer. He was outside of his comfort zone. He still used a flip phone at the time. So the whole idea of touchscreen and that type of thing, it didn’t compute. So even though he saw the benefit to it, I mean it would explain it to him like, Hey, it’s going to be much easier for me to sell you those shocks, the struts, the ball drains when you can take a video of it. And I could show that to the customer versus just telling them, Hey, your ball joint’s loose.
(23:21):
So he believed in it. It just took him a while to really start using and being able to use the tablet effectively. And I think he’s finally gotten to the point, it probably took him up until about six months ago, really to start using the tablet effectively. He would still kind of cherry pick the pictures and just kind of around and do what he would normally do on a paper inspection, go after the gravy, so to speak, check for the steering suspension and note those things and kind of skip some of the other stuff. And I think what really led him to start doing it correctly is when he started seeing it work for the other technicians, they would bring it in, they would do the pull inspection first, and they were getting, yes, they came in for the check engine light, but now we’re fixing that and we’re doing the brakes and we’re doing the shocks and we’re doing the struts versus just fixing the check engine light. Once he saw it working for the other guys, that’s when he started really putting in the effort and it’s paying off for him as well.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (24:28):
So in the end, it was, if I may summarize, you championed it. You were not just sitting outside and say, we are going to do this now. You actually showed how to do it. You took the tablet in your hands, you changed the inspection sheet, you basically tracing, blazing the trail, and then the younger guys adopted and saw the results in their paycheck and then everybody else followed.
Brandon Polhemus (25:08):
Right? I think for what I did for the first, I mean it felt like an eternity, but probably about the first six months I would personally go out every day, two to three times and do an inspection myself. Even though I would have the guy do the oil change or whatever else, I would do the inspection, find, okay, what’s working, what’s not working, what could be made better? Go inside, make the adjustments to the inspection, and then the following day do the same thing using the changes that I would make so that we were constantly getting better because ultimately I wanted the inspection to a make sense for the customer, but also flow in such a way for the technician where they’re not having to walk from the front of the car to the back of the car, back to the front, raise the car, lower the car where they can just, it’s a natural flow.
(25:55):
And so making those changes and it was kind of ever evolving. And to be fair, it is still evolving. I still go out on a, if not daily, every other day and do an inspection to see, okay, hey, how can I make this better? Constantly communicating with the technicians, what can I change to make this better for you, better for the customer? And I’m getting all that feedback now from four stores, not just mine, the other three stores communicate with me as well so that I can make our inspection as effective for both the customer and for the technician as possible.
Fred Haynes (26:31):
Brandon has spent, we upgraded to TVPX early on at my prior lake location and Brandon spent time there. I’ve had other service advisors from his location who have come over and spent time over there to really work with the team and understand what they’re doing. Brandon, you spent yesterday morning at our other Eagan location because they just upgraded TVPX on Monday. And so I wanted them to have somebody with that firsthand experience that understands what it means to do a guided mode tech inspection and what that means when the service advisor gets it and how you leverage it. And I think even got a call this morning for them for a tech that happened to be out yesterday to help walk through it again. So he’s really played that role, especially when you’re talking about what happens with the technician. Brandon has the technical skills from a car perspective as well as the service advisor skills where he kind of gets the whole picture. And so he’s able to do that and really build the credibility with the guys. I’m more of the person who’s looking at what the output is at the end of the day and helping them understand what are the key inputs that affect that output and how are they doing with those key inputs. And so that’s what we focus on.
Bill Connor (28:01):
As you switched over to TVPX, I know you spent some time working your inspections to go in and add the guidance to ’em. Do you find that consistency that you created by doing that gets you to the point where pretty much anybody that inspects the car, no matter the skill level, produces the same results? And does that relieve some pressure from the customer because you’re not having to call them and walk through it with them. They can look it over on leisure and then call the shop.
Fred Haynes (28:29):
So that definitely helps and it certainly gives them, I think gives us more credibility sooner with the guest for sure. Anytime you do something in the space of implementing new process for people, you’re trying to take your best practices and you’re trying to make it so that everybody can leverage em. We used to talk all the time about you’re going to take, what does my best salesperson do? I want to understand that. And then I want to teach everybody else what they do so that they can do the same thing. That’s part of it is first thing you got to do is do I know what I need to do? Yeah, okay. Now does the people that I want to do it that way, do they know that that’s what they need to do? And do they know how to do that? And then you have to measure it over time and see are they doing it and help them, remind them and keep moving it in that direction. And so yes, it helped with the customer a lot. And then as you get the wins, obviously it convinces people, Hey, okay, it’s not a waste of time for me to recommend a particular type of service or to take these pictures that I’m being asked to take because it really results in something positive for us. win-win for the guest.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (29:49):
So before we go to guided, I still want to, and I apologize, it’s one of my favorite subjects, is how for the service advisor change the process going from basically pick up the phone, explain everything verbally, consciously, or not apply sales pressure to put more time into the preparation of the inspection results, send it out and then wait for the call. Or if it’s a waiter, they even get, I don’t know whether you do it this way, a text message sitting there and you can see from the counter how the phone rings and the bullet out and look at the inspection result. Can you talk about that, Brandon?
Brandon Polhemus (30:47):
Yeah. So to answer that second portion, as far as the waiters, yeah, we do text and or email to ’em even if they’re sitting there. But I will also then email it to our shop email and we have a template at the desk that can open that email. And because sometimes especially with TVPX, the photos, unless you actually click on ’em to expand ’em, are pretty small. And so you condense it even further onto a cell phone unless, especially if it’s a first time visitor that hasn’t used the inspection before seeing the inspection, they may not know how to navigate and open up the photo as much. So having that tablet a little bit bigger interface has helped. I could just go and hand them the tablet as they’re sitting there in the waiting room and then they can peruse that. They get a little bit better visibility. But as far as the process for the advisors,
(31:40):
It’s the automotive industry. We’re not in a bubble. Not in a vacuum. Every customer is a little bit different. I can tell ’em until I’m blue in the face that, Hey, you’re going to get this inspection as a text, there’s an email, open it, look at it, call me with questions or call me when you get a chance. All that kind of, and they don’t do it. So you’re going to get some of those people. But in general, if the advisor puts the effort into the inspection, which is where, and again, we’re guided modes help with some of those captions and sales is kind of built into it, but if the advisor puts the effort into the inspection and sends it out, we have seen good returns versus little to no effort and just sending it out, then the customer calls up with, what the heck am I looking at?
(32:26):
They still don’t understand it. So for this process to work really effectively, you’ve got to have, you got to have buy-in on all three parties, technician, advisor, and the customer has to understand and get the process as well. Otherwise they’re not going to open and look at the inspection. And even if they do open it and look at it, they might just, okay, cool. And that takes time to build that level of trust with your customers. And again, it’s the 10 80 10 rule you got the 10% of the people are going to buy everything you tell ’em to do. You got 10% of the people that aren’t going to buy anything no matter what you tell ’em. And so I try focusing on the 80 and we’ve had good success with it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (33:23):
And was it difficult for the individual service advisors to spend more time ahead? So because it’s all perceived technician also as advisors, as more work. I mean that’s the initial reaction. You want me to put more work in this?
Brandon Polhemus (33:46):
Yes. And again, I had delayed buy-in from the technicians in some ways. There were some advisors that were like, yeah, this is awesome, let’s go. And then some guys who were like, this is dumb. And so just every individual is a little bit different. I think for the most part across all four stores. And Fred, you could probably answer this better than I could, but I think even though there was some initial resistance from some guys at the other stores specifically, I think we’re having a much better buy-in at this point now from all four locations than we did initially.
Fred Haynes (34:25):
I think we have enough examples of success in various pockets and pieces in each area that they understand that, look, it’s never a hundred percent game, so you’re playing the law of odds. So if you service a hundred cars a week, you’re not going to sell a hundred percent of everything you find. That isn’t the reality of what happens in our environment. I don’t have mandated, there are no mandated state inspections. There’s no laws that say you can’t drive around with no tread on your tires. There’s nothing like that for us to fall back on that I know some places have. And that’s great. So it really does fall back on. I don’t think we ever pressured anybody. I’ve never been a part of that. We don’t have that kind of a mentality and never have. It’s more about how are we really transparent, provide our professional opinion of what it means to drive around on tires that are four or five 30 seconds and why we believe that you should consider replacing those things right now or very soon, if not from us.
(35:37):
And you clearly, if you’re not even having that conversation, whether it be digital or in person with guests, how are they ever going to, nothing’s going to happen. They don’t know. They’re looking to you, us to tell them what their car needs. And nobody inherently wants to drive around in a situation where they don’t know whether it’s going to break down or whether it’s going to cause ’em to run off the road. Of course they don’t, but they don’t know either. And I think the other thing that happens that probably help with digital inspections, and we talk about this a lot, is it’s very easy for everybody and myself included, that you look through things from your own perspective. And so if I’m an automotive professional and I know cars, I can take a picture of an oil leak, show it to a guest and say, you have an oil leak, we need to fix it. And it’s a picture that’s got half of the bottom of the car. And I can tell you that when I would look at those things, I had no idea what an oil leak looked like. In most cars, an oil leak, most car looks like caked on mud.
(36:46):
And so until you put an arrow on it and you explain and say, see this thing here that’s indicative of X, we need to do this and this is why you need to do it. And I think that that level of transparency becomes evidence when you do digital inspections. And again, you put yourself in a position where everybody can see that and kind of the aha moments go off, go off of your second and third kind of service advisor guys say, oh, that’s why he’s able to actually sell some of that stuff and I can’t ever do that. And that helps a lot, right?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (37:23):
And what also helps from other shops we talk to is make a conscious decision to look at the inspection results with the layman’s eyes. That’s hard for specialists like us, but if you take a conscious attempt and look at this, just like you said, the oil leak, you will find, oh, the layman’s explanation makes a huge difference. And what we sometimes feel as useless additional work is what makes actually the motorists say, aha, that’s why. And approve the work. Right. So have you done audits or show differences pictures to your staff to point out differences like that? Or has the guided introduction made that clear or can you talk about that?
Fred Haynes (38:27):
Yeah, so I mean I think the short answer is yes, that absolutely. And so it’s not me in the beginning. I was the one that was doing all of the administrative audit type stuff and having the coaching sessions with folks, and we’ve ultimately handed that off, as I mentioned to our store managers. And what’s critical is that we’re all on the same page about, Hey, what does good look like? Because that’s the first hurdle to overcome. And believe it or not, it’s not a constant. You can’t just say, okay, this is what good is today guys, and then move on to the next topic and never revisit again forever and ever that because you’ll find that either people, you have attrition, people move, something changes in the shop, any bazillion different types of reason, and all of a sudden you start to entropy and you start to kind of decay and all of a sudden something isn’t happening like you’d expect anymore.
(39:27):
And so you’ve got to be constantly revisiting that. And then you start to see you’ve got some guy who’s got a thousand dollars ARO at a location and you’ve got another guy who’s got $153 ARO. Well what’s different? Well, let’s look and you can start to talk about what those differences are and say, okay, well what do I teach and train? How do I make that visible to the individual? Part of the problem, Tom, you don’t sell any struts is because you don’t recommend them. Look, here’s what everybody across the entire organization does in terms of percentage of vehicles that need struts, and this is what the industry average is according to our vendors when we talk to ’em, and this is where we’re at. So probably not going to sell a lot of struts or be successful in selling struts if you’re not finding them, if you’re not presenting them.
(40:16):
But again, all you can do is get to that point. And what I found is that even my guys, the guys that are really good, you have some of those and as I’ve grown, you start to get an appreciation for what good looks like. You only know what you know because of what you see. And once you kind of grow a bit and you start to see more of what good looks like, you start to learn that it isn’t just presenting it, there’s how you present it in lay terms, as you said, it’s how you prioritize it. Do you say it’s a yellow item that they can do at their leisure or Yeah, this is something that the truth is that that serpentine belt, you’re going to be doing a tow. So if you really are using this car and are dependable on it and don’t have that as something you can really tolerate, this is something we should probably take care of today, not tomorrow, not next week, not six months from now.
(41:11):
When you come back again, that’s not pressure. That’s just being honest with the guest about what the condition is. And if you’re showing ’em a picture and you’ve got video and you’ve got words that they understand and you’re not going, I pulled a P 1 0 2 4 code on your car and your sixth cylinder is misfiring, we should replace your solenoid unless you’re a gearhead. You’re like, I don’t even know what that means. Half of that, right? And I think it’s a natural thing to start talking bits and bites with people in your own profession. It’s natural.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (41:49):
You want to be detailed, right? Be
Fred Haynes (41:50):
You want to be detailed, that’s where you are. That’s where you live, that’s what’s going on in your head and it’s very difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes for all of us.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (42:03):
So how do we do on time, Bill?
Fred Haynes (42:07):
15 minutes, 15
Uwe Kleinschmidt (42:08):
Minutes, time flies. So how has guided changed that for the better? Because I assume it does.
Fred Haynes (42:20):
I think overall it’s definitely a better, I mean I think you know that I have some opinions about some of the guided. I think that there’s a little bit of good, there’s got a lot of good and a little bit of challenge that comes with it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (42:35):
Potential for improvement,
Fred Haynes (42:37):
Definitely potential for improvement. I invested a lot of time of my own going through and finding good reference pictures
(42:50):
For every one of the conditions, 400 plus conditions we have in our inspection writing and what Bill told me I need to do, which is this is what it is, it’s broke, and when it’s broke, this is what can happen. You need to fix it today on every single one of those conditions. That’s what Bill coaches, in order to keep you either safe or to keep you comfortable or to make your vehicle reliable, this is what we have to do. And so just as Brandon said that our technicians aren’t necessarily, they’re kind of like doctors in terms of their legibility. Our service advisors aren’t English majors, and so it’s not necessarily easy for them to do the perfect wording on all 400 of those conditions consistently and type ahead isn’t necessarily enough because you’re in a rush and sometimes you pick the wrong type of head. So having that condition come across is a big bar raiser for everybody. Now we’re at least all starting from for that condition, these are the best words to say about that condition. You still have to be able to explain it because ultimately what you hope to achieve I think, is that the guest the best is that they say, okay, yeah, do it. Or they call back and say, I want to do X, Y, Z. That doesn’t happen.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (44:21):
Or they have a question about it, right? Because the
Fred Haynes (44:23):
Question is the next best thing. So the next best thing is that they say, I didn’t really understand that. Can you explain it? Yeah, sure, I can explain that. And now you can use your professional expertise to explain even further with what is possible or what it means and why they should do it. And that’s where our good guys really go, head and shoulders above the others. The ones that are really good at this are able to do that and stay in lay terms, not overwhelm ’em with details, answer their question and shut up, not talk the guests out of the sale, all those kinds of things that don’t have anything to do with a particular system that they’re good at that then cause it to be successful.
Bill Connor (45:08):
Look, either they’re not, the customer needs certain things in order to go ahead and make a buying decision is that is they need to see almost the same thing they’d see at the side of the car. They need to see what it is, what needs to be done, and the reason why they should open their wallet. Any of them, three things are missing. And of course there’s a fourth because if the side of the car, the technician would point to it and that’s going to be the arrow on the digital inspection, but customers won’t buy what they don’t understand. We used to do show and sell at the side of the car. Now what we’re doing is we’re just using a different tool set and we got to accomplish the same thing.
Fred Haynes (45:41):
Exactly. So yeah, it does. If you look at that most successful process, the digital inspection helps you do that more often with more people that aren’t even necessarily there. And as Brandon has learned, even if they’re there, it can be helpful. He walks over with the, if they see that they’re playing Candy Crush and they’re not looking at the inspection, he walks over with the tablet and sets it on their lap, Hey, take a look at this and come talk to me. Just as an objective measure, we record all inbound calls from regardless of source, and that’s how we understand where our traffic is coming from and make sure that we’re doing the things we’re supposed to be doing and saying the things we’re supposed to be saying. When we have phone calls, and I would say before digital inspections, I would rarely hear a sales call. And by sales call, what I mean is it’s time to decide that I’m going to actually repair something.
(46:41):
We see that probably anywhere between 10 and 20% of the time. Now that gets recorded on an inbound. So the idea that I send an inspection and a guest calls back is really truthfully happening very frequently. Not always, not always, but a lot more frequently. So the process is working and when that happens, you’re kind of in the best position because they put time and energy in to look at it. We’ve experimented a little bit with saying, look, if they call and they say, oh no, I didn’t look at it, well, we’ve experimented with, well what do we do in that case? Do we just go into old school or do we say, well, you really should look at that and I’ll send you the link again and why don’t you take 10 or 15 minutes to look at it and give me a call? We’ve experimented with those things at different points of times, and
Uwe Kleinschmidt (47:31):
I mean that must be tough for the service advisor to hang up and wait for another call.
Fred Haynes (47:37):
I mean, I think one of my best guys, his struggle is it’s one o’clock in the afternoon, we close at five 30. He knows that car needs breaks and he just can’t stand waiting 20 minutes for that person to maybe call, right? That is hard. And I can tell you I don’t think he’s successful all the time, but it does help that they have visibility in the tool to did it get opened? Are they actively looking at it so he can make a decision after 10 minutes if it’s been not been opened or not looked at or they’ve looked at it and they’ve stopped looking at it, okay, maybe I can go ahead and give him a call now and it won’t be a complete disaster. But a lot of people don’t. I mean, you still have a number of customers, Brandon this that you could send ’em texts till the cows come home. You could tell ’em that texts are coming and the emails are coming and they just will not look at it. They’re there for whatever oil change brought ’em in or whatever, and they’re just not interested in anything else ever. And so those are tough nuts to crack, but you can’t let those specific cases edict your professionalism and your process, right? We’ve talked, I heard this on one of the trainer guy, you wouldn’t let a customer tell you you only changed one brake pad.
(48:56):
So don’t ’em tell you how your process is going to work for inspections and servicing vehicles. What we bring to the party, all we can do is explain to them if they want an oil change in 22 minutes, then I know where they can get that and they could pay 60 bucks an hour and get four flushes they don’t need right down the street at the quick lube.
Bill Connor (49:20):
So is it kind of safe to say that a customer, even though they think they might want a quick inspection, what they really deserve is a quality inspection that delivers them the ability to make good decisions about their vehicle based on safety, comfort and dependability? Absolutely.
Fred Haynes (49:35):
And
Bill Connor (49:35):
Those aren’t inspections that just have red, green and yellow on it. They have some details and also some information as far as well lit pictures that are in focus, they got an error or something driving their eyes to it just like they would inside of the car. And then they got some information on it as far as what it is, what needs to be done and the reason why they should spend money on it. That is a well-prepared inspection that enables or empowers a customer to make decisions that when they call, they’re just asking you about time and pricing. And even if it doesn’t happen every time, the odds are in your favor. The more they learn, the more they trust it, the odds are going to be in your favor that that percentage increases.
Fred Haynes (50:13):
And you’re right, it’s a very good position to be in if you sparked the guest’s interest in a particular thing. I was listening to another example of the shuttle ride. Many service advisors would say, look, I don’t have time to go give a shuttle ride. They give it to the general service guy or the guy that is least effective and he’s the one that goes and does it. And they were saying, no, I value the ride. And he said, there’s three things that people are going to talk about the weather, they’re going to talk about this and they’re going to ask you how’s business? And you wait for that question and then you basically plant something. Well, we’re busy as can believe. We’re giving away shocks and struts and I am not making any money on ’em. And then zip it, right? Well, do I have shocks or struts on my car? Well, yes you do. There are helpers in that whole process that again aren’t going to come across in necessarily a digital inspection that are very powerful. And if you look at people who are effective, they do some of those things, maybe not even knowing they’re doing them. They talk in lay terms, they let the guest, they ask open-ended questions, they don’t just tell people what’s going on. All those things are really important and you need to do the same things in digital inspection to be successful.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (51:46):
So back to the time of presentation. So there is this range of possibilities. It could be that you might, so let’s do two extremes. So I can make my point. You can go through an inspection extremely fast and then rely on the service advisor’s ability to explain it just to have an early point of presentation. Or the other extreme is you do a awesome job in explaining everything and send it relatively late to the motorist and especially a waiter who is about, he’s expecting the car is about to be done and then you present the inspection results. That’s going to be a tough communication, I assume. Where’s the good balance of seizing the opportunity of the right moment of presentation with the right quality?
Fred Haynes (52:58):
If you want to be a quick service, if you want to run a quick service, then waiters are terrific. And I think our experience is that is the most difficult situation to deal with. And what we witnessed is that if you’re not getting to them with something that’s going to separate them from their vehicle within the first, say 5, 10, 15 minutes of them being there, then they’re watching the clock. And you could come with that to them with almost anything. And they’ve already figured out what they’ve got to do in 20 minutes and there’s just is nothing you can say that’s going to make them decide to do that. You might be able to schedule it in the future and that’s where you go, but you’re not going to sell it now.
(53:45):
That is tough waiters. And that’s been another interesting outcome of this whole covid thing, is our lobbies closed. It wasn’t safe to sit in the lobbies, and so our volume went down dramatically and we had far fewer people sitting in our lobby and we scheduled that way and we did it that way. I think that we provided a higher level of professional service, and I think the guests got a better service and it was better for us too, in terms of our profitability. So I think it’s a good thing. So I’m absolutely convinced, and I think the loss leading oil change is the toughest thing to sell. That’s a pretty big investment to sell. Not that you can’t, and not that I didn’t have people that were doing that, but you really differentiate your quality and your capabilities between your people with that kind of a model in my experience.
(54:47):
So I think that the person that I have that short circuits it, and Brandon knows who I’m talking about, and he admit that, yeah, I do can’t help myself. He could probably sell three of those break jobs in the time that it would take him to do one inspection completely in today’s environment. I mean, he’s that good and he’s built that level of rapport with the person from start to finish, that he doesn’t need to go in a long discussion explaining things with people. He’s doing the lay term explanation and they trust him implicitly, so that’s why he sells, right? Again, you’re trying to give that capability to more people more quickly so that they can achieve the same sort of thing. And that’s what we’re trying to do, and I think we’ve achieved some of that, but you’re never done. You’re never done. You got to keep after it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (55:46):
Oh, three minutes left.
Bill Connor (55:49):
So that’s a whole nother topic we need to go and expand on later to go ahead and talk about building inspections to go and convert that waiting customer to extract ’em out of their car and get them onto bigger and better things. So that’s really good. Uwe, you want to go ahead and sum up where we’ve been at and maybe give us a peek into where we’re going to go next week?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (56:15):
Yeah, I’m still processing everything, to be honest. I really like this notion of Brandon explaining how he championed everything. There’s one person respected in all four shops in this case, to be the respected authority and people who listen to, and he’s also implementing it himself and shows how it works. I think that’s a big guarantee for success for everybody who’s listening to
Fred Haynes (56:54):
It. Certainly helps a lot with consistency, right? Because you can quote, implement it, but you may have different experiences by each service advisor, by each location, by each guest, by each technician, and I’m not sure that’s how you get a lot better as an organization,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (57:14):
Right?
Bill Connor (57:16):
The other big takeaway for both of these guys is they very patiently explain to everybody in the process, service writers, technicians, general service guys, what’s in it for them and how as the process changes their life is going to get better. So they haven’t forced it down their throat and said, just do this or die. Basically, they put a lot of the what’s in it for them in their conversations.
Fred Haynes (57:38):
I don’t have any of those kind of people. I haven’t found any of those kind of people, right, Brandon? Yeah, you have to. I mean, you got to show ’em in it for him and why it’s better. And frankly, I shouldn’t be telling ’em to do something that I don’t believe that is and seen that’s better. Why would I do that? These are not easy jobs, right? I’ve told you guys, being a service advisor is not easy, and especially in a model like ours where they basically do everything from start to finish with the guest experience and they’re also actively managing parts in the shop and the technicians and the workloads. This is not an easy job.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (58:16):
Yeah, no, I mean service advisors or Superman, there’s no doubt about it. It’s amazing.
Bill Connor (58:25):
So we’ve hit the top of the hour and we’ve covered a lot, and there’s more to come, I’m pretty sure.
Fred Haynes (58:33):
Alright, well thanks. Thanks Uwe. Thanks Brandon.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (58:36):
Thank you, Brandon for being available and the shop is running in the background, I hope. Thank you, Fred.
Fred Haynes (58:48):
I’d
Bill Connor (58:49):
Like to thank both these guys and be sure to point out that autovitals.com/radio, there’s a whole warehouse full of recordings of these webinars like this, and they’re really great to go ahead and use to get some inspirational thoughts of shop owners just like you to go ahead and use. And I’d also like you to challenge you a little bit to go find another shop owner in your area that’s struggling a little bit. Invite them to some of these episodes or bring ’em on with you and kind of help live up the industry also. So once again, I’d like to thank everybody a great day and look forward to continuing to develop AutoVitals into the only complete shop success solution for those shops that choose to partner with us. Thank you. Thank you and have a great day.