Customer Stories

Business picked up over the years, and Karl was able to assemble a small team and build his own on-premise shop management system. In 2010, he decided to move Ultimate Auto Repair to a larger space two miles from his house. He was able to employ more people but eventually hit a growth cap.

After switching to Tekmetric, Karl was able to accelerate over the hump and more than double his business. Today, they’re still growing every month.

Ripping the Band-Aid Off

With my old system, I was stuck. Each technician would have five or six clipboards, and they'd have to shuffle and figure out what was authorized and what wasn't. To find out anything, I had to do it manually. It's no fun at the end of the month trying to count how many cars and work orders we did.

There was no way that we were going to make it any further without a lot of changes.

I was afraid to make the change. I thought, "Tekmetric has a lot of good stuff going, but I'm not sure". And then everything came to a head. My laptop crashed. I couldn't get into the old program. We had been talking about making the change, so I grabbed my service writer and said, "We're making the change right now". It was like ripping off the band-aid.

By day three, I said to my team "Hey guys. I'm sorry about the stress". And they said, "Stress? Are you kidding me? This is way better! We don't have to look for a work order on the wall!" They took to it right away.

The immediate result was that everybody could instantly see with a click what everyone else was talking about. The technician could put his notes in there: what he saw and what he didn't see. It's so nice for the service writer to be able to see the customer's notes and the technician’s notes. The customer came in with this complaint. We addressed it. This is the problem. The technician also found this. And everybody can see that live, instantly.

Ticket to Freedom

I was welded to the place without Tekmetric. If I wasn't there, nobody knew what to do. Now, they know.

You can't run a million dollar shop off of one guy having to be there. At the end of the day, the world runs on math. If you don't know what the math is, you don't know what you're doing; you have no clue whether you made money or you lost money. You're just throwing quotes out there and hoping things are there.

But with Tekmetric, I can see in realtime what my markup is, what it's going to be, and what it should be. I can give my service writers a bottom dollar: what they need to sell it for. I can tell them how much they need to discount for, and they can quickly see all that right in Tekmetric. I can set up matrices, even labor matrixes now, which is crazy to me!

I call it their 'guard rail'. They know how high they can go and how low they can go to make a sale. At some point, if you don't have a technician working, and that's their job for the day, and if you don't sell that job, they’re not going to be working. That service writer needs to know how low they can go to make that sale.

Tekmetric gives me the freedom to leave for days at a time and everything keeps running. It has basically allowed me to duplicate myself, to show the guys: this is the system, and these are the steps you need to take. I can show the guys what to do, and they can replicate it.

Before, vacations were almost impossible. Now, I can leave, and I know the shop will keep running. With Tekmetric, it's all right there. My team has everything they need.

Realizing the Potential

As a business owner, Tekmetric helps me make quick decisions, which is what it's all about. I have to be able to know where I’m at and where I’m going to project it. And then we need to be able to operate with consistency, too. Because when the customer comes back the second time, we need to be able to quote it the same. There's so much background information in there that I don't know how I'd run anything over $500,000 without Tekmetric.

We're moving into commercial diesel. In Jackson, there are a lot of general contractors, plumbers, and electricians. I'm cleaning out the spare building on my property and putting in four bays, so we can concentrate on commercial diesel customers over there and get their trucks in and out quickly. It's awesome because I can set that up in Tekmetric as its own repair shop. I can track the efficiency of service writers and technicians in each building.

Growing my business allows me to get people good jobs - jobs that weren't necessarily available to me. The possibilities are limitless.

Making the Dean's List

My daughters have been helping around the shop, too. My 21-year-old comes in after hours and spends three to five hours a week cleaning the shop and does interior details. She started her own cleaning business, and she cleans houses.

My youngest is our Quality Control. She QCs all the cars when we're done. And she wants to be a service writer, so we're training her to be a service writer. She works with me every day. It's pretty awesome. She likes accounting, and she actually does our end-of-day reporting, so she loves Tekmetric. She can jump in there and go through and close out all the cars and make sure they're all paid for. She gives me the final count.

I'm happy that I can teach her a trade where she can make some money, whether she’s working at Ultimate Auto Repair or another shop.

And both kids made the dean’s list this semester! So I’m proud of that, too.

For more information about Ultimate Auto Repair, visit ultimateautorepairmi.com

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You may be tempted to think that Jim Brown is a lucky case in 2020. He’s one of the shop owners who managed to expand his business in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. But the more you learn about Jim’s approach to running his auto shop, the clearer it becomes that he simply proved the old saying true: luck is the crossroads where preparation meets opportunity.

In July 2020, Jim opened the second location of Speed Auto Repair, the shop he started working part-time in 1989 when he was only 17 years old. Back then it was called Speed Oil Change & Tune-Up, a fast-service lube franchise that had recently opened up in Roswell, GA. Jim kept working at Speed all through college, and after earning his business degree, he began to see a future for himself at the shop.

“The guy who started the shop was a retired GE electrical engineer,” Jim says. “He took me under his wing and we grew the business together.”

Jim had big dreams for the shop, even at that young age, and the owner was more than happy to let him run with the ball. He spearheaded Speed’s evolution into an independent, full-service auto repair business, buying-in and becoming co-owner at age 24. Four years later, at the ripe old age of 28, Jim bought out the original owner and changed the name to Speed Auto Repair.

We recently sat down with Jim over video chat from his new Speed Auto Repair location, nine miles down the road in neighboring Alpharetta. He talked to us about his love for the auto repair business, how he took the opportunity to streamline his shop during the initial COVID-19 lockdown period, his efforts to uplift his community through auto repair mentorship programs, and what he thinks is the secret to success in the auto repair business. Here’s what he had to say:

Pushing Through With the Community

The first three weeks when the virus hit here, everything was frozen. It was a little scary, but the right thing for us to do was push through.

What I was trying to relate to my customers is that we care; we're here for you no matter what.

The first thing I did in response to the lockdown was triple my marketing budget. Social media, videos, mailers—all the things that we normally do—I tripled it. What I was trying to relate to my customers is that we care; we're here for you no matter what. We're not only here to serve your mechanical needs, but we're here to get through this pandemic together no matter what may arise. That could mean repairs or service on your car, or it could mean getting your medicine or groceries if you couldn’t leave your house. I made a video for our customers where we laid it all out: whatever you need, just give us a call and we will make it happen.

Overhauling Our Systems to Stay Profitable

The next thing we worked on was our shop’s processes. We asked ourselves: how can we become profitable during these times? Those first few weeks were very slow, so if we didn’t have cars, I set my guys to redoing the floors and painting the walls. We worked on building repairs, redid the parking lot, and repaired and serviced all of our equipment. Everything that needed to be done, we took those three weeks, and we did it. We ended up redoing the entire shop.

Then we worked on all of our systems. We perfected our customer intake, our checkout systems, and our digital inspections. We recreated all of our canned jobs and things like that so that when we got busy again, we were ready to roll. We also worked on our expectations of our employees and retrained them on the profitability of our labor margins, parts margins, and gross profit margins. It simplified us overall. We set the bar, trained our employees, and now they know our expectations.

Tekmetric was a huge help in achieving our system overhaul. Using Tekmetric’s tools, we’re able to see the profitability of each job. Our mark-ups, our parts makeup, our labor matrix——it’s all there. And now that we’ve overhauled and perfected our system, we’ve been able to take it to the new store and duplicate it.

The Time Was Right for a Second Location

I’ve always wanted to expand the business to another location, but I got really serious about it in January 2020. We wanted a location that was far enough away that we could serve a different clientele, but not so far away that I couldn’t easily manage both locations. We kept looking at locations, trying to find the exact right fit between distance, road frontage, income, car count on the roads, and stuff like that.

When the virus hit, I started hearing all these rumors about shop owners who were up there in age and thinking about getting out of the auto repair business. Then in May, the opportunity to take over this Alpharetta location presented itself, and it felt like now was the time to take the chance. We jumped on it, and officially opened our second location on July 13th.

Rethinking How We Interact With Our Customers

Our big innovation during the pandemic was touchless service: you book an appointment using our online portal, and we’ll come to your house to pick your car up for you. I’d never really thought of doing anything like that before, but it became such a hit that we decided to keep doing it. Most people weren’t even leaving the house when we started the touchless service, so we marketed it as a perfect opportunity for them to finally get all the repairs that they had been putting off because they needed the car to drive back and forth to work.

Once we pick up the car and get it in the shop, we perform our inspection and use Tekmetric to send pictures of all work that needs to be done directly to the customer’s phone. The invoice is attached to the report as well, so they can pay it right there on their phone, and they never have to leave the safety of their home. Before we take the car back, we sanitize the interior, run an ozone machine inside the cabin to purify the air, and completely cover the floors, seats, and steering wheel to drive it back to their house. Once it’s back, we take all that stuff out, wipe the interior down one more time, and that’s it. That whole time, you never even have to see us.

Getting More Insights from Our Shop Management System

Our previous shop management system was a program that we had written specifically for us. It lasted us about 10 or 12 years, and it worked well for us at the time, but we needed more information. We weren’t tracking as many things as we could, and it was very difficult to track labor profitability, parts profitability, jobs, and everything else. If you wanted to time the technicians in order to track their efficiency, you would have to put a clock on their box. To be honest, those methods are not very accurate.

When we started looking for a new shop management system, our number one goal was to go cloud-based. Right away, we started running into barriers. We use Apple products at all of our stores, and most of the other systems aren’t compatible. We had 25,000 customers in our database with complete histories of all their work: names, addresses, emails, everything. The other systems we were talking to said that we would have to lose all of that information.

Useful Tools and Integrations Have Helped Us Streamline Service Across the Board

Tekmetric has worked very well for us so far. All my guys love it. They love being paperless and doing digital inspections. They all have iPads, and a few of my guys even use their phones. It just makes things easier. You can teach anyone how to use it. We don’t have to walk back and forth from the front office to the back all day long, so it’s easier to communicate. The digital inspections have all the pictures right there with typed up descriptions of what needs to be done. It’s much easier to sell a job when everything’s written on the inspection, and you have the pictures to back it up.

It just makes things easier.

I think the biggest benefit of using Tekmetric is that we’re able to see our customer retention and our profitability for the week, the day, and the job. I think that's huge. We use these reports to lay everything out and see what kind of workforce we're going to need for the week. It’s also much easier to track our technicians’ efficiency. I can see the time that they’re in the building versus what they’re producing and what they track on their labor times. It’s much simpler than any other method I’ve used before.

Before we were on Tekmetric, I wasn’t using any special program for customer retention. Now we use the MyShopManager and integrate it with Tekmetric, which has worked well for us. It’s really simple to manage our reputation and respond to our online reviews. I just log on in the evening and go through the list for both stores.

The whole Tekmetric crew has just been awesome, too. Any time there’s any kind of issue, call, or write-up, they take care of it almost immediately. We’re always excited when there’s a new update. We appreciate that Tekmetric is constantly changing to what the industry's needs are, and at the same time, taking care of their individual shops’ needs. I like that we're able to call up and get somebody on the phone immediately. We love the product and we love people.

Embedded in the Community

I'm a huge believer in serving our community in any kind of way. Wherever we go, we're going to embed ourselves and become a part of the neighborhood. That extends beyond car repair. We ask ourselves what we can do for the folks who live here.

We have a mentor program that we offer to some of the local high school and college students who want to become entrepreneurs later in life. They learn the auto repair trade, but they also learn about the business side of things. We also run a young driver's workshop for students and other people who are just getting their driver’s licenses. It’s all the stuff that you don’t really think about if you’ve been driving for a while, but that you need to know. We teach them about their cars, what the lights on the dash mean, how to change a tire, and what to do if you get in an accident. I’ve written some small books to teach children about how to become safe drivers. We’ve been doing these programs at the Roswell location for a while now, and we’re about to start it up in Alpharetta.

Back in August, we offered free and half-price oil changes to the teachers who were going back to work. When school got out at the start of the pandemic, we offered every single school employee a free oil change. It’s an easy way for us to give back to our community, and it lets them meet us and see if they like our service. Hopefully, they’ll use us again someday.

The Secret to Growing and Staying Successful

If you’re trying to get into the auto repair business, my advice is to create a superstar team with your employees. I’m constantly hiring on all platforms and interviewing potential new employees. I’m out there in the community, too. I ask our customers who come from other shops if they knew the mechanic at their previous shop. I set time aside each week to try to recruit people. Once they’re hired, I also believe in continuing to train. Whether it’s with each other or through coaching, I believe in having the team be a constant part of the training process and being held accountable.

I love this industry. I love the people, I love the cars, I love the business. And I still do my best to keep getting better and stay an industry leader. I learn about the cars, the direction we're headed—everything. And as I keep growing in the industry, I grow my business along the way.

For more information about Speed Auto Repair, visit speedautorepair.com

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Tim Suggs has always had an independent streak. He started his career working at a Lexus dealership but felt like he could help more people if he could run things his own way. So in 2006, at just 23, he opened his own shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota: Turbo Tim’s Anything Automotive.

Over the years, Turbo Tim's has grown a reputation for being one of the friendliest and most fun shops in the nation.

Tim believes that his success stems from treating the people (and animals) around himself well and cultivating a unique and relatable culture that gives back. Tim, his technicians, and service advisors focus on “average cars, average people.” They’re currently making big moves by expanding to a second location and creating a nonprofit side of the business.

We recently caught up with Tim to learn about his shop and how he plans to ramp up business for the future. Here’s what he had to say:

Creating a Unique, Relatable Culture

The first five years of business were tough. We focused our auto repair business strategy on doing a high volume of work at a low cost, which was great for bringing in customers, but obviously stressful.

Early on, it was apparent that if I put people first, the money would come. I focused on building an atmosphere that was both fun and professional for employees and customers alike. One of the most instrumental, yet unintentional, parts of our culture came from a cat I found at a machine shop. I’ve always been a cat person, and I asked the technicians there if that was their cat. They said it was a stray that they regularly fed. After checking that he wasn’t microchipped and didn’t belong to anyone, I brought him home with me.

And that’s the origin story of Bobby, our original shop cat. We now have multiple cats who greet folks in our waiting room. Bobby also positively affected our marketing. Halfway through our growth, we began branding ourselves with a cat logo inspired by Bobby. Today, customers who put Bobby bumper stickers on their cars get 10% off for life. Less productive are our chickens, who “work” in the chicken coop on our outdoor patio.

Having animals around has really influenced our culture. Good people generally care about animals, and if they care about animals, they’ll likely care about people as well. The employees that we’ve attracted and retained over the years are a part of our community. We’re always hanging out at the shop after hours and on the weekends. A few of our employees have even formed their own band. Of course, our culture extends to our customers, too. When they visit us, they can get nitro cold brew and energy drinks on tap, grab La Croix from our stocked fridge, and play games in our shop waiting room.

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Implementing a New Shop Management System

We switched to Tekmetric during the COVID-19 pandemic. I demoed Tekmetric at the Vision conference in February, and by April, we launched it at the shop. My service advisors and technicians were instantly excited about it once they started using it. They told me:

This is it. This is what the future is.

What they love the most about Tekmetric is how the software helps them be transparent with customers. That’s something we’ve always valued and emphasized. Tekmetric makes it easier than ever for them to send customers estimates and other vital information about their car repairs, especially now that they aren’t regularly interacting with customers face-to-face due to COVID-19. They also find the Tekmerchant payment processing integration and text-to-pay features extremely convenient.

Tekmetric has streamlined our processes and led to business growth. In our first month using it, we had our most hours billed per repair order (RO) average.

Even during the pandemic, we keep beating our records.

As a shop owner, I’ve been using Tekmetric’s detailed reports to manage my staff more fairly. For example, if the reports show me that a technician is doing a disproportionate amount of oil changes compared to others, I’ll make it a point to assign him different tasks.

Expanding My Mechanic Shop

Having Tekmetric has made me more comfortable with opening up a second shop location. To manage overflow, we needed to expand. Our second shop, which will open soon, is only two miles away from our original location.

I still want all new employees to start at the original shop, as I think it’s the best way to get them accustomed to our culture. Half of our existing service writers will move to the new shop, and as the second location gets business, we’ll slowly move over some of our technicians.

I’m looking forward to trying new creative marketing and advertising methods at the second location and comparing the results between the two shops. It’ll be interesting to see which one ends up attracting more customers, or particular types of cars, and why. Tekmetric’s reports will make it extremely easy to analyze those things.

One thing I still don’t know yet, though, is what we’re going to do with the animal situation at the second shop. We just might have to hoard more cats and chickens!

Turbocharging the Community

We’re also in the process of starting a nonprofit, Community Automotive, for low-income auto repair.

Rachel, my wife and co-owner of Turbo Tim's has really helped us grow our relationship with the community. She has a Ph.D. in sociology and is heavily involved with women’s workshops and community-building events. Our other team members are passionate about giving back as well.

I plan on hiring a service worker who can strengthen the connection between auto repair and social work. That person’s knowledge and experience, coupled with our use of Tekmetric, will give us important metrics about our nonprofit branch. We’ll be able to track the nonprofit arm and the two shops so we can see how much we’re helping while balancing our business needs. I want to make sure that we’re not undercutting other shops in the area while also providing quality auto repair to those who may need it to get their lives going again.

For the world to get better, I think everybody has to get better. I want Turbo Tim’s to pay it forward. Many people have helped us on our journey, and as human beings, we all have an obligation to lift each other up.

Anyone can end up in a difficult life situation. With some help, they can start to turn things around. It’s about giving each other mutual support—having each others’ backs.

To get a feel for Turbo Tim’s and meet Bobby and the rest of the team, visit turbotims.com.

Mrs. Jones doesn’t care if her alternator fluid is leaking. She cares if she can get her kid to school, or her mom to the doctor. Stan’s helps with that. Stan’s helps solve problems; auto repair is just part of how they accomplish that goal.

Scott’s parents, Stan & Donna, started Stan’s Automotive in 1973 when Lafayette was a small town with a population of about 4,000. Today, their son Scott and his team serve a community of about 100,000, repairing a full range of domestic and foreign vehicles. They have grown his family’s shop alongside Lafayette and the surrounding area. We caught up with Scott to learn more about him and his team, how they continue to refine Stan’s Automotive, and how they continue to find new ways to help the people in his hometown of Lafayette.

47 Years of Quality, Care, and Giving Back

After college, when I returned to working with dad, he showed me that the business was really not about fixing cars, but about our relationships with people. A turning point for me was realizing that ‘family-owned business’ means that my family values are my business values—and that dictates how I treat my staff and how we treat our clients. I want to take care of my people. At least a third of my staff has been with me for the entire 20 years that I've been here. So I owe a lot of loyalty to them and I want to see them handsomely rewarded as we grow.

My fundamental philosophy is that if you live to help other people win, then ultimately you're going to win, too.

We all care and look out for each other. If one of our staff has a family emergency, we all pull together so that they can take the time they need to be with their family. The definition I have of "doing things right’’ is this: Am I taking care of my team, my customers, and my business? If I can say “yes” then we’re doing it right. Profitability, sustainability, and growth will follow.

We had that happen this past year. I won't get into it, but basically a staff member had to take leave to take care of his wife. What we had to do was support him and do whatever it took for him to get through what he and his wife were going through in their life, and the business became secondary to treating him like a member of our family. The best part is, everybody else here and all of our other technicians really stepped up, and we made it through it and actually managed to grow through it.

There is no secret to sticking around for 47 years; we just treat everyone like family and stay involved in the success of the community.

Helping Our Community Succeed

Our business has grown up in a small town that has become a big town. I think we owe a loyalty to our community. I always feel like I want to give back, so we do. We partner with a multitude of schools and community groups and other things to grow programs here locally. And then my wife and I do mission work in Ecuador.

We see doing the right thing as a philosophy and not a tactic. It's made us very successful.

We set aside the majority of our marketing budget to help people. Another ad in a newspaper doesn't help people. Solving people's problems does.

For example, we helped the school across the street. Their band's boosters program came to me and they wanted me to write them a big check. I said, "I can't write you a big check, but there's this program that I have. I give you these coupons. They cost you $0. You go sell them, and they're worth about $200 in value to the customer. You go sell them to people that you know and let the kids' parents sell 'em at work and let them sell 'em on social media." They came to me for $500 and what they got was $6,500 that they were able to generate out of these coupons that I gave them.

We've got a community food bank. We keep a food bin in our waiting area and we're constantly gathering food for them, and then we do our own stuff to give to them also. I've got a coffee and a soda bar in my waiting area, and I accept donations. Every month I take those donations and add a chunk of money from the business and that goes to our Meals on Wheels program here in the area. I've done that for like 20 years. And we just stay plugged in, we stay connected. When something comes up and one of my guys is like, "Can I go to this event?"

Yeah, absolutely, go! Go represent us and go preach the gospel of goodwill to everybody. And it's been pretty awesome.

I've probably given away somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 worth of auto repair this year, and that's been done for anything from the local police department showing up and saying, "Hey, I encountered this family on a call. They're having problems. One of their problems is with the car. Can you help?" Of course I can help. A couple weeks ago, a church reached out to us to ask if we could fix a woman's heater who just moved here from Florida. Somebody had bypassed her heater core because it was too expensive for her to repair. That was fine when she lived in Florida, but in Colorado during the winter, a heater is pretty important. We took care of it because under the circumstances it was the right thing to do.

So now I have people coming in sayin, "Hey, I'm here because you guys are awesome and you supported this program. Oh, and by the way, turns out I have a car!" People laugh at me sometimes when I sit in groups of shop owners and they're like, "That's really old school." Yup. Guess what? It works. 'Cause people are people and relationships are relationships. You've got to nurture relationships.

Adopting a New Shop Management System

When my dad started Stan's in 1973, they were running on scratch paper, pens, and pencils like everybody else. Throughout the years, we adopted shop management systems that were fit for the level of business that we were doing at the time.

In the mid-80's we went to a UNIX-based system that was pretty primitive, but it did a lot. My mom went to a training class on it, and I don't think she even realized it, but she was coding everything that needed to be done. She was programming in UNIX before that was a thing that people were doing! So that carried us into probably the mid-90's , give or take, maybe early 90's. Then we went to a DOS-based system and we stayed with that for probably 10 years, give or take. We went from that to RO Writer. We were with RO Writer for probably 14 or 15 years.

Then in July of '18, when I bought the shop, we decided that it was a good time to make a switch, and we switched to a software company that I won't even give them credence of saying their name. They've been in the industry for a long time. Unfortunately, as it turned out, they got purchased by a larger company on the literal day we switched over and went live. And that was a complete and total disaster. We spent five months last year pretty much limping along and not even knowing what our real numbers were. I went back to doing accounting manually. It seriously was a frickin' disaster.

So two months into that, I knew it was a disaster, and I was looking for a solution to my crisis. And that was when I started looking at some of the more progressive companies that were leading the way with technology. That's how I came to get to meet people at Tekmetric.

For the sake of my team, I wanted them to be able to accomplish more without simply working harder. If I can put a tool in their hands that helps them do their job in half the time, it empowers them to put more of their focus on client service and run a better shop. That's motivating. That's growing. That's transforming.

The first thing that we noticed when we switched to Tekmetric was that the processes are fairly intuitive. Frankly, it's kind of scary to think that we just switched over to this software and there's not a 400 page manual for me to sit down and read through and figure out how it works. We just had to sit down with it and figure out and how it worked. And the fact that that happened smoothly says a lot to the workflow processes that they put into place. They just make sense. It's very intuitive and pretty easy for a service advisor to keep up with volume using this software.

Tekmetric also empowers our clients. They need to feel like they are more than just a repair order. We give them options to communicate with us on their terms: we can text, email, or call them about their repairs. The more communication options our shop management system provides, the more we are able to give our clients the kind of experience that shows how much we value and respect them.

But the biggest thing is that the team at Tekmetric listens to me and really drills down to solving shop owners' pain points. It's not just "What do we want?" but also "Why does it need to be a certain way?" And that, quite frankly, is the difference-maker for Tekmetric. Every other shop management system is either written by a shop owner and is tailored to exactly how they run that shop, or it's written by some software developers who don't have a clue about how a shop runs, and they think they do, and they want you to change all your processes and procedures to match what they wrote. Tekmetric has done an awesome job of surrounding themselves with people in the industry, mostly people much smarter than me, who have really helped them figure out what an average shop owner looks like and needs.

For more information about Stan's Automotive, visit stansautomotive.com

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As location manager of Wisconsin-based automotive repair shop, Silver Lake Auto, Tyler Peartree makes top-tier customer service a priority. He plays an instrumental role in executing important operational decisions that affect the daily operations across all four locations of Silver Lake Auto. Through its forty-year history, Silver Lake Auto has become known for its concierge service, a differentiator that excels in offering convenience-centric customer care and quality repairs. But the service didn’t come without hiccups, and Tyler was tasked with addressing its challenges in a way that built customer trust while growing revenue. He knew the auto repair shop had a truly valuable offering through its concierge services, but he needed a solution that could pay-off the exponential benefit. The answer? Tekmetric Shop Management System and its embedded payments offering, Tekmetric Payments.

A Bottleneck in the Process

As much as customers loved the service, Silver Lake Auto’s concierge service faced a significant bottleneck: the vehicle drop-off. While Tyler’s team could pick up vehicles and take them to the shop for an initial inspection, they required payment before they could return the vehicles. As a result, the drop-off portion was rendered unnecessary.

There was a gap in the process because customers had to come to our location and pay for the repairs,

Tyler reflected. He knew that to make his concierge service a standout benefit to customers, he would need a system that allowed customers to pay anytime and from anywhere, rather than deal with the inconvenience of coming into the shop.

Implementing a New Payments System

Tyler began researching shop management platforms with digital payments offerings that could benefit his customers and close the gap in Silver Lake Auto’s concierge service, while still allowing management to remain connected to multiple store locations. The platform that caught his attention? Tekmetric. Tekmetric, a cloud-based shop management system for auto repair shops, offered features that aligned with Tyler’s goals. Not only did it track shop data in an accessible, easy-to-understand interface, but it also allowed data sharing across multiple locations through its multi-shop feature, Tekmetric Multi-Shop. Most importantly, Tekmetric also offered a solution to the bottleneck in Silver Lake Auto’s concierge service. Tekmetric’s embedded payments offering, Tekmetric Payments, offered flexible, secure solutions that allowed Tyler and his team to easily manage customer payments and other accounting functions. Through Tekmerchant, Tyler and Silver Lake Auto could:

Enable customers to pay via text or email with Tekmetric’s secure text-to-pay offering

Automatically integrate all partial and complete payments into their point-of-sale

Access data through Tekmetric’s real-time reporting on payments and batches/payouts

Reduce chargebacks with enhanced early warning fraud detection

Success from the First Day

According to Tyler, the implementation and training process for Tekmetric Payments was simple and intuitive. Tekmetric offered training videos, speedy customer service to help with specific questions and help tickets, among other key assistance. With all the resources Tekmetric offered, Tyler found it easy to integrate the system and make sure his team was comfortable. “As an organization, we create a lot of training videos,” said Tyler.

The fact that Tekmetric already had videos created meant we didn’t have to do anything – just share the links to existing videos.”

Tekmetric combined with Tekmetric Payments proved successful at Silver Lake Auto from the first day of use, as the text-to-pay feature integrated seamlessly with the shop’s concierge drop-off service. “We had a customer in Italy on vacation,” Tyler said. “They were able to pay for their repair by text, and we were able to deliver the vehicle to their house while they were on vacation. Without Tekmetric, we would have had to wait two weeks – with the vehicle at our shop – for them to pay. Instead, we were able to get their payment, take the car back and close out the repair order.”

Continued Growth in Shop Performance

Since implementing Tekmetric and Tekmerchant, Silver Lake Auto’s shop performance continues to grow. At the organization’s flagship store, average repair order (ARO) has increased by more than $200 a month. Additionally, the shop can now offer text-to-pay at all its locations, which has offered more convenience for customers – particularly those that leverage the shop’s concierge drop-off service. Once the payment link has been sent, payment is completed quickly and efficiently. If a customer has Apple Pay or Google Pay it just takes just a couple of clicks. This benefits both the customer and the shop, as the vehicle can then be delivered directly to the customer rather than waiting until the customer can pick it up.

Silver Lake Auto’s service advisors have seen great success with Tekmetric Payments. As the team members responsible for collecting payment and closing out repair orders, service advisors have particularly enjoyed being able to share a link and receive payment in just a few minutes, without waiting for the customer to come into the shop.

Customers have also been thrilled with the new system – particularly parents: “We service a lot of high schools in the area,” said Tyler. “With Tekmetric, we can pick up a student’s car from the local high school to make repairs. The parents can pay through text-to-pay, then we drop the car off at the high school again.”

Additionally, after-hour pickups of vehicles have increased. Before Tekmetric, the team at Silver Lake Auto didn’t have the capability to safely take credit card information over the phone. But with the new system, they are able to offer secure, encrypted links and, once payment has been received, leave keys in a safe location for the owner to pick up the vehicle after-hours.

Tekmetric offered Silver Lake Auto the solution it needed to enhance their customer experience and promote shop growth. With Tekmetric implemented at all its locations, Silver Lake Auto can now fill the gap in the concierge process to complete vehicle drop-offs more efficiently, and it can offer customers a secure option for digital payments. Internally, service advisors can increase efficiency and close out repair orders faster. Altogether, Tyler knows this is the switch his shop needed, and it’s one he would recommend to others in his position: “It’s a night and day difference,” he said. “Make the switch.”

For more information about Silver Lake Auto, visit silverlakeauto.com.

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He wanted to go into either cars or computers, but in the 70s, no one knew quite how prevalent computers would later become, so he went with cars, enrolling in George Washington Carver Senior High’s automotive repair program. After receiving his associate’s degree in Motor Vehicle Technology from Delgado Community College in 1985, he continued to absorb new knowledge and pick up more service skills by acquiring his Lexus and Toyota Master Certification Rating, becoming an L1 Technician through the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence. After getting married, Henderson and his new family moved to Georgia and in 2005, he took the plunge and started TA Automotive of Conyers. TA Automotive is currently undergoing a new stage of growth thanks to Henderson’s leadership and operational decisions that bring his shop into the 21st century.

We had the opportunity to speak with Henderson to learn more about how he plans to continue growing his auto repair shop and achieve his vision of growing his revenue, his team, and his positive impact on the community. Here’s what he had to say:

Having a Vision

I've always had my eye on running my own business. To be honest with you, I wish I would have done it 15 years earlier than I did. Sometimes you have to wait until things materialize and find the best time for your family to handle such an adjustment.

I'm the type of person that likes challenges. I like the opportunity to grow. I like to move forward. You know, when you plateau in your career as a technician, you just want to do more. I did not want to be that guy who was 60 years old and still doing the same thing. So owning my own business was really the next progression as far as that is concerned.

I felt that it was important to have a master certification before opening up my own business. I worked for Lexus for two years and received my master certification from them before starting TA Automotive.

Being Independent

I felt the need to do the independent route because I wanted to learn how to run the business, grow the business, conduct marketing, and things like that. It's a transition that most technicians don't make. There was a tremendous learning curve because the mind of a technician is different from that of the mind of a service advisor or a shop manager or a business manager. And the mind of a technician is most certainly different than that of the entrepreneur, the guy who has the vision, the guy that plans, the guy that looks at everything and says, "This is where we are, and this is where we need to go." Transitioning from one mindset to another is an ongoing process.

Setting the Right Example

The culture of TA Automotive revolves around my vision to always take care of the customer and do the best work we can no matter what. And that’s all about transparency. We believe in always being honest when giving customers an answer, even if they don't want the answer. It's my job to give them the information they need so that they can make the best decision about their vehicle. Customers want someone who they can rely on.

Money is a very important component of any business because you've got to have it to keep the doors open. But money doesn't always equate to the final decision.

I learned that if we treat the customer right, in the long-run it's going to be beneficial. That's one of the principles I go by. I've always believed in treating people the way that I want to be treated.

As for leading my team, I have to set the right example. I can't tell my guys to do something that I would not do. By setting the right example, I set the tone for my shop. If I ask my team to do something, they know I've done it a hundred times before. I always ask myself, "What could I have done differently? What needs to change? What can I do better?"

Updating What's Obsolete

The system I had installed for the longest time worked great, but it only worked on my computer. It was very limited, and I could tell it was becoming obsolete.

If I can't send an email or an estimate to a customer from within my system, it's obsolete. If I can't do inspections and attach it to the estimate for an approval, it's obsolete. If I can't communicate with customers via email and text, it's obsolete. If I can't access that system from my smartphone, it's obsolete.

One of my sons does computer networking. He helped me set up my old system to work remotely, but it was still limited because there was no way in the world I could easily share information with my customers.

A Tool Designed for Growth

I was looking for a system like Tekmetric for years. Having alliances is really important to being successful at anything. Their auto repair software helps us do a much better job at communicating with our customers. It integrates so many features! For instance, I can just text an invoice to the customer, they receive and approve it, and I get a notification on my phone and on my computer. Then I’m able to integrate with the parts ordering and management components of my business. I can do all of that from within the system. Just being able to integrate and track everything is tremendous for where I’m trying to take TA Automotive.

Tekmetric shows me everything as a business owner. If I go to reports, I have so many metrics that I can look at that tell me what's going on. If you would have asked me six months ago, "How many alignments did you sell?" I couldn’t tell you. At least not quickly. Tekmetric breaks out all of those metrics and shows me what we're selling and what we're not selling. It gives me the breakdown I need to measure what I'm doing.

Adjust & Fine-Tune

Even with this new technology, my vision hasn’t changed. It's like, when you get in your car to go home, it's not a straight line. You're always making adjustments. You hit a roadblock in the street, so you make an adjustment. Someone's crossing the road in front of you, you make an adjustment. I’m constantly fine-tuning.

Without the right tool, it's impossible to fine-tune a business—to get it going in the direction you need it to go.

Shop owners need feedback. The more feedback we get, the more things we can monitor, the better we are at making the changes we need to grow. If it doesn't get measured, you've got a real problem. We're well on our way. At a deeper level now, I see more clearly what's going on with my business.

Adjusting to Uncertainty

We are doing social distancing. We have shields and barriers up to protect the employees. Every car gets a fresh lining. We disinfect, and we're always cleaning. We've always been big on keeping the waiting area clean, but now we pay more attention to disinfecting.

One of the most helpful changes I made, for the virus and in general, is switching to the text-to-pay system, Tekmerchant. We don't even have to take the customers’ cards anymore. We can collect touchless payment over the phone or via text. Just last week, I was able to pull over to the side of the road, pull up Tekmerchant on my phone, and take payment because it's all web-based. The credit card terminal turned on at the front desk and took the payment. The system prompted me on my cell phone. I asked them, "Do you want me to email or text you the receipt?" I wasn't even near the shop! I was miles away, and I was able to do that. There is no way in the world I could've pulled that off with my other system.

Keeping Everybody Honest

Another thing I like about Tekmetric is that it keeps everybody honest. For instance, we'll shoot a text before we do the work, and the customer needs to approve. When they approve on their smartphone, they literally agree to the terms-and-conditions of our services. I had a guy that came in here last month and said, "Well, nobody told me..." I said, "Sir. You approved on your phone." And his wife looked at him just shaking her head. He didn't see his wife, but we're looking at the wife, right? She was just shaking her head. And she came back and said, "I'm sorry for my husband's behavior.”

The Key to Owning a Business

After owning a business for 15 years and going through all sorts of ups and downs, what I learned the most is that you need to know who you are and how committed you're willing to be. You have to have a solid plan. Having the right alliances has helped us tremendously. I went at it alone for a long time. For 13 years. I did not accomplish what I should have accomplished because it was just me. When I ended up going to training sessions and teaming up with true partners like Tekmetric, that’s when I got my vision back.

All along, I have been going to school, and I have been forming alliances. You have to find the right alliances. Some people just want to add employees and tools. I'm not interested in adding an employee or a tool. I'm interested in adding the right person. The right tool.

It’s like finding a romantic partner; you have to find the right person. It's the same way with business. You've got to have the right stuff

For more information about TA Automotive, visit taautomotiveofconyers.com

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Aaron became an official part of the S&S team in 2006. He started handling the shop’s IT systems, and over the years, he slowly moved into management. By 2018, when Aaron’s father decided to retire (for real this time), Aaron was running much of the day-to-day operations while his dad was on the floor with his technicians just like the old days.

Since officially taking over, Aaron has worked to modernize S&S by going completely paperless. He evolved the shop’s management culture to help his employees better themselves. It’s this mentality that has helped Aaron and S&S Auto Repair grow in 2020, despite the challenges that his community has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. In June of 2020, S&S Auto Repair opened its second location in nearby Hixson, TN.

We recently sat down with Aaron to discuss how his shop was able to grow during COVID-19, how he tries to make a difference in his employee’s lives, and why he thinks that a positive message will get you further in your community than any other. Here’s what he had to say:

Tightening Our Belts to Push Through

When we were in the heat of COVID and everything but the essential businesses were shutting down, we saw a little bit of a dip. But ever since June, we’ve seen the same growth patterns that we’d seen before the pandemic.

Even though we qualified, I decided not to take any of the money that Congress offered through the PPP and SBA. I felt like we were in a good position to be able to weather the storm and take the risk of what might happen. I wanted to move forward and push through. We buckled down and tightened our belt. We found ways to cut our expenses and trimmed the fat quite a bit. Since we had already gone paperless in February after switching to Tekmetric, it was easy for us to transition to a safe, touchless auto repair service. Thankfully, we made it through that whole time fairly easily and came out on the other side with a big gust of new customers.

Focusing on a Positive Message to Uplift the Community

I watched how my friends and mentors handled their messaging after COVID, and I decided to do none of that. I pretty much abandoned the normal automotive messaging. For me, it was all about “How can we help you?” I wanted messages that centered on being there to help our customers when they needed us. I posted on social media about community togetherness, perseverance, and pressing forward. Several of them were just one-word posts. One was “Forward,” another was “Perseverance,” things like that. They took off like crazy. People were sharing them over and over again because the message was positive. Instead of the fear that you saw in other places, it was “We can get through this together.” And I think people responded better to that than to the fearmongering.

I wanted messages that centered on being there to help our customers when they needed us.

On top of COVID, we also had a tornado come through this area. It was an EF3 tornado, and it basically leveled our entire area. Even my high school got crushed. We were already slow from COVID when that happened, so I let my employees off to help the community. Some of them went out with chainsaws and cut down trees. We invited the community college athletic program to come over and make sandwiches to distribute to those in need.

During that time, we kind of became more like a concierge service. We had elderly people who called us asking to get milk for them. One lady called us because her house was flooding and she wanted us to pray with her. We decided to go a step further and call our customers to check on them. We didn’t want to sell them anything, we just wanted to make sure they were okay. I had my whole service staff pick up a list and start calling to check on people.

Honestly, I think that’s the way we should be as auto shop owners. We need to be leaders in our community. As business owners, we interact so much with our fellow citizens. We need to put that positive message out there. If we believe in that positive movement and push that through to our communities, our customers will take it and run with it.

As a result, we’ve had a wave of new customers who heard of us because they saw what we were doing for the community. When our customers come in or call to pick up their vehicles, they’re like, "I see you everywhere." Then to open up a second location on top of that, we’re bringing in new customers in a new community.

Expanding to a Second Location

Everybody told me that I was either a genius or a fool for opening up a shop during COVID. In fact, the day we found the property was the same day that we switched our shop over to Tekmetric.

We found the property in February, and by March, we had signed a letter of intent. We based our intentions on how our customers would react to COVID. Since we had a big gust of new customers due to our messaging during the pandemic, we thought it would be good to open a new location. We took over the property on May 1st and opened for business 30 days later. We decided to do it old school; instead of hiring contractors, we built out everything ourselves. I’d work at our Chattanooga shop until about 4 o’clock, then go over to the Hixson location and work until 9 PM or 10 PM every night. My father even pitched in, tirelessly working alongside me during the month of May to get the Hixson location up and running by June.

Everybody told me that I was either a genius or a fool for opening up a shop during COVID. But it’s been gangbusters.

Many people were furloughed during COVID, and I knew that there were rock stars out there who were unhappy with the way their shops were treating them. So I heavily advertised that I was hiring for the positions that were available at the new shop. We got something like 10 applications a week, from parts people to technicians to service advisors. I brought in five new people from the industry and trained them on our methods during the whole month of May, so we were able to go into June fully-stocked and ready to go with employees. Since they were getting to know our culture at our original location and learning our paperless, digital systems, there was no real transition time.

Our two shops are only eight miles apart, but a river divides the two communities. Now that we have shops on both sides, we’re able to serve both communities. Some of our customers have switched locations because they live or work in one community or the other, but we didn’t really lose any car count at the original location. Our customer base is also telling their family and friends about us, and people are coming in left and right.

Going Paperless

We were a pen-and-paper shop up until 2005 when we decided to upgrade to a shop management system. Our first program had a lot of good characteristics and was great for a small shop, but as we grew, we needed something that was more robust and user-friendly. I wanted something that was as easy to use as Facebook, that would give me the reporting that I need, and would give me the option to change information on the fly right in front of the customer at the point of sale.

I vetted Tekmetric and another cloud-based software system, but I decided to go with Tekmetric because of their owners. They were very involved in creating the next generation of shop management software. They’re pouring their time, money, and effort into creating a great system. So I decided to jump on board with Tekmetric.

When we went live with Tekmetric, I was so confident that my guys would get it that I wasn’t even in the shop that day.

When we went live with Tekmetric, I was so confident that my guys would get it that I wasn’t even in the shop that day. And I got no complaints whatsoever. They didn’t even have to call customer service. Tekmetric was probably one of the easiest onboarding processes that we have ever had.

We went completely paperless when we went live with Tekmetric in February. Going paperless is pretty much unheard of in our town. There are only a handful of people who are doing it, and they're only doing it halfway. We use Tekmetric for all of our in-house communication, so everyone can talk to each other through their tablets or computers. All of our information is passed digitally between our service, parts, and technician departments. When we duplicated our system for our second location, it was completely seamless because the digital side was already working. I said I wouldn’t buy any more paper when we switched to Tekmetric, and I haven't bought any paper since February.

How Tekmetric Helps Us Organize

Even when we were on paper, our company has always prioritized our customers’ repairs for them. We divide our information into three categories: the reason for the service, the safety of the vehicle, and maintenance for future repairs. With these three categories, we can answer all our customers’ questions and help them prioritize what needs to be done.

Our goal is to help our customers budget their repairs. If a technician brings us a digital inspection and there is a lot of stuff in red, we can go through and break them down into the three categories of safety, maintenance, and repairs. In each category, we break it down further: this needs to be done today, this can wait until your next oil change, and this one we can work on in the next six months, but you need to budget for it.

Many repair companies want to go in and get every dollar they can at every sale. I want to go in and create a relationship. I talk to my guys about this, too. We're doing relationship automotive service. We're building a relationship and rapport with the customer. We’re saying, "Hey, these things can wait. We can check on them every oil change to see if they're getting worse or staying the way they are, and perhaps we can save you money down the road.

”We want to build that relationship and that rapport where we can actually help them save money towards their repair so they can keep that car longer. We may see them two to three times a year, where other people in our industry are seeing them once, maybe twice a year. I would rather see my customers more often each year and have them spend less money with me at every visit than try to grab everything out of their wallet that I can the first time they come in.

Tekmetric makes it easy for us to categorize repairs in the order that we want them before we give it back to the customer. Then, when we present their inspection to them, it’s in the order that they need the repairs done. We can break it down cleaner and easier for the customer, and give them a honey-do list for their car. It’s very simple and a lot easier than the way we used to work when we were on paper.

The Future of S&S Auto Repair

S&S stands for Smith and Smith after my parents, Steve and Melanie Smith. My family has been in the automotive business since the 1950s. My dad has been a mechanic since 1976. He started working for my grandfather that year, who at the time had owned four car dealerships. My grandfather actually started in the automotive industry by driving cars down from Detroit to sell in our city. I was literally born into the automotive business.

Not many people know this, but I had originally taken pre-seminary classes. I finished a program and got my certificate, but then I felt like I needed to take a different approach in life. I decided that, as a business owner, I could reach more people through principle than through preaching. So I decided to focus my efforts more towards a business approach to help individuals better themselves. It starts with believing in yourself and knowing your self-worth.

We're a very goal-oriented company.

I have big goal boards with all my employees. I'm always trying to help them reach their goals. I get excited when my employees buy a house, or a car, or they save their first $10,000. I mean, a house and a car are great, but saving ten grand can be a huge deal.

There's always growth opportunities. As a business owner, if you're not growing yourself then your business is not growing. We started an apprentice program here, where we’re training up the next generation of automotive staff. They’re growing in their knowledge and their experience, so if I want to retain those individuals then I need to grow myself. I understand there's going to be bumps in the road, especially opening new shops and putting in new policies and programs and things like that, but it's that commitment to our culture and our customer that is pivotal.

I want to change not only my employees’ lives but also the lives of their children and grandchildren. I want my top technicians to make six figures. You don't usually hear shop owners talk in that way. I don't care how much money I make. I'll make enough money. I want the apprentice who just started with us to be making $40,000 in a year, then $80,000 in two years. That’s the thing that’s going to matter. If you take care of those employees, they’ll take care of you, and more importantly, they’ll take care of your customers. If they take care of the customers, the business will take care of itself. It’s a lifestyle of taking care of those around you.

For more information about S&S Auto Repair Shop, visit ssautorepair.net

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In 2001, Artie decided it was time to own his own shop, so he purchased Performance Transmission & A/C Automotive Repair in Gainesville, Florida. Later that year, Artie brought Dustin on board to help run errands, fetch parts, and take care of general shop maintenance.

Over the years, Dustin worked his way up the ranks, just like his dad did. He was promoted to technician, then service advisor, and then assistant manager. In 2011, Artie and Dustin expanded the shop, and the next year, Artie put Dustin in charge of daily operations.

In 2019, Dustin bought into the shop, becoming part owner. At the end of 2020, Dustin and his wife, Colleen, did some research and decided to switch to a new shop management system. They switched to Tekmetric in December of 2020, and it paid off. After only four months, Performance Transmission & A/C had their most profitable months in the history of the company to date.

We caught up with Dustin to learn more about his principles as a shop owner, what prompted him to switch to Tekmetric, and how the Tekmetric system of shop management has paid off for him and his team.

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The Growing Pains of an Outdated Shop Management Program

We were using the same program to manage the shop for 19 years. It was very basic—great for generating and printing invoices, but lousy on the estimate side, and not very good for customer communication.

For example, we do a lot of work for college students. The kids are here in town, and dad or mom are out of town or out of state. We’ve even talked to parents in Europe before. And the parents want a copy of the invoice. With the old program, I would have to go in, turn it into a .pdf, save it, load my email, load the parent’s email, attach it as a .pdf, and send them a copy of the invoice. It was a five minute long process, but it slowed us down.

It was also difficult to keep up any type of constant contact with the clients. We always ended up playing phone tag. We would leave a voicemail, but when the customer called us back, I'd be in the shop working on a car, so then I’d have to call them back. Back then, we didn't have the volume we have now. It was a lot easier to juggle calls when we were only working on three or four cars a day instead of twenty.

One of the things that I love about Tekmetric is the fact that in one mouse click, I can send the estimate and the invoice. I will text someone the copy of the estimate while I'm calling them to explain everything on the phone and say, "Hey, by the way, as soon as we hang up, check your text. You have a copy of the estimate I just went over on the phone with you. Feel free to review it, and let me know if you have any questions." Now we can keep up that constant contact with customers.

Getting Rid of a Bottleneck

With the program we were using before Tekmetric, we did estimates with a calculator, a pen, and paper. At the end of the day, whenever all the jobs were done, we would actually have to enter it into the computer. It was an old school way to do it.

I've got a service writer, Jude, who helps me at the front counter. We noticed that we were getting bottlenecked between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. because all we were doing for two hours straight was entering invoices. Phone calls weren't getting returned; clients came in, and we were getting interrupted; and we would miss a part here or there.

So I told my wife, Colleen, "It's time. We have got to find a better system. We've got to break this end of day bottleneck.” She actually checked all of the shop management systems on the market. I told her to weed it down to the top three or four, come present them to me, then we'll pick the top two and decide, as a team, which was going to be the best route.

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The Efficiency Aspect

We reached a point where production was almost maxed out, so we needed to improve efficiency. During the summertime, we can only bring four cars into the shop at one time. So I always ask myself how we could save time?

“What can we do to cut five minutes on this job without actually cutting corners on turning the wrenches?”

Our guys are on hourly pay schedules, and they get overtime every week. So we try to build that team atmosphere. We don't look for our guys to cut corners on their work, but we want to improve efficiency. So that was another big driver in finding a shop management system—if I could trim two minutes per job that I write, at the end of the day with twenty or twenty-five estimates, that's almost an hour a day that I can save. So the efficiency aspect was one of the big drivers for us finding a new shop management system. Just like breaking that end of day bottleneck on actually generating the invoices, I wanted to trim a little bit of time.

“What You’re Looking for is Right There”

We went live with Tekmetric in the second week of December. I would say by the first week of January, we were really catching our stride. And then February, we just took off.

“We felt like we had known Tekmetric forever.”

Tekmetric is a very intuitive program. I liken it to smart phones: If you need to do something on a smartphone and you can't figure it out, you're probably overthinking what you're doing. I think Tekmetric is the same way. I love the three little dots when you're doing a return. You just click on the three little dots, and usually what you're looking for is right there.

It took a little bit of time to say, "Okay. On this date, we are fully switching over to Tekmetric appointments." So it was a little slow to jump on the appointment side of it. We now only make appointments in Tekmetric. And I don't even really have a reason for why we didn't make that switch right away. I guess in my mind, it was like, "Okay. Let's not change too many things at one time. Let's get our toes wet. Let's figure out how to use the program. Then we'll get up to our waist and start using it." Now that we know how to use the appointment calendar, I love it. I love how we can tie future repairs to it, and that we can tie appointments to repair orders.

“Trust the Numbers”

When we were deciding between Tekmetric and another shop management system, I knew we needed to get Artie on board with the reporting side of things. He wanted to make sure that he could "trust the numbers" in the report. So way back when, in 2001, him and I got together because he said, "Look. This is how I want to do my sales sheet." We made a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet together that had all the important numbers—everything we wanted on our daily sales. When we saw the End-of-Day Report in Tekmetric, no joke, it is almost block-for-block what Artie and I created almost 20 years ago. Of course, it has more. We didn't have the "Hours Presented" or "Hours sold", the “Close Ratio...” stuff like that. But as far as the actual sales numbers go, it was uncanny how close the two looked to each other.

So one of the other things that we've done differently, prior to Tekmetric, our “Car Count” was actually “Paid Invoices.” I thought that was a more accurate representation of what we sold. I know some shops do Car Count, even if they just check the brakes and never actually sold anything. We've always just gone off of "Paid Invoices." So when I saw Tekmetric and saw that that's how it did the reporting on the End-of-Day Report, I liked that. I was like, "Yes! Posted ROs. That's what we want to see!"

The Ability to Seize Opportunities and Reach New Heights

This year, after switching to Tekmetric, we saw that March was our best month ever. April was our second best month ever. March and April are tax time, so historically, they're very strong months. I think the timing of the stimulus had a lot to do with it, too. We noticed a lot of people were coming in and needing their car battery changed. Pretty much they’d come in and say, "I haven't moved my car in three months, and now it won't crank." So I think a lot of it was that so many people stayed in last year and did not take any trips, and didn’t do any maintenance or repairs. They were finally getting moving, and their cars said, "Hey. I haven't moved in six months. I'm not happy. We need some work."

Because we had hit our stride with Tekmetric, we were able to maximize the amount of production and actually get to all the vehicles coming in the door. It doesn't matter if a thousand people come in a day through the front door; if we can't get the cars out the back, that doesn't matter. So I definitely think the efficiency improvement with Tekmetric was a big part of being able to achieve the sales that we did.

I kept very detailed numbers going back to 2012 when I started taking the daily operations. $449 is our current year-to-date average, which is about $50 more than our historical average. I can say that, yes, some of that is the industry and all the things we talked about—the stimulus money and people delaying repairs from last year. But I also attribute a lot of our current success to Tekmetric: the efficiency, the presentation, how I can present everything to the client, the ability to quickly text them the estimate so they can review it. I do think that the ticket average increase has a lot to do with Tekmetric.

“Is It Really Worth It?”

I have always wanted to track a lot of the numbers that Tekmetric tracks for me, but with the old program, it took a lot of data mining to move these numbers over into a spreadsheet. At the end of the day, I would ask myself "Is it really worth it?" Without Tekmetric, it would take me an extra five hours a week to track these numbers. I get here at 6:45 a.m., and I leave whenever we close, which is usually 6:00 p.m., so my days are long enough as it is.

“To think about wanting these numbers and now having them in a few mouse-clicks is amazing.”

I like having the Close Ratio and Effective Labor Rate on the End of Day report right there at my fingertips. One of the reports that I like the most is the Service Writer Report. With that wealth of information, I can tell where we're at in the month. I can see what's been declined and spot trends. I can see if there’s anything I can do to help Jude sell better, and if there's anything he's having a hard time selling. What's being declined? What's being approved? What's taking forever to get approved? Now I know, and we can do what we need to do to close larger tickets.

Tekmetric is a great system for growing the team. I'm adding another guy in June. He's going to help us on the phones, then eventually, he's going to be a full tech. Not that long ago, we were a small team; I didn't have Colleen or Jude here. Artie and I did 100% of everything ourselves. So to have a shop management system that we can all grow within is definitely an asset.

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More Time for the Things that Matter

I was able to take a week’s vacation back in January. It had been a while since I had taken a full week off. Not to say I haven't taken vacations, but it's always been more of an extended weekend. My son turned five back in January, so we rented a cabin up in North Georgia and literally, for a straight week, spent time in nature as a family. With Tekmetric, I was able to stay in contact with my shop just enough. At the end of the day, I would check in on my phone and see that cars were making their way from the estimate side to the working side to the completed side. It gave me peace-of-mind. And that was just in the beginning. We had only been using it that little bit of December and January, so we were still getting our feet wet with the system.

For me to be able to log in for five minutes at the end of the day and say, "Oh. Good! They finished Mr. Smith's van” or “They finished Joe's truck" was comforting. To know that everybody was doing great, but I didn't have to call them every ten minutes and ask, "Hey. How are things going?" I was able to just log in remotely and look at stuff. I've got a talented team. They do what they do best. But I don't have to actually call them to check in. I can just log into Tekmetric and see what's going on.

Our family has a lot of hobbies. Personally, I love to garden. My son is a tomato junkie. He's got a $10 a week habit of eating cherry tomatoes, but we have a Lemon Boy tomato bush that’s probably got 40 or 50 fruit growing right now. I appreciate that Tekmetric gives me more time to focus on my family and our passions.

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Taking Care of People

When you own a company, there are a lot of people who depend on you. One thing that Artie has instilled in me is to not ever take that lightly. This shop was my first baby before I had a kid because I'm here so much. I put so much of my heart and soul into this company, taking care of all the people we interact with, whether it's our clients or our employees. We have people depending on us to meet payroll so that they can take care of their families.

This is my work family. I'm here every day with them. And especially going through 2020 with them, that re-solidified our family bond. We went through the pandemic last year, and we made it out the other side. We're back on track with where we were projecting from 2019 to 2020, and I couldn't have done that without the efficiency of Tekmetric.

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For more information about Performance Transmission & A/C Automotive, visit performancetransmission.net

After a few years of operating Prestige European, Eric realized that he was tied to the shop. When a friend told him “You don’t own a business, you own a job,” Eric realized he needed to get out of his own way if he wanted his shop to grow.

Eric teamed up with business partner Mike Difato and began to restructure Prestige Automotive by using innovative tools to empower his team. Their shop has grown from $300,000 in annual revenue to about $1.5 million in five years.

In recent months, Prestige European has been put to the test and had to quickly adjust business practices to address COVID-19. Luckily, Mike, Eric and his team have acted quickly and worked together to continue providing services to guests in a safe manner.

Why Auto Repair is Essential

People still need to work. They still need to provide for their families. There are lots of vehicles that still need to be on the road. It’s not just emergency vehicles. We're working on plumbers' cars, grocery store employees' cars, pharmacists, nurses, and doctors' cars, all of whom are on the front line helping our communities and their families. These are all essential businesses that we need to be there for.

A Chance to Let New Leaders Flourish

In January of this year, we promoted our head service advisor to shop manager. We wanted him thinking like an owner. And we promoted our lead tech to shop foreman. We just gave them the reins. We stepped away for about a month and let them figure stuff out on their own. Trust me, it was hard. That shop's my baby. But it's what you have to do if you truly want to step away from the shop and start to grow.

About a month after the promotions, my shop foreman came up to me and said, "Hey. I love you to death, but can you please not come in anymore? At first, I was kind of offended. I was like, "Excuse me?" And he said, "Listen. I'm trying to build my leadership, and when you come in, the people I’m trying to lead just go straight to you.

"So I gave him some metrics that I wanted him to meet, and as long as they were met, I said, "You got it. I'll come in once a week for your meeting, and I'll do everything else from outside the shop".

Now, we're using this as a chance to build up the newly promoted leaders. We're letting them deliver a lot of these messages so that they can grow. And honestly, we're letting them make the decisions.

Planning Together as a Team

My team brought their concerns to me and Mike. A lot of ideas and suggestions came from them. We're being very upfront because there's so much unknown out there. As we entered April, we made sure that they knew what our plan was. We had two weeks worth of cars to work on, and I presented a list of two weeks worth of shop projects like painting the walls, landscaping, and pressure washing the floor. I told the guys,

We're going to use this time to make our shop better.

How We Changed for the Better

We’re doing everything we can to limit the spread and keep each other safe. I told my guys to abide by the six-foot rule. We're in a big enough shop where we don't have to be on top of each other. My shop foreman can dispatch work right from Tekmetric, and everybody can see it from their own workspace.

We put a parts table out by the gate, so the parts guys can drive up, drop off the parts and go. We switched to touchless payment processing with Tekmerchant, so we can now use text-to-pay with our customers. I ordered a cell-phone locker to use for guest pickups. We text the customer the code, park their car in a neighboring lot, and let them grab it. We even ordered 1,000 little boxes of hand sanitizer with our logo on it to put in every car after we're done with them along with our Thank You note.

My team, my shop management system, my vendors, and my guests all played a critical role in helping us stay in operation.

For more information about Prestige European Auto Service, visit PrestigeEuropean.com

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