Service advisors serve as the major touchpoint between customers and your shop. While they ultimately need to build repair orders for technicians, they need to get that information from the customer.
And vice versa, when technicians provide inspection findings, service advisors explain those findings to the customer to figure out the best path forward.
That's why service advisors need to make customer service a focal point of their role, to build that trusting relationship between the customer and your shop.
Because when customers feel like they can trust that your shop is giving them the right recommendations, they'll feel more comfortable approving repair orders for the work their vehicles need to keep running safely and reliably.
1. Support Your Customers and Your Team From Anywhere
Remote work is here to stay, the ability and flexibility to access your shop from anywhere in the world, at any time, as long as you have an internet connection, is unparalleled. You've never had this type of control and access before.
Let the Cloud Do the Heavy Lifting
Think of the "cloud" like the lifts in your bays. Obviously you can't jack a car up on your own, so you bring in a tool to do that for you. That's pretty much what a cloud-based platform does for your business. Because modern shop management systems are cloud-based, nothing lives on your shop's computers, or stuffed in your binders.
Why is that a good thing?
Because you never have to worry about losing it, and you can access everything required to run your shop anywhere you have an internet connection. All that information is stored on servers operated, maintained and secured by your platform.
Access Your Shop From Anywhere
All of your shop's operations, data, customer history, vehicle inspection findings, declined estimates, and everything, is collected and saved remotely. This opens up a whole new dimension for not just shop owners, but general managers and service advisors too, with the ability to check on and manage every aspect of their shop remotely.
2. Help Your Shop as Run Efficiently as Possible
A lot is going on behind the scenes at an auto repair shop. Tekmetric helps you streamline those in-shop tasks so you can get back to leading your team as repairs come and go.
Inventory Table & Parts Reports
Tekmetric’s inventory table you'll gain full visibility into see exactly what parts sell well, which brands of parts your customers prefer, and which parts manufacturers your shop may want to avoid in the future due to repeated recalls or low inventory.
Labor Guide
Establishing accurate repair times shouldn’t be a guessing game nor should it take you away from your other service advisor responsibilities.
Built-in labor guide smakes it easy to find accurate labor times for repairs without having to leave Tekmetric. With VIN decoding, additional labor, and a wealth of labor times at your fingertips, you can build estimates faster than ever.
Labor and Parts Matrices
Tekmetric makes it easy to create and save markup matrices directly in your shop’s settings. When you’re building estimates, your labor and parts markups will be auto-applied based on your settings. No more guessing or extensive calculations!
3. Lead Your Team With Clarity and Communication
A good leader knows how to inspire their team while also trusting them to make the right calls. We’ve developed the following features to make it easier for service advisors to see the status of all repairs without having to leave the service desk.
Streamline your shop's workflow
By streamlining your auto repair shop workflow, service advisor's can establish a standardized intake process to ensure the same level of service, care and professionalism is provided to customers every time.
Build repair orders in seconds and apply the right digital vehicle inspection templates with just a few clicks. Service advisors can get some time away from the computer screen, letting them focus on the customer directly, address their concerns, and create a stress-free experience.
Visibility into upcoming work
With a clear view of scheduled repairs, technicians can manage their workloads more efficiently by providing a clear view of the tasks they need to complete each day.
And because Tekmetric provides technicians with easy access to customer data, including vehicle history, service records, and customer preferences, they can provide more personalized service to their shop's clientele.
4. Create a Personalized Experience
Building and fostering that trusting relationship between your customers and your shop starts with creating a personalized experience. Customers want to feel like they're being heard, and that their concerns or hesitations are being taken seriously.
When service advisors can take a step back from building a repair order to focus on having a direct and responsive conversation with clients, they can help customers feel like they're receiving the best guidance and care your shop has to offer.
Customer History
With detailed customer history available at your fingertips, even across multiple locations with shared customer history, Service Advisors can always stay on top of the latest repairs completed on their customers’ vehicles.
By linking customer data so that service writers have access to all past information -- digital vehicle inspections, estimates generated, approved or declined work, and completed repairs -- you can save your shop time while creating a more personalized experience for the customer.
Default Inspections
With default inspections, you can set up a default inspection template that will be automatically applied to every vehicle in your shop.
Service advisors won’t have to spend time searching for your shop’s standard inspection every time they build a new repair order, but instead can tailor their service and approach to the customer’s need with a standard foundation.
Were you looking for a vendor to reorder carbon copy auto repair receipt templates when you found this blog? Maybe you’ve already spent a few hours at your computer, searching for the right auto repair receipt template. But none of the templates you’ve seen looks right for your shop. It’s hard to find a perfect fit. You need a template that is fast to fill, inexpensive, flexible enough to work for any sale, and easy for you and your customers to understand. That’s a tall order.
But all too often, standalone templates fail to meet the complex business needs of modern auto repair shops.
You have already made positive changes toward getting organized by searching for and maybe even trying out a variety of new templates. But what if you could save time and improve accuracy with a system that did all the work of writing and tracking receipts for you?
Think about how you currently find the information you need for your receipts and fill them out. Maybe you use carbon copies. Maybe you type the receipts out. But you’re probably getting the information from your invoices, which themselves reflect estimates. That’s three documents to write per customer, which can quickly add up to a lot of time spent on paperwork.
Auto repair shop management systems are capable of populating receipts with payment information and prices from estimates and invoices in seconds to create consistent receipts and a more positive customer experience.
We know that change can be hard, but it’s worth it.
Let’s analyze some of the ways your current auto repair receipt templates might be holding you back and how an auto repair shop management system can improve your customer experience, simplify work at the shop, and lead to more business growth for you and your team.
Drivers typically come in with an expectation of what's wrong with their car, which can make it tricky to sell maintenance work. They might think you're trying to squeeze more money out of them, or may simply have a set budget in their mind and don’t plan on spending extra.
In reality, you're simply trying to go above and beyond and provide them with the best service possible. So how do youshow that, and which tools will help you transform the way you sell maintenance?
Here’s how to build customer trust while staying true to your auto repair shop’s mission of providing optimal maintenance recommendations.
Vehicle inspection checklists guide your technician’s through each aspect of a given inspection so that no problem areas go unaddressed.
Having a set list of points to check for each inspection will ensure they remember to look into each item listed. But before your shop gets started on inspections, you have to get down to the nitty-gritty of inspection checklists.
Find The Right Digital Vehicle Inspection Checklist For Your shop
There's no one-size-fits-all vehicle inspection checklist. It's essential to have different inspection checklists depending on the customer's concerns and what prompted them to bring their car to your shop.
One generic inspection checklist is not enough as it may be too broad or too narrow to cover all the necessary areas.
Your shop may have its own variations of inspections depending on the services you provide. For instance, an auto body repair shop may focus on checking for scratches, dents, and cracks, while a general repair shop will mostly inspect the belts, filters, fluids, and everything else under the hood.
So, how many vehicle inspection checklists do you need? As many checklists as there are common reasons for vehicle owners to bring their cars to your shop.
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