Leverage technology to improve your shop's performance, customer service

Want to do your part to help the nation’s economy rebound? Just find a new way to put technology to work for your shop.

Where’s the connection? It’s not just about buying a new computer or cell phone. It’s about productivity. As Dr. Martin Regalia, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, noted in his economic forecast at the I-CAR annual conference last summer, growth in business productivity – getting more done with less – is a fundamental measure of any economy’s strength and growth. Help your shop’s team boost its productivity, and you help support the broader economy.

Shops are going digital by using technology to boost their office staff’s productivity, to improve customer service, to boost their bottom line – and thus indirectly do their part to help jump-start the overall economy.

Centralize your estimating

Larger and multiple-location collision repair businesses can now use technology to centralize their estimating operations. The Gerber Collision & Glass chain, which operates in seven states, is piloting a set of technology offered by Librestream, a Canadian firm. The system enables a customer service and sales representative at a Gerber shop to use a digital video camera and the Librestream system to have live two-way visual and voice communication with an estimator elsewhere. The estimator can ask the service rep to zoom in on certain areas of the vehicle – or can even control the camera remotely – to see the damage, capture the digital images needed and prepare the estimate.

Gerber said the system enables its best estimators to prepare more estimates each day while other staff members, who now need far less estimating know-how, can focus on selling the job and providing customer service.

Get a new dial tone

You’ve probably heard of Skype and seen ads for Vonage. You may have seen the acronym VoIP, which stands for “voice over Internet protocol.” But is it all something that should mean much to a collision repair shop owner? You bet, said Barbara Morgan, owner of Nissen’s CARSTAR, a 10-employee shop in Palm Bay, Fla. “It saves me a bunch of money on the phone bill,” Morgan says. “Once we switched to voice over IP, we cut our phone bill in half.”

With VoIP, your phone calls are essentially routed over the Internet rather than the public telephone network. That means you need a high-speed Internet connection, but there are no long-distance charges and less need for multiple phone “land-lines.” Many times you are able to keep the same phone number(s). While it may require some investment in hardware and software, Morgan said that can pay off quickly, and she hasn’t experienced any of the sound quality problems that plagued VoIP in years past.

As with all telecommunication services, there’s no shortage of variations in the VoIP packages available depending on your company’s needs. But here are three places you can get started researching the options:

• AT&T: www.corp.att.com/voip
• Skype: www.skype.com/business
• Vonage: www.vonage.com/small_business_calling_plans/premium_unlimited_minutes/?refer_id=WEBSR090201002W1

Let customers watch

Systems designed to allow customers to log in at a shop’s Web site to see photos of their vehicle repairs in-progress have been around for some years now and are even required as part of some insurer direct repair programs.

“I’ve found that it’s a good aid in explaining what you’re doing to a vehicle, and as long as customers know what’s going on, they feel more comfortable with the process,” says Keith Greenblat of Auto Collision Center in Daly City, Calif., which uses the See Progress “AutoWatch” system. “They often don’t realize how much goes into fixing the car. With AutoWatch they can see what’s happening. And having my e-mail address linked to the picture eliminates some of the phone calls.”

But other shops have built or implemented other systems that offer a remote look into their shops in other ways. David Bourgeois, co-owner of Queen City Auto Rebuild in Redmond, Wash., uses software called RO Tracker that also lets customers log in and see where in the process their vehicle is and what the anticipated completion date is. Though the shop can shoot and include photos of the in-process vehicle in the system, Bourgeois said they generally only take the time to do that for customer-pay jobs, or if a customer expresses an interest. Instead, the system has pre-set explanations for the customer of each step in the process.

What Bourgeois likes about the system is it also allows him to quickly monitor the shop’s production remotely. He can sort the list of jobs in any number of ways, quickly see which customers are checking in at the Web site for updates, and see what delivery dates are changing.

But why only look remotely at a static list of work – or once-a-day photos of a job in progress – when you or your customers can see live streaming video of what’s actually happening in your production area?

Looking to add a little more “wow” to her shop’s customer service, Morgan installed eight video cameras in her 8,000-square-foot shop, giving anyone visiting the shop’s Web site (www.carcollision.net) a live, behind-the-scenes look at technicians at work.

“Customers love it,” Morgan says. “Our (customer) survey cards come back and they just rave about the cameras. One customer called disappointed because we had her car on the frame rack with the damaged side against the wall away from the cameras, so when we were done with the frame work, we made sure we backed the car into the next stall so she could watch the work being done. At least I know customers are looking at their cars.”
Morgan said the cameras offer her a selling point no other shop in her area offers, though she hopes to begin marketing the system to other shops this fall.

She made sure her technicians understood the system is designed purely as a customer benefit, not to monitor their performance, and she said now that the cameras have been in place a year, “Employees don’t give them a second thought.”

Proactive updates

But what about the customer who isn’t apt to visit your Web site for a status update? With studies clearly demonstrating the value of keeping customers informed – see related story, Customer updates pay off – Morgan wanted a proactive but productive way to provide customer updates. So she had her IT department help build a system that automatically sends an e-mail or voicemail to a customer each time a vehicle’s status moves forward (body, paint, reassembly, detail, etc.) in the shop’s management system.

“If they receive the voicemail, they have the option to talk to a live person by hitting ‘O’ and it rings the phone at the shop and they can talk to us,” Morgan says. “It increases our productivity exponentially because we’re not sitting on the phone all day calling customers. You’re doing it with a mouse click you’d be making anyway.”

Like the live camera feed system she had developed, the automated e-mail and voicemail update is something Morgan hopes to have available for licensed use by other shops late this fall.

“They will have the ability to record their own voice on the voicemail messages customers receive, so it’s not a canned thing,” she says. “And we are building versions to work with the different management systems, or even for shops that don’t use management software.”

Another company, www.UpdatePromise.com, offers a $199-per-month system some shops use to automatically send periodic text message updates to customers’ cell phones or e-mail addresses. The system can be set up to update customers every 24, 48 or 72 hours and sends a thank you message when the job is completed.

Online tech help

Shops also can turn to technology to improve the quality and completeness of their repairs. There are a growing number of ways to access automaker repair information online, in many cases without spending a lot of money to do so.

Kia remains the only automaker to make access to its service and repair information Web site (www.kiatechinfo.com) absolutely free. The bad news is there’s not a lot there for collision repairers: some dimension and frame specs, but not much on sectioning points, weld locations or metal types.

GM, however, is among the automakers providing the most comprehensive collision repair information – and like Kia, has made it available at no charge. Collision repairers can access the GM information by going to www.goodwrench.com. There they will find all the automaker’s collision repair technical information, at no charge, organized by vehicle make and model.

Toyota has made its “Collision Repair Reference Guide” available for free through its wholesale parts Web site at www.ToyotaPartsAndService.com. By registering at the free site, you can check the searchable reference guide for high-strength steel locations, jacking and hoisting specs, wheel alignment specs, airbag component replacement information, vehicle identification charts and more.

Chrysler last year unveiled a new Web site, www.installers-mopar.com, which gives collision repairers access to Chrysler collision repair information for a one-time registration fee of $25.

For other information from any of the other automaker Web sites, you’ll face a fee for access. At $350 per year, the Toyota/Scion and Honda sites are among the most reasonably priced. A number of others – Saab and Suzuki – are $500 per year. Most of the rest of the Web sites cost $1,000 or more per year, but all offer daily, weekly or monthly options if you don’t need ongoing access.

A chart on the National Automotive Service Task Force’s Web site, www.nastf.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3291, summarizes the subscription options and charges, and provides links to the original equipment Web sites. Another option for finding links to the information Web sites is www.OEM1stop.com, which automakers created as a one-page link to more than 30 OEM service and repair Web sites.

Doing your part for the nation’s economy by boosting your shop’s productivity doesn’t necessarily require a big investment of cash – just a willingness to look for new and better ways to put technology to work for you.