Spooky Pitfalls to Avoid When Implementing a Digital Shop

One of the biggest hesitations shop owners have in going digital is how to handle the implementation process. How well will your staff buy in? How will they understand the value of what a Digital Shop can provide? How long will it take for them to get the hang of it?

On this week’s episode of Digital Shop Talk Radio, we have Christoph Schopfer of Auburn Euro Motors on to discuss his shop’s journey in going digital, what changes his shops had to make, and what kind of advice he can give to shops who are considering going digital or who are new to the process.

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):
Into us. Did you mean now? Now
Dustin Anaas (00:05):
I mean you’re on.
Tom Dorsey (00:12):
I don’t see anything.
Dustin Anaas (00:19):
Oh my gosh. I think you’re live, man.
Tom Dorsey (00:22):
All right, well I’ll just roll. Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition, technically Challenged Digital Shop Talk Radio. It’s Wednesday, October 30th and this is our Halloween edition and we’ve got some spooky topics. Today we’re going to be talking about spooky pitfalls to avoid when implementing a digital shop program into your shop. And I’ve got a fantastic guest with us, Christoph Schopfer from Auburn Euro Motors in Auburn, California running on a generator, fires, burning all the around them and still shows up for Digital Shop Talk Radio. That’s what winners do. Welcome Christoph.
Christoph Schopfer (01:03):
Hey Tom,
Tom Dorsey (01:04):
Thanks for showing up, man. I appreciate it. And so today what we’re going to be talking about is I know we met you out at Drive at the Drive Conference and down in Pomona and you got to talking with Dustin about how your implementation with AutoVitals went. And it was funny, it was like what we heard a little bit last week with bought the program sounded great and then it sat on a shelf and maybe it was getting used here and there, but not really with a plan and then something changed. What happened?
Christoph Schopfer (01:37):
Yeah, so we started up with AutoVitals late November last year. So we’ve been with you guys about a year now. We signed on, we implemented it then, but we signed on in October last year. I really need to, when I do things, I want to understand how they work, the ins and outs, which was a huge help. I probably spent three weeks to a month, just all of October last year just learning the software, learning AutoVitals, and I think that really helped. When we did go to implement it, we went all in, pushed all the chips in late November last year. When I say all in, we just went paperless, workflow, digital inspection, everything. We were doing paper workflow, which we hadn’t really dialed in. We were also doing paper inspections and we had that dialed and we basically just eliminated all that and went full digital and yeah, it was, do you want me to talk a little bit about that first month? Of course, man,
Tom Dorsey (02:48):
We like to hear the bitter with the butter,
Christoph Schopfer (02:50):
So it didn’t go too well. The big help was the fact that I knew the software, but getting people to utilize it the way I wanted it to be utilized was difficult. We’re a small shop, three technicians, two service advisors, and just constant problems with them wanting to adapt it. Not so much problems with AutoVitals, just problems with them not understanding and wanting to hate it because it’s something new. And we were pretty dialed before. I’ll talk about how bad it was the first couple months. It was probably six weeks or so. And what I would do differently, we did have some successful actions. I’ll say now we can’t survive without it. We’re on full generators right now. We even got a seconder internet service provider because as you know, it’s all cloud-based. And I have the same crew I did before with the addition of one New Tech. I will say that if we go paper right now, which the first go around at the power outages, we had to do that not due to AutoVitals, but our server went down and our POS software was having issues and the guys hated it. The guys that didn’t want to do the digital stuff a year ago, now they can’t survive.
(04:26):
But anyways, so the main problems I was having were basically, it was new, it was new technology, and I got a full range of technicians at the time. I have a 25-year-old, I have a 40 something year old and a late 50-year-old. So I really have every generation working in here and they all didn’t like it because it was new. Unanimous. Yes. So one successful thing we did was my enthusiasm for it and showing them the benefits of it. The buy-in actually didn’t take too long. It was a couple weeks just staying on top of ’em, staying consistent, working with the front.
(05:18):
But after a couple weeks it just wasn’t we, it was something, it was new for us, so just the CRM part of AutoVitals, everything was just very difficult to get it up and running. I eventually found after about a month, AutoVitals has an old, it’s actually difficult to find and I wanted to ask you guys about that. You have a 12 week I think it was, or a 12 day, 12 day program. I found that and I kind of modified it and I stopped everything because it just wasn’t working. I kept the digital inspection and I implemented the 12 day program you guys had. So I basically scaled it back after, I want to say it was probably three weeks of just not, it just wasn’t working. And I knew that we want this and I wanted to work, so I had to get to work and figure out what I needed to do to get it to work.
(06:21):
And a big thing is we had a meeting after work that really helped and everyone kind of got a taste for it and by now I had their buy-in and it was more like, okay, what do we need to do to get this thing to work? One thing I would do over is go in steps. Maybe if you’re full paper right now, if the shop’s full paper, maybe do, I would probably start with doing the inspections first, getting that dialed in and then implement the workflow. And you really got to have, the one thing that I think is a huge thing is you really got to have your workflow in before some people, I guess it works for some people, but if your workflow isn’t dialed, I think it would make it a lot more difficult just implementing the digital workflow. I’m not saying it’s impossible, it would just be a little more difficult.
(07:28):
So I would say I would work on if your workflow’s not that great work on that, implement the digital inspections. I’m in a top 20 group and everyone in my top 20 group does digital inspections and my specific group, there’s six of us, only one of our six shops isn’t with AutoVitals. The other five are, we kind of joined in the middle. We’ve been in this group a long time. One guy was, he’s been doing AutoVitals for five years. Another guy just joined about six months ago. We joined a year ago. Another shop joined two years ago. So we all kind of learned from each other. And one thing I noticed with the people who weren’t as successful in implementing it or getting the buy-in with the technicians are the ones that didn’t, whoever was implementing it, they didn’t know the work, they didn’t really know the software well, and I really spent the time to get to know the software.
(08:29):
I also, if you have a paper inspection, and this is key, and I haven’t really talked to anybody that did this, but I did this and it worked. This was another very successful action that we did. What I did is I started from scratch and made my entire inspection my own. So on our paper inspection there was steps that they have, green, yellow, red, just like I don’t have an example here. I should have been a little more prepared. I can hold it up. But anyways, what I did is I made the digital inspection near that. Exactly. So they’re doing the same thing. It’s just on a tablet now, and it took me a long time. I will be honest, I probably put about 10 hours into that inspection, just building it, putting all of our tasks on there from our POS software that we used.
(09:29):
And that was a huge help because the guys saw that as, okay, we’re doing the same inspection. It’s not some predefined inspection from another shop. I mean, there’s plenty of inspections that we have access to, which are amazing. I mean, you can take the time to find something that would work for your shop, but what worked for us is basically doing the same thing we were doing before just in a digital format. So everybody that I’ve talked to that’s going with AutoVitals in drive new shops, I tell ’em that that’s key. You’ve got to do it. You got to put the hours in. You don’t put the hours in, you’re going to struggle with it. That was a huge benefit for us. And then another thing moving forward, and even today we still do this, if we come across a common problem that we see a lot on a car, I’ll just give a basic example. Say front, left wheel bearing, making noise, replace, and then the action might be wheel bearing and hub, not just replace wheel bearing. The guys will they have a sheet, each one of ’em, and with the recommendation and the action or condition and action, and they’ll write down a condition and action to add. And I’m constantly changing, not constantly, probably once a month I’ll go in, I collect those sheets and I’ll add that stuff on there just to make it easier for ’em.
(10:55):
What really helped with the backend, with the front end, the workflow, we were dialed with paper and the same thing with the inspection. I tried to create steps in our workflow that mirrored, so we have 11, there’s the generic one, but we have 11 from when the car is checked in to when it gets picked up, the 11 steps that the CAR could be in. That was a huge, huge help as well for the front in getting their buy-in. The other thing is as the implementer and Tom, am I speaking mostly with people implementing or
Tom Dorsey (11:36):
Yeah, and there’s a lot of different folks in the audience, right? But I got to tell you, Christoph, I mean where are you buddy? You, I mean this is exactly the story that we’re really trying to tell on this show is to help people that have gone through exactly what you go through. Because I mean you killed it, right? Is you got to have a dedicated implementer that knows the software. You have to have a plan and yeah, the 12 days to paperless, it’s on help AutoVitals.com, write that down. Like Christoph said, he stumbled across it, but you want to make that help. AutoVitals.com, your best friend, it’s got tons of resources on there like the 12 days to paperless, which give you a plan for implementation and then you bite it off in small bites, right? How to eat that elephant one bite at a time.
(12:20):
And man, it’s like you had to go through and a lot of shops go through exactly what you go through, Christoph. And the difference is a lot of times, man, is that you, like you said, you were committed to it and you bought into it and you knew it was going to be a benefit for your shop. And like you said, it’s the way of the future because you see it in your 20 groups that those elite shops are moving towards this technology and you stayed in the saddle. A lot of guys give up, but yeah, if you could speak to that, we’ve got guys that are sitting in your same shoes. We’ve got folks out here listening that are veterans and they figured it out and they probably did it the hard way. And then we’ve got other folks that are just now getting into their stride and starting to hit those ARO increases like your shop experienced over the last year and all of this is going to be a help to them, buddy.
Christoph Schopfer (13:08):
Okay, so that’s the other thing I’ll bring up. I wanted to implement this a year before we did. I wanted to get, and we just didn’t. I wish I would’ve done it sooner. Everyone always says that. Also, when we were going through it that first month, I mean I’ll be honest, there was a lot of sleepless nights. Very, very stressful. Very stressful. But I stuck with it. And another big thing I did is when we were making a big sale, and I know it was because of the digital inspection, usually we were seeing it with existing customers, one that didn’t really buy a lot usually, and now they’re buying a bunch of stuff or they’re not asking questions or they’re just asking how much it is after we show it to them and okay, yeah, let’s do it. I wrote those examples down and we have our weekly meetings with the staff and I brought that up.
(14:07):
Hey, listen, this person didn’t usually doesn’t buy, they bought in. I will say this, our average ARO was very high before when we implemented AutoVitals. It honestly took a dip the first month. Well, all of our stats really did. That was kind of the stressful part. And then it got back up to where it was prior to AutoVitals and then maybe it wasn’t much more, it was probably five to 10% more, but initially, but as we started implementing more and more of the features of AutoVitals, it got better and better. So as we implemented the CRM for example, I didn’t start really doing that until two to three months after, which I really regret because we really started seeing a return on the CRM feature six, eight months out after this last August, a few months ago, we really started seeing appointments being scheduled for stuff we did.
(15:15):
They’re getting their inspection reset to them and they’re saying, oh, we need to take care of this. I’m like, yeah, you’re right. We do need to take care of that. So the CRM thing, but the key is you got to make sure when you close the ARO out or when you close it out, that what they’re going to get in six months is relevant and what they’re going to need, not this huge laundry list. Because the first ones were kind of like that, and we didn’t know until July when they started getting the mailers. They like, dude, my car says it needs 28 things. I need a new car. The car’s got 40,000 miles. So you got to make sure what they’re going to get and what they’re going to see is accurate. And so that when you implement the CRM, you really got to be on top of that.
(16:06):
And then the other thing I was going to add is the constant meetings with the front on how to basically, sorry, how to edit the inspections and make them really, really good. That’s when we saw our average ARO increase by more than 10 from before AutoVitals to now we’re probably at a 30% increase, which is huge because another bay our average ROS on the shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so the editing of everything is really key. And actually after this last drive thing and watching ua UA talk about that, and I kind of knew it, but I’m like, this is really important. I got to train them on this. And we were at a 3% inspection, edited pictures, great. Probably back in May. I met with my, I have Shay, I don’t know if anybody else has Shay. Everybody probably knows who Shanie is.
(17:21):
Shanie was like, you really got to get on top of this. So we got it up to about 15 to 18% and I was like, oh, wow, that’s great. Well, after this meeting, this convention conference that we were at, I came back and I told my friend, two service advisors, the two girls, I told ’em, Hey, you guys, I showed ’em what to do, how to do it, how I would like it. I showed ’em the difference on the customer gets, it’s confusing if it’s not done versus the way it should be done. And I said, Hey, and I made a game. If you can get up to 40% by Friday, this was on Monday, I’ll buy you guys lunch. Then the next week I was like, okay, if we can get up to 50%, I’ll buy you lunch. And we’re at 50 plus percent.
(18:10):
I don’t buy ’em lunch every week. But my service advisor actually just told me yesterday, she said, I’m really appreciative that you showed me the picture thing. She’s been selling work yesterday at Crazy and sending out inspections. And I think her average for the week, it’s Wednesday is over three grand average hour, which I mean that’s crazy. But she told me a lot of it’s because she’s editing the inspections and this is all very new, the whole editing. And she’s like, I know you’re not going to buy us lunch every week, but she’s like, I mean, we’re going to be hitting bonus, so you don’t need doing this. You don’t need to buy you lunch. And I was like, well, I don’t want it to go back down to 18% because I’m not buying the lunch. So she’s like, no, we didn’t realize it. I think a lot of owners and a lot of managers, we know how it should be, but it’s communicating to the front, especially on how important it’s to have a proper inspection that the customer gets and sees in layman’s terms, not a picture of a CV boot.
(19:20):
I mean, we know what that is. Customer’s not going to know what that is. Hey, it’s cornering. So anyways, those were all my, anyways, I can talk about it all day. My main successful things are like Tom was saying, the 12 step thing, making your own inspection that that’ll help huge with buy-in back and then with the front, making a workflow that mimics your workflow that you have at your shop. And also asking the staff what can help them with getting the software. For us, it was adding things to the inspection, showing the front how to do editing the inspections and how you want it. And explaining to them customers don’t know what they’re looking at, how important. Otherwise, it’s kind of a waste of taking a picture of a tire gate code. Customer doesn’t know what they’re looking at whereas, and it kind of makes the digital inspection pointless unless you explain, Hey, this is why we took a picture of that. Your tires are seven years old, it should be replaced or whatever it may be. And then total transparency, we started marketing. That’s what we’re doing. And started marketing, how transparent we are, how we’re new age, this is how we do things. And 99% of the customers really, really like it.
(20:56):
Every customer likes what we’re doing. The only ones that don’t like it, it’s happened two times and it was the only customers that complained about the digital inspection were customers that historically would argue with what we were telling ’em was wrong with their car. But now there’s no argument. There’s a picture of it. Always thought
Tom Dorsey (21:20):
That I tell you, ded, my car.
Christoph Schopfer (21:21):
I always thought that was funny.
Tom Dorsey (21:23):
Yeah, right. They’re the only ones that don’t like it. That’s fantastic. You can really see where your picture edit rate took off and then your motorist research time just shoots up through the roof. You guys are, think around 250 something seconds on average for your motorist research time. And so it sounds like what you’re saying is that the longer that they’re looking at the inspection, the more the front is able to sell.
Christoph Schopfer (21:49):
That’s the other thing that our research time wasn’t always that high. That’s another thing I learned at the conference this last month really is how important that was. And I came back and I showed him what that number meant. Like I said, I learned the software, I didn’t really know what that is. I didn’t even know what it was until I saw that. And now I tell them, wait. So they’ll sit there and they’ll wait until the countdown stop until stops. They’ll physically watch it. I mean, we’re only doing 30 cars a week, so they can sit there and they can watch, and when it stops, they’ll probably wait like 20 seconds and then they’ll call the customer. That’s been a huge help.
Tom Dorsey (22:31):
Get ’em right on time. Right? Yeah,
Christoph Schopfer (22:34):
That’s
Tom Dorsey (22:34):
It, man. That’s it. You got to have that perfect timing.
Christoph Schopfer (22:38):
Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (22:40):
So that’s good. And so what else have you noticed from a revenue perspective? Because your revenue’s up, I mean all of your metrics, I mean since the beginning of the year are just on a really solid uptrend. I don’t know, you tell what your ARO is like you said it’s up 33%, but you still see some areas where you can get some improvement. What are you going to be focused on next? What’s your next big goal?
Christoph Schopfer (23:07):
My main thing right now is keeping my average ARO up there and consistent because if I can keep my car count up and keep my average ARO, everything else kind of falls into place. I’ve been pretty consistent with keeping my car count up. The past couple weeks have been very rough for us with no electricity.
(23:27):
I mean, we’re running on generators right now and everything that kind of affected it with people not coming, showing up to their appointments. So that kind of affected our car count thing. But I told the front, Hey, your average has been pretty steady at a high rate. I mean it used to be six 50 or so, 700. I mean, our average ARO is, it’s closer than I would say it’s over 900 on average. We’re European, so it’s kind of cheating. But our average ARO has gone up. I didn’t think it would. I remember the days when it was in between five and $700, and I was pretty happy with that. And I mean, now mean last week was 900, 919 I think, and I was like, oh, why did it drop? It was a thousand week before, and we’re doing the same amount of cars. I have the same staff here.
(24:29):
We’re doing the same amount of cars. Not only do we have a higher average ARO, but I feel like we’re not overselling customers. They’re kind of telling us that they want to do the work. It’s not like, oh, do I need to do that? So it’s kind of a win-win. It’s not like, oh, we’re really getting everything that’s wrong with the car. It’s really the customer that’s telling us they want it done. So to me, that’s huge. Those two things, having the customer wanting it, and I want to say probably less selling. It’s more like they’re picking from a menu, I don’t want to do this, this, this, and this. The service writer’s just there telling them how much it costs,
Tom Dorsey (25:12):
Man is music to my ears, Christoph, you warm my heart, buddy. I got to tell you, I’ve traveled all over the place trying to spread that gospel right there. And like you said, it’s difficult because you get people in and they don’t know what to expect and they think it’s going to work like a toaster. I just got to plug it in and turn it on and it’s going to work. And you have to commit. You have to have a plan. But when you do, that’s exactly the results, man. That’s exactly what we want hear is that you don’t sell to people anymore. People want to buy. They just don’t want to be sold. And nowadays on the internet, we are all our own experts. We go through and we know what we need and we know what we want to buy. And so it’s your job really just to give them the information to figure out of all that stuff.
(25:57):
Because you guys are on average recommending eight recommendations per inspection. That’s fantastic. That’s kind of right in the sweet spot. It gives your service rider a lot of flexibility on how to package the sale and then create the follow up. Because that’s the other thing is, and you alluded to that in this interview, is to say that I don’t have to sell everything right now today. It’s not like it was 15 years ago. I don’t have to try to push everything because I may never see you again. All I have to do is have that plan and educate you on what you need and then give you the opportunity and to put it on. You’re in control. When do you want to come back? When is it good time for you to come in and get these next steps done? And 60% of them come back through the door. And so if you’re not selling it today, you’re still going to sell it. It’s just money in the bank.
Christoph Schopfer (26:51):
Yeah, exactly. And I’d like to say the first month right now, we’ve been doing it for a year, so I’ll say, all happy go lucky. Everything’s working great. And it is, but that first month is tough. You just got to stick it out. I mean, some people, it’s only a couple weeks they get it in. But yeah, it’s got to be, it is just tough. It is what it is. Meeting you got to stick it out. You got to know the software. You got to know the basics at least before you implement it. That’s my
Tom Dorsey (27:28):
No, that’s exactly, you have to be involved as the shop owner. Don’t put this off on some manager or some staff member and expect it’s going to work for you and it’s not going to become a headache for you. You have to know it. You might not manage it day to day, but you need to know it. It’s like what John Long said. It’s that hit by the bus rule. If your implementer is sick today and can’t come in, well that leaves you and you better know what to do. Or like you said, you’re going to see those pitfalls. And then when you have, your staff is so used to using it, they can’t change it up. They’re dependent on it now, and it needs to work and it needs to be committed from the top down. Have a goal, communicate that goal in your shop meetings, reinforce that on a regular basis, and then go for it. Track your results in the business control panel and reward success. And then you have $900 ARO. That’s fantastic.
Christoph Schopfer (28:27):
The car counts the same, everything’s the same there. It’s just like you said, more money in the bank,
Tom Dorsey (28:32):
More money in the bank. Man, I’m not
Christoph Schopfer (28:35):
Squeezing it from the customer. They’re the ones telling me they want to get it done.
Tom Dorsey (28:40):
And like I said, now you’re in control, man. You could work on as much as you want. You want to crank it up and hit capacity, or you want to coast and still run good margins and pay the bills and have time off and spend time with the family. I mean, that’s the dream for everybody who’s in your shoes, right? It’s just you got it figured out and yeah, you went through a month of pain. Hey, you know what? I fell down a lot the first month. I was learning how to ride a bike, but now I know how to do wheelies. So there’s a benefit, right? There’s a payoff, man, Christoph, you are awesome, buddy. You need to come back on the show. And I don’t know why it took us 38 episodes or 39 episodes to have you on here, because throughout this show we’ve been talking about Exactly. You laid it out as clear as day. If I could put you in a bottle, boy, I’d sell you. But thanks for coming on, Dustin. Next week we’re going to have Mitch Schneider on, is that right?
Dustin Anaas (29:36):
Yeah. Yeah. He’s talking shop management and just imparting his wisdom. He is been around for a while and he is got a lot of great stuff to say. He wrote a book on it, so we’re going to,
Tom Dorsey (29:46):
Yeah, and we’re going to have Uon with him too because they go way back. And it was funny, back when AutoVitals was first being founded, Mitch was one of our first kind of consultants, first customers, and I tell you what, U couldn’t have fell into a better situation than to have a mentor like Mitch, but they didn’t always see eye to eye, and so I’m hoping next week we’re going to put ’em together and we’re going to let ’em hash it out and talk shop and tell those stories, and it should be a pretty entertaining episode. Gosh, I got to know. I don’t know. It is going to be hard to top this one, Christoph. I mean, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you for just, I mean, that was so much knowledge, right? So much help to people that are new to AutoVitals are struggling to get where you’re at. I mean, I couldn’t have said it any better if I paid somebody to say it, and I really appreciate it, buddy. That was fantastic. Thank you.
Christoph Schopfer (30:41):
Yeah, no problem. I mean, it works, so like I said, I don’t want to try to sell it or anything. I want to help fellow shop owners and this is the future. You need this.
Tom Dorsey (30:57):
That was a huge help, buddy. Dustin, post up if you could that help autovitals.com, link in the Facebook just so folks can get to that link, because that’s a critical resource for you, especially when you’re starting out. There’s so much information on there to help you. And just like what Christoph said, couldn’t said any better. Take it, make it your own. Edit it, make it work for your shop. Get into the inspection sheet library and find the stuff that’s going to work from you. No need to start from scratch. You get to learn from guys like Christoph that went through the pane. Don’t walk on broken glass just because it’s fun. Avoid the broken glass and get to the benefits as fast as you can and get to the payoff like Christoph, man. Fantastic. Hope to see you on soon until then. Tune in every Wednesday, right next Wednesday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. We’ll be back here doing it again, talking to Uwe and Mitch Schneider. Until then, get out and make some money. Go to help AutoVitals.com, get your resources and then go make some money. Thanks a lot. Thanks.