Meet Tom Braun: Where There is a Will, There is a Way

In this episode of The Digital Shop Talk Radio show, Tom & Uwe are joined by Tom Braun, Owner of Tuffy Auto Service Center in Clinton Twp. Listen as Tom tells his shop success story along his digital journey. See how far he’s come through the challenges he faced and the successes he achieved along the way.

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:00:06):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey and we’ve got a great show for you today. I know I’ve been teasing you a little bit with kind of leading into this, try to get Tom on last week, but he was going to go hunting slash caught, but I’ll let him tell you all about it, but we got him on this week. And so without further ado, I’d like to introduce a trailblazer, Tom Braun from Tuffy Tire and Auto Service in Clinton Township, Michigan. Welcome, Tom.
Tom Braun (00:00:37):
Hi, Tom.
Tom Dorsey (00:00:38):
Hey buddy. And of course, as always, we’ve got half of our expert panel of experts on Bill Connor and Uwe Kleinschmidt. Welcome, gentlemen. Good day. Good morning. And both actually all three of us have been working with Tom and kind of through this journey, and I think it’s going to be a great episode and a great story for you folks to hear, whether you’re on the fence, whether you’re in the trenches, maybe just getting started and struggling and you need a little boost to persevere because we’ve got to Exactly. That is a story of perseverance for you today. As a matter of fact, I’ve titled the episode where there’s a will, there’s a way, because I think in a nutshell, Tom, that is how we could classify your journey to the point that you’re at now. Wouldn’t you agree?
Tom Braun (00:01:23):
I would agree, yes.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:25):
And so tell us a little bit about how we got to this point. How did you decide to start us off with, tell us about your operation. What’s t y’all about? What are you doing up there in Clinton Township?
Tom Braun (00:01:38):
So my shop is located in Clinton Township, Michigan, just north of Detroit. It’s a franchise location. The Tuffy Tire Auto Service franchise has about 170 stores in the network. I’ve been here 14, well, coming up on 14 years in May. I bought my store, I worked here. I started off as a technician, like most shop owners out there. We started off as a technician. We worked our way up, took over the store as a general manager. And then in May, coming up here seven years ago, I purchased the location. So that’s where I’m at. That’s how I got my store. And do you want to get it right into the digital
Tom Dorsey (00:02:30):
And tell us a little bit, so you worked as a tech there, took over as an owner and then decided to go digital. We’ll just leave it at that because kind of how we were introduced to you, how our relationship developed. And so give us a little insight because it’s not something that the franchise was doing, it’s something that you kind of decided on and I would say had a vision for a little bit to us how you came to that.
Tom Braun (00:03:01):
So back when I bought the store, well, previous to buying the store, when I was just a general manager, I wanted to get into digital inspections. I had originally sat in on a webinar or an advertisement for AutoVitals back, I don’t know, had to be 2012 ish and seeing just a digital inspection. And I had always struggled to get my technicians to fully 100% complete a paper inspection. That was always a challenge and I was a believer in it. I know that McDonald’s made tons of money asking if they want fries with that. So for us, I wanted to get a system in place where it was easy for the technicians to do what I wanted them to do. So I reached out to AutoVitals and started learning about the digital inspection platform back then. And Tuffy as a franchise company, they limit us to what point of sale softwares we can use. So we are using one of the companies a point of sale that they approved. And at that time, when I reached out to that point of sale company, they unfortunately would not integrate with AutoVitals because they were working on their own digital inspection platform. I remember that.
Tom Dorsey (00:04:22):
And so basically, yeah, we reached out to us and we basically said, Hey, sorry. No,
Tom Braun (00:04:27):
You can’t. They just wouldn’t do it. And AutoVitals said, look, in order for the program to work properly, it has to integrate. I mean, it has to. So we gave stock trick or the point of sale system that I used the time to develop their inspection, and they did. They came out with something, they launched it a year after that and it didn’t work very well. They quickly pulled it back, relaunched it again about a year later. And it was right around sometime in 2019 when we finally got it working. Now, I had worked with them throughout the year 2019 to get it to where it would work as a digital inspection, but by the time it was ready to go, I want to say it was right around, it was the 1st of November, 2019, but we used that for a while. And the digital inspection, it made it easier for the technicians to do what we wanted ’em to do, which was to completely inspect every vehicle that come into the shop.
(00:05:32):
So kind of mission accomplished there on the same time I was young and learning from the technician and manager point of view, from the owner point of view. And I was really trying to, and still to this day, we’re still writing processes and procedures and making sure that those standard procedures are defined and that we have ’em in place. So going back way back, we had a paper that we printed out, actually had ’em printed, they were too big for me to print, and we would track every time a car would come in, we’d write it on the board, eventually assign it to a technician by drawing their initials on it, and then we order parts or for O’Reilly’s and then kind of black ’em out with a marker as they left the shop that
Tom Dorsey (00:06:30):
Looks something like this. Let see if I can, let’s see if can increase my screen cycles.
Tom Braun (00:06:38):
And that worked for us for a while. But then Google, I discovered Google Sheets where you could have a shared spreadsheet or a shared document. So what we did then is we evolved that paper spreadsheet that tracked all of our movements, or I like to say steering the ship. We could steer the ship with this shared Google spreadsheet that I created and basically same situation where as you can see there, that spreadsheet. So on the top left corner, we would record all the cars coming in, we would dispatch ’em by copying and pasting that to each one of the technicians areas and then and yada yada. So we had this another platform on. And that
Tom Dorsey (00:07:30):
Was all something that you developed though?
Tom Braun (00:07:32):
Yeah. Yeah, I did that. I made it and I had colors built into it so that when you type the word sold in the right box, it would turn green so the technicians could Conditional formatting. Yeah. Yeah, conditional formatting. Yeah. So we had some stuff like that in there to help steer the ship. But I mean, again, taking a step from working off of just clipboards, and I was talking with Tom before we started and I remember the day of, we’d open the shop in the morning and of course we’d have a few customers come in first thing in the morning, and I’d be up at the front counter writing up the customer into the computer system. And all of a sudden you look to your right and all of a sudden you got three or four technicians standing there going, oh, what are we working on today? It’s just kind of nice to where we come now, the technicians, they don’t have to come to the front counter, the technicians, the carpet’s a lot cleaner in the lobby because we don’t have to worry about those boots running in the
Tom Dorsey (00:08:38):
That’s funny, David. It’s out on carpet cleaning
Tom Braun (00:08:42):
Come a long way.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:08:44):
The cleaning crew comes only once a week
Tom Dorsey (00:08:47):
Now. Yeah.
Tom Braun (00:08:47):
Poor guys. A digital side effect I’ve never heard before. Digital side effects.
Tom Dorsey (00:08:53):
We need to add that to the BP.
Tom Braun (00:08:56):
Yes.
Tom Dorsey (00:08:57):
That’s a great adoption metric. It’s working when
Tom Braun (00:09:01):
That’s carpet cleaning, carpets cleaning the front
Tom Dorsey (00:09:03):
Line. That’s fantastic. It’s almost like we were saying earlier, a lot of people try to manage workflow in dispatch on a sheet and have all a thousand different variations of that whiteboards and hanging bags and clipboard racks. And the problem with it always is, as soon as somebody brushes up against that whiteboard and erases half of it, or you forget, you update it, it’s broken. And then eventually you almost need somebody who’s hired to manage the whiteboard for you and it defeats the purpose. You’re trying to become more efficient, more productive, but on the other hand, it’s really starts to slow you down and it costs you more from a business expense perspective.
Tom Braun (00:09:50):
Well, and especially when you’re running more than one service advisor, because back in the day when I did all of the service writing and all the customer communications by myself, that was one thing. It was still difficult to remember everybody you needed to call at the end of the day or you still had challenges, but there was only one guy to blame. You only had your service advisor or yourself to blame when you start adding a receptionist, which we added and now a second service advisor. And now we’re running with two service advisors. And I try to not necessarily be a service advisor, but so you have potentially up to four people who are dispatching work, talking with customers and ordering parts and all that. It certainly makes it a lot easier to know what the other person’s done already. When you have the technician view screen, the TVP, it’s great for that.
Tom Dorsey (00:10:57):
Yeah, exactly. And we’ve had quite a few episodes now with Adam and John Long and these guys talking about how that evolves really into the production manager as your volume increases or that need for that specialization starts to increase. And it’s kind of in your progression, in your timeline of, because as we were talking yesterday, you’re single location, but not only I think are you probably catching a lot of attention from at the corporate level with the performance of your location and your numbers, but you have the desire to become multi-center owner. And it’s really great to see because I mean, you couldn’t set yourself up in a better position. You’re really establishing that strong foundation, putting the processes in place, bulletproofing them now, and then it becomes just flipping a switch. How many do you want? I mean, it is similar to Ramsey brothers where they’ve got it down so well from the Meineke organization that they’re just throwing shops at ’em and it’s just plug and play almost at this point. Right.
Tom Braun (00:12:04):
And that’s really been my goal throughout the last several years is get the systems and the procedures in place strong enough to where I don’t have to be steering the ship. So you teach that to the service advisor or manager and you’re able to step away and start acquiring that second, third, and fifth store.
Tom Dorsey (00:12:27):
Yeah. Tommy, talk to us a little bit about, because this is what really intrigues me because, and just to be clear, so because we still didn’t integrate, I mean you’ve only been integrated now for a month, a couple of months.
Tom Braun (00:12:40):
It’s been a couple of months now with the
Tom Dorsey (00:12:41):
Point of sale, right? Yeah. When you started in November 19, that was in our standalone or non-integrated version,
Tom Braun (00:12:50):
Just the digital inspection.
Tom Dorsey (00:12:53):
And so then you had the spreadsheet you were still managing. Now on top of that, you have the digital inspection and getting everybody used to that. I mean, so that’s not easy. That’s her cats right there. And so talk to us a little bit about how that transition and what is the difference now that you’re integrated and you’ve got not only the full product suite and all the bells and whistles, but you have to change process changed again. How did that transition look like? And for folks that are kind of new and they’re grinding and they don’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel, what’s been the difference for you between those two?
Tom Braun (00:13:37):
Well, it’s a huge difference. Going from a paper inspection or a paper write writeup to the digital inspection is one humongous step. And then go into the technician view is another just huge step. The digital inspection is nice because, and I can share some numbers. I don’t know if we’re ready to get into that, but when I took over the store, we were running right around a 200 to $250 ticket average. And I told maybe, I think it was Bill and I think I told all three of these guys the story. But when I first took over the store and I was trying to find that inspection, like I talked about getting the guys, getting my technicians to do what I want to do, those full inspections, I literally went to, I’m telling you, every place in town I could, everybody who did an oil change and an inspection, I was buying an oil change from them so I could get a copy of their inspection sheet so I could repurpose it and try it, right?
(00:14:44):
And see if my technicians would do that inspection for ’em. And don’t get me wrong, they did it, but it was never really complete. And when we went to the digital inspection through the point of sale company, again, it was being done and our ticket average went way up or went up. But again, I had no way to know, well, was this part really being checked or was the technician just putting a check mark in that box? With the AutoVitals digital inspection, we require a picture for every failed part and even for the not failed parts you could do. So when a technician says it’s a good or bad part and they have to take a picture of that part now, yeah, the technician absolutely put their eyes on it. They put their eyes on it enough to take a picture of it. So we just felt that we’re getting a better and a fuller inspection from it.
(00:15:44):
And when we went from, and like I said, when I bought store, I was right between 200, $250 average ARO. Now in 2017, it was 296, we jumped over 300 in 2018, it took me from 2014 to 2018 to get to four years to jump that little, just about a hundred dollars per ticket then. So we went from 314 in 2018 to $332 in 2019. And like I said, it was November when we launched that digital inspection. And in 2020 this year so far with a pandemic and guys being out of work and people being out of work, our ticket average this year is $409 and 72 cents. And that’s as of year to date. As of yesterday, I ran that report through November and over the
Tom Dorsey (00:16:43):
Last 90 days, it’s $444. I
Tom Braun (00:16:46):
Was
Tom Dorsey (00:16:47):
Attp this morning.
Tom Braun (00:16:48):
I put it on that and we’re getting better because to add onto that, when you take and you do the program, and we talked about some growing pains and trusting the system, that’s kind of what I teach my guys. So I’ve told my guys from the beginning, we’re going to try this, whatever this is, in this case, it’s a complete new program. From the beginning to the end, what we asked the customer, we talked to the customer about at the counter communicating that they’re going to get an inspection before a phone call and then actually giving them the inspection before the phone call.
(00:17:29):
I don’t know, several weeks ago now, maybe a month, maybe a little more than that. And Bill says to me, he says, Tom, all right to the point now where I want you to start sending the inspection to the customer and let them review it, and you’re going to give ’em that 10 minutes. If they don’t open it, you call ’em. I think most of you guys are pretty familiar with it. And I said, Bill, I don’t think I like that idea Bill. I like to call my customers and I want to sell the customer a repair. And Bill says, Tom, just trust but verify, I think is what you say, bill, give me a chance. And it was the second inspection I sent to a customer before I called him anyway, so I send the inspection to the customer and then she called me about 10 minutes later, just like Bill said she would.
(00:18:21):
And she said, oh, Tom, I was looking over the inspection and I opened it up and I had my estimate all ready to go. So we go through all the, she needed breaks and I think it was an intake leak or whatever it was. So we got to the end and I gave her a total, and she said, Tom, that’s great, and I want to have all of that done, but you didn’t say anything about the brake flush. And I said, what are you talking about? And the customer says, well, on the inspection you sent me, there was a brake flush needed. And I opened the inspection up and when I was building the estimate, I completely overlooked that brake flush. Wow. So it was neat to see and trust but verify, but I was able to see that Bill was right in this case.
(00:19:04):
And it’s been nice to look at it a little bit different. And we know we’ve always just been informing the customer, educating the customer, letting ’em know what’s wrong with their vehicle and letting them decide. That’s always been our approach, but this is even better because they can read it, they can do the research and see why do I need a brake flush? Maybe it should be Googled it. And she was very important to her. I don’t know that. But it’s nice to see that the systems that Bill and AutoVitals have taught us and that we’ve implemented, they’ve just worked tenfold
Bill Connor (00:19:51):
With the quality of the inspections between what you used to do and what your technicians are producing with the guided inspection. Can you talk about a little bit about their ease of adoption through that new process using that particular tool?
Tom Braun (00:20:06):
Yeah. I mean, it’s great. With the guided inspection, it’s nice because my favorite thing is the pictures, right? Because pre covid our program was get the customers in, get the vehicle inspected, get the customer in the shop and show ’em what’s wrong. And now we’re still doing that. We’re still getting the vehicle in the shop and getting it inspected and showing the customer what’s wrong. We’re just doing it in a virtual way. So with the guided inspection form, the nice part about it is as they go through the inspection form, it says if you mark something as a failure, it shows you an example of what type of a picture you should take to support that type of a failure. And then also it has pre-written relevant customer notes. And they’re written so well that again, Bill and I talked up front and I said, well, Bill, I think I’d like to write all the customer notes. And Bill said, you’re crazy. You don’t through that’s, you don’t want to go through all that. He says, just do a couple inspections, read the notes and see what you think. And truthfully, the written in a way that I just couldn’t agree with more, every note that a customer sees is they’re a hundred percent spot on and I haven’t changed any of them.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:36):
And this is the exciting part, right? You’ve, the year that you went through non-integrated inspection, getting the inspection process down is great. It’s great for the tech and building those habits. But now not only do you get access to the data, but then you get access to these other workflow features and communication features that really are going to allow you, I mean the increase, the 80% or 90% increase, whatever it is that you had in your ARO in the beginning here is just, I’m wondering where you’re going to end up in the six hundreds.
Tom Braun (00:22:16):
Yeah. Well, that’d be great.
Tom Dorsey (00:22:18):
I’m sure. Yeah.
Tom Braun (00:22:20):
I hope there’s no limit to it. Hey,
Tom Dorsey (00:22:22):
So talk to us because here’s another challenge and just I want to get, so folks realize Tom came to us, we couldn’t integrate. He says, I’m not going to take no for an answer. I’m going to work on the point of sale provider. I’m going to work on corporate, I’m going to work on AutoVitals. And really it’s what he did. I mean, gosh, it was probably six, eight months went by and then we’re all of a sudden we’re all sitting at the table together and we’re having this discussion. And Tom drove it through the entire time. The other challenge though that you have is you’re the type operation in your customer demographic. There’s not a lot of, say, tire centric or even tire service or quick lube type operations that are running a full digital inspection and workflow management. A lot of ’em will say, it just takes too long. It’s just not conducive. My customers feel like I’m trying to pressure or bully or whatever, sell them stuff. Talk to us a little bit about how that’s working out because you’re really kind of blazing the trail as it comes to defining the best practices for converting a tire shopper into purchasing, maintenance and repair.
Tom Braun (00:23:32):
Well, and that’s something that you train your customers on. New customers are always going to need a little bit more time upfront. And that’s kind of like what I was talking about as when we brought this program on. It was a complete reboot from the words at the front counter all the way to the sales presentation. So when you have a new customer come in, just train the person who’s at the front counter to educate the customer of what to expect. I found that over the years most we’re going to all have those 10 percenters. I think everybody knows the 10 percenters, but 90% of your customer base, 90% of the people that visit, they want to know what’s going on with their vehicle. So it’s a service. Now we provide the complete digital inspection at no charge to our customers. That’s something that we’ve always done from the beginning and now we just, it’s a huge selling.
Tom Dorsey (00:24:43):
So even if somebody was coming in for just mountain balance or something, bought some tires online coming in mountain balance, and you’re going to knock out the full digital inspection, you tell them that upfront. Yep. Now, have you found that it scares ’em away or that there’s any negative feedback?
Tom Braun (00:25:00):
There are going to be some people, and we have had some people that shied away a little bit. But when you explain to them that, look, my job, and this is the way I approach it, is our job is to inspect your vehicle and educate you, let you know what you have going on at that point. It’s completely up to you, Mr. And Mrs. Customer, if you’re here for tires and we find that you need ball joints, I’m going to tell you about it because it’s going to wear these tires. If you want them, we’d be happy to do the repairs for you. If not, then we’re going to provide you with this report that tells you the state, the health of your vehicle. So yes, upfront. I mean, there are some people who, I’m trying to think how to say it. The people go to the shop and they say, you just tell ’em all you’re here for is them tires. And my dad said, all I want are these tires, right? And that’s okay. Yeah, that’s great. All we’re going to do is your tires today, but while it’s in, I’d like to give you something for free. And we do it for free. So that’s why we do it for free because we just want to give it to everybody and let them decide.
(00:26:28):
I work hard on keeping the lobby clean, looking good and comfortable, and not real shopping, more of a comfortable space to wait and watch tv. And we have plants and flowers and drinks. And so it’s all about comfort and making the customer feel that one, they’re not being taken advantage of because you never want to take advantage of a customer. And unfortunately in the automotive repair business, we have this little bit of a reputation from whoever gave us that reputation. So we have to overcome that, and we overcome that by transparency. That’s what it is. So with the digital inspection, you let ’em know upfront, this is what I’m doing and this is what you can expect. We have customers that come in and they say, Hey, I need an oil change. I need it right now. How long? Okay, we can do it for you. It’s going to take about 45 minutes and well, 45 minutes for an oil change. Well, it’s not just an oil change. And some customers, they won’t even wait for it. You’ll get one a month that just, they’re not into it. And that’s okay too because the ridden right, because there’s 15 or 20 the
Tom Dorsey (00:27:48):
Door for you
Tom Braun (00:27:49):
Right behind them that want the good quality experience and service. And then the oil change, we kind of view the oil change as a necessary side thing. The main thing is the inspection and the way we treat the customer and present it to them
Tom Dorsey (00:28:11):
And plant the seeds. I know you worked directly with Tom for quite a bit, Linda and Kind was really involved in the process to integrate and to develop it. I know you kind came out of it pretty excited and you had a lot of, I’ve known Uwe for a long time now, and I know when Uwe gets inspired and then Uwe gets on, it starts inventing stuff in his sleep even. And I know when you came out of it, you really inspired, I think to tackle the tire, the challenge of tire operations. And I know Tommy, you guys are tire and service and probably moving away as much as possible from being tire centric and being seen as a service center. And there’s still a lot of people out there though that are trying to follow that lead that are trying to make that transition. So if you could talk to us a little bit about where do you see what are the big challenges and how do you from the inventor’s perspective, seek to solve those?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:29:18):
Yeah, thanks. I mean, Tom described a pretty well already. People have a certain goal coming in and then a comprehensive inspection wouldn’t fit in the time schedule. And if the usefulness of the results is not clear to the customer, you can spin your wheels and you not get follow up work. And so we basically were trying to help, I mean, there’s no replacement for selling the value of an inspection results to the customer that needs to be done in some fashion. So it was at the counter an example, Tom, do you have an example of a good inspection results hanging around somewhere or bookmarked on a screen and show it or something like that? Because people are normally super impressed by the visual, oh, this is what I’m going to get from my car. And then most people say yes because of that. But back to Tom’s point, Tom, can I call you Dorsey so we can distinguish whatever you want thing one and thing
Tom Braun (00:30:41):
Two.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:30:45):
So we did guide it and Bill mentioned it already and we talked about it because it really helps expedite a lot of steps and keeps even on the pressure of the process consistent. But the other thing we’ve done is split the inspection into two parts. And if there’s really a adamant customer says, that’s exactly what I’m here for, do 15 instead of 50 inspection points, the 45 minutes is going to be 20 and present it and make sure those items cover the safety items because I don’t know how Michigan’s laws are, but you might be liable for a non detected safety issue when you let the car off the lot. I don’t know how that is in Michigan. So there should be at least some safety checks involved. And so long story short, guided makes it super simple for technicians under pressure and service advisors under time pressure and structure. The inspection result the inspection sheet in a way that you can do it in stages, do a short 15 point first, present it to the customer and invite them to do the rest, showing a full comprehensive inspection result, how valuable that is.
Tom Braun (00:32:24):
And to your point there, for example, with the brakes and the brake inspection, that’s a great area that you can talk about where it’s something we do free tire rotations with an oil change for customers. And the reason we do that is because we want the wheels off so we can easily see the brake. So you get the customer on that every other or however they want to do it. But if the wheels aren’t coming off, and a lot of technicians probably on and listening to this, a lot of us know you can look through the wheel and you can get an idea of the condition of the brakes. But with the inspection form, the guided inspection form, it doesn’t necessarily when a technician marks that the brakes need attention, it doesn’t say, Hey, your brakes need to be replaced. It says, Hey, your brakes need a complete brake inspection. So when the customer gets that, so you’re not jumping into necessarily a sale on everything. You’re identifying areas that need attention. And then you can have that conversation with the customer and that customer might say, oh, well, great thanks, but my son, he’s a certified brake technician, but that’s all he knows. So you get all different kinds of things out there, but at least you identify the system failure and then you can have that discussion with the customer to do more of an in-depth inspection on that system or that part of that failure.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:57):
And Tom, if you could talk a little bit about from an operational perspective, right, because a lot of times you hear from, gosh, we just don’t have the time, or do you have a teamwork thing set up where maybe I’m the guy who’s pulling the wheels off and I’m going to go balance, and while I’m on the balancer, maybe the guy next to me comes and just knocks out those brake measurements and a couple of pictures and then he goes back to what he’s doing. And what I’m getting at is from a quick volume, high volume type perspective, we can still get pretty comprehensive if we work in those types of stages. Talk to us a little bit about how you have that set up in your shop from an operations perspective.
Tom Braun (00:34:42):
Well, for an operations perspective in our shop, we recently reworked the way bonuses happen. So I believe that everybody in the shop should have an opportunity to make a bonus. Previously, we worked on more as an individual bonus structure. Now everybody has their own little bonus structure, but they go into bonus. We go into a bonus as a shop. So when we hit our 10% over break even is when bonus starts kicking in. And then they have milestones that we have to make in there based on sales and gross profit. So that’s one thing that we did to increase the teamwork aspect of it. Now managing it has always been a challenge. And this is something I tried probably two years ago. It didn’t really work out. So we went back to individual bonus structure. And now with AutoVitals, with the fully integrated system, every technician has their own device.
(00:35:49):
And we use the iPads, but everybody has their own iPads. So if I know, because I’m at the front counter, I can see that a customer is at their limit. We all know the pace that keep looking up at you while you’re sitting at your computer. We all know those uncomfortable body language things. So we can see that. And from that point, we can simply just type a message to that technician saying, Hey, I want you to go help technician A, B technician B go help technician A, finish this inspection up, help him get these tires balanced, or whatever. Their alarm goes off on the iPad out there. They get the message, they select the tee time that says they’re assisting another technician and they’re off.
(00:36:43):
So that’s been huge. It is just easy to communicate with the guys what the next step is on the technician view page, the little icons that pop up, I worked with Bill to make an icon for each one of our suppliers. So we have a little O’Reilly’s and it’s green and napa’s blue. So when the parts are coming from a certain vendor, we can indicate that to the technician. One of the things that we did too is we have on either end of the shop, in the shop, we have a big screen TV that also has the technician view page up on it all the time. So we make those changes just at a glance, the technician can look up and see, oh, my parts are coming from O’Reilly’s without necessarily going back to their iPad on their cart. They can see what’s coming next and they can view it on their iPad as well.
Tom Dorsey (00:37:46):
Having a scoreboard at either end of the field,
Tom Braun (00:37:51):
It’s cool, man. I’m telling you,
Tom Dorsey (00:37:55):
And I think it’s brilliant, right, is when you structure your bonus plan that way, now everybody’s involved and everybody’s pulling to the same goal. And that’s when that board starts to make a lot of, it gets a lot of use because now we’re really paying attention to it because we’re driving for that production bonus. And everybody’s, like you said, it’s transparency for the customer, but then there’s also transparency internally in between team members. And that helps a, it’s just like being on a football team. You miss your block, everybody’s going to tell you about it in the next huddle, and then you’re going to go 110% the next play. And that’s really what happens. And so when you’re introducing something like this that can be very disruptive and it can be, there’s a lot of work before there’s some payoff. That’s why, and I’m sure Bill’s been working with you to achieve those quick wins, you probably heard quick wins coming out enough from us to say, Hey.
(00:38:46):
And then once they start paying off, you go, aha, I understand why they’re driving those quick wins. Because that’s what it takes for them to get the little taste and then really go after it hard. And so how’s it been from the tech perspective? I mean, you introduced, because I got to tell you, I’d really like to get a follow up episode almost where we can bring in some of your guys and even interview ’em because you took a pretty hard road, you went through the non-integrated side of it and there’s not a lot of data and you don’t know if you’re doing it right, there’s not a lot of help and you got to kind of just figure it out and then to go into the guided where it’s almost, Hey, are they like, Hey, I’ve done all this work. I’m so expert at it now because of what I’ve been through. I don’t need this guided. Or did they see it as really a relief to have the structure and the guidance around it and really be able to get a process in place as they complete those inspections?
Tom Braun (00:39:50):
I haven’t had, and we still use the guided mode, we still use the guided inspection sheet today, the technicians it. I’ve had no complaints as far as that goes. Originally when we first went to the digital inspection, all my technicians were flat rate and their concern. And if you have flat rate technicians out there and you’re looking at making a major change that is going to cost them time, they’re going to be concerned about it. And so you might do something like, we did a one month because we give free inspections, so we don’t pay on inspections as flat rate technicians. But when we integrated the systems and we went to the digital, I did, we gave ’em three tenths just to offset some of that. And it was only for a month. So the expectation wasn’t for it to go forward past that first month.
(00:40:50):
But the other cool thing is it tracks your times. So you can show a technician, hey, and start off, Hey, you’re doing a paper inspection. How long does it take you to do the paper inspection? And my guys were saying, they were telling me a half hour, okay, alright, fine. Half hour. So in all fairness, when we get down to a half hour on a digital inspection, now we’re even, we’re breaking even. And if we can get it done faster than that, now we’re all winning even you as a flat rate tech. And now I’d say the guys are, and I haven’t looked at the report recently, but I’d say we’re probably in the 15 to 20 minutes on an inspection now. And like I said, the inspections we’re getting just to reiterate, are way more complete than they ever were before. And I’ll add additionally to that, the inspections that we were doing digitally before the guided inspection. So our guided inspection is 36 points. We touched 36 points before the guided inspection. It was 19 points, is that right? Yeah. So we went from a 19 point inspection to 36 points and still I’d say the slowest tech is still probably 10 minutes faster. That’s incredible, man.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:42:16):
For the pudding, can we revisit a few other numbers? I expected we are going to scream from the rooftops at the beginning of the, so when we looked at your numbers yesterday, if we project and annualize everything, your ARO increase enables you for $5,000 more revenue per week.
Tom Braun (00:42:42):
Per week
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:42:43):
With less staff or the same staff.
Tom Braun (00:42:46):
And we are, as of it was January, 2020, we lost one technician. So we’re one guy. So we were running five techs and now we’re running four. And our average ARO, like I said, it went up from 332 to 409
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:43:04):
And you have about 60, 50, 60 cars a week, right?
Tom Braun (00:43:07):
Yeah. We work, it’s about 60 cars,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:43:09):
60 calls. And you’re still maintaining
Tom Dorsey (00:43:11):
That even being down to one tech.
Tom Braun (00:43:14):
Yeah. And like you said once, and you said that number earlier, but the average AROover the last whatever it was, 60 days is even up even up even more than that. But over the year it’s at 410 or 409.
(00:43:31):
So yeah, it’s huge. We are going to be with everything that went on with Covid and all the different states out there had different shutdowns and different things happening to ’em. And for us in Michigan for a while there they pretty much shut everything down. We were down to just one technician and myself, everybody else was laid off in April. It was very slow. But even in just looking at some of those numbers, we still ran a $469 ticket average in April. But you got to remember, I have my best technician, the one who follows procedures exactly, and myself. So the two of us doing the things that following the protocol and following the procedures the way they’re supposed to be done, we were able to see that high ticket average, a low car count, which was one of the things that helped us. I mean, it helped us get through that slow time.
Bill Connor (00:44:37):
So when you switched from your inspection or your dispatching on the spreadsheet to the today’s vehicle page, watching setting your goals for the technician, watching the green, yellow red bars communicating digitally, talk about how you’re using that differently and the type of data that you have right down to knowing where your technicians are in their goals on a daily basis, not having to wait for the end of the day, week or pay period to find out they’re short.
Tom Braun (00:45:06):
Well, I mean, that’s exactly right, Bill. At first, again, it was constant reminding, constant reminding the technicians. And the beautiful part, I’m going to plug it again, is you just type a little message and then the alarm goes off and it says, yeah, hey, pick a car or tee time, you got to be working on a car or a tee time. No activity is no good. So just keeping the guys on that. And we talked about things like, hey, the tee times are so important because especially talking about a flat rate technician who gets paid for what they do upfront, my guys are like, I don’t understand why I got to do this. It doesn’t make sense to me. And it’s like, well, I said, well, let’s talk about something. Let’s say everybody wants to make more money. You ask any technician out there, they all want to make more money.
(00:45:58):
So I say to my technician, you want to make more money? We can, after we do this and we do this correctly, we can pull those numbers. And when I pull those numbers, if I see that you’re waiting on parts 20% of your day every day, then I got to procedurally we got to fix something. But if it shows me that you’re outside smoking cigarettes 20% of your day, well then it’s something you got to work on. So it’s not, I think for my guys upfront, the tee times thing was a little bit, I don’t want to say hard because just explaining it to ’em like that it made sense, but getting ’em to understand that it’s something that can be used to better the whole building. We’re trying to build this team, this environment where when I win as an owner, everybody wins. And that’s the way I feel about it. That’s the way I hope I portray myself to the guys. And that’s the way I treat. So like you said, Bill, you add these TeE Times in, you want ’em to make sure they’re selecting them because red is no good. So we want green.
(00:47:12):
Like I said before, we give three tents for an inspection when a car comes in. And the reason we did that, we changed it, is not that we’re paying the flat rate technicians three tenths, but we add three tenths to the ticket so that when they pull an inspection up, it shows green for three-tenths, right? And after that it goes red so that we can monitor that. So like I say, as a service advisor trying to steer the ship, Bill says you’re trying to keep service advisor on the perch and you can monitor that. Now I can monitor, when I was out with Covid, I was out of the shop for 11 days and you’re able to log in from home and I can watch what’s going on and fire off the
Tom Dorsey (00:48:04):
Chats
Tom Braun (00:48:05):
And fire off the chats from home. And likewise though, I would’ve pre my little quarantine. I would’ve said, yeah, we’re procedurally 100%, but I had to stay home for 10 days and I wasn’t in the building. And previous to that, I like to think, yeah, my guys did their thing. My manager and my service advisor, they do it. I don’t do it, but I’ve built, we ran a number this morning and we looked at it and my ticket average was down, the ticket average was down under 400 those 10 days. And so I told Bill, I said, Bill, well now I know it is time to, I got to retrain, we got to retrain, we got to go over the policies and the procedures one more time. And Bill says, well, you don’t got to start at the beginning. That’s the good news is now. And we ran some reports and Bill says, well, when you were out, the inspections weren’t getting done a hundred percent. And we were right around a 50% inspection. I think you said Bill, right?
(00:49:17):
So now that I’m back, all of a sudden the inspections are getting done again. So from an owner’s perspective, or for me, you had mentioned earlier that I am looking to be going to the multi-store ownership, and I have to be able to see, know those things right now and be able to address ’em. And it’s so powerful to be able to spend that time, that little bit of time you have as a multi-store owner to address what’s important or what’s actually the symptom was the sales were down, but the cause of that failure was incomplete inspections. So we were able to identify that without retraining the whole staff.
Tom Dorsey (00:50:02):
Exactly. And you don’t have to go through digging through video tape or security camera footage or going in and calling ’em in individually and reading ’em the riot act and all of that. You get to go right into the data, to the meat and potatoes and see exactly what needs to be done and take an action. And that’s what helps to develop that muscle memory where you’re at, right? You’ve got to develop and get them bought in so that it happens automatically. Once you’re at that point, then you can just review and there’s less enforcement that’s required.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:50:43):
Can I switch topics a little bit because I’m super curious about how you deal with people who just come in for tires? Yeah, yeah, that’s what I was about earlier. It kind of similar to oil change. It’s one of those things where there’s not a lot of margin in it. And so specifically, how do you make them curious about the inspection? And number two, do you use any device to measure tread depth or otherwise hunter or similar things or do you use manual tire gauges or how do you deal with tire customers?
Tom Braun (00:51:21):
Well, tire customers are a little bit different. They still get the inspection, but they don’t typically get the inspection until it’s in the building. A lot of the tire business comes shopped on the phone. So customers will call, Hey, how much for this size tire, whatever. And we still try, and I’m not afraid to tell ’em what the price of a tire or any repairs over the phone. I’m not afraid to do that. It’s not my first line of defense. I always want to get the car here. Of course, that’s number one. We’ve always known that, right?
(00:52:07):
But with the tire customer, just yesterday we had a customer who we haven’t seen in a while, but she came in the store and she said, Hey, I need tires. And I had a car on every bay. And so the way I handle is I grabbed the manual tire gauge tread depth gauge, and I went out in the parking lot and just did the quick tire inspection for her. And we talked about different kinds of tires or whatever. And the tires she wanted, we had to order and they came in this morning, car was in, she dropped it off this morning as well, and that’s when we went through and did the complete inspection on it.
(00:52:51):
It’s hard to get the time with a vehicle to do a complete inspection before you have, unless now the other thing you can do is when you go out to look at the tires, if you do go out in the parking lot, or if the customer says, oh, just my right front is wearing real uneven, you can sell ’em on an inspection based on that uneven tire wear. Because to talk about buying a set of tires, even on a, I mean, it was a Chrysler 200 and she had $600 in tires before the alignment. So if you’re fortunate enough to see some uneven tire wear, that’s where my conversation tends to focus. Not necessarily on the tires. Again, the worn tire is the symptom. We want to know what’s causing it.
Bill Connor (00:53:40):
So you take the approach, we know that you need tires, how can we help you protect that investment?
Tom Braun (00:53:45):
Yes, exactly right. And I’ll tell ’em, look, I don’t want to just sell you tires so they can wear out in a year and you can be back and I can buy another set of tires. And that’s not what my job is. They’re designed to last 70,000 miles, provided the suspension can support those tires for 70,000 miles.
Tom Dorsey (00:54:04):
And that’s why it’s really important if you have ’em, like your hunter quick check, or even the groove glove or some of the other visual tire testing tools is so great, the ones that we integrate with that we can put right into the inspection results once they see that visual modeling of how that tire is uneven, and then it starts to all make sense, right? Oh yeah, the tire rod’s here, or these bushings or whatever it might be, the need for the alignment becomes evident. You just can’t argue with it. And it’s funny, I was thinking that when you were talking earlier about how the dad will send the kid down, you just get the tires and then the guy knows it all about cars and then comes home with the digital inspection and he goes, did they let you leave with those bushings? Why didn’t he fix? That’s going to flip them just like that because hey, I know everything about cars. Right?
Tom Braun (00:54:58):
And it’s true. We had a customer who again, when we first started doing the digital inspections and sending them, like Bill said, sending them out, I had a customer who called me and he says, oh, you got notes on this inspection about the check engine. I just had it in for brake or whatever the other suspension or whatever it was. And I explained to him, I said, look, that’s okay. That’s what we’re working on. This is a service that we’re giving. This is a gift. This is everything we found on your vehicle. We understand this is maybe the budget’s not there, maybe, but now you have information that you didn’t have before and that’s because you’re our customer.
(00:55:45):
And it turned into, we ended up doing a bunch more work for him, but at first when he called, he was upset because he felt he didn’t know it was going to come. And so that’s why it’s so important up at the counter to prep them for that. They don’t know it’s going to come if they don’t know what to expect. I mean, it’s just like anything else. If you were going into surgery and you didn’t know what it was going to be like, I mean, it would freak you out. But if you knew everything, what to expect, oh yeah, well, the doctor said this was going to happen. So it’s kind of the same thing.
Tom Dorsey (00:56:15):
Yeah, no, you got to set ’em up. Like you said, it’s the transparency and also it’s educating that customer is the type of shop we run. You’re going to have this service every time you come in and what you do with it. I mean, I’m not going to twist your arm or I can’t twist your arm, but I am going to provide you with the information. And it covers not only that motorist from a safety perspective, but also your business, right, is, Hey, we looked at these things, we documented this, we told you these things, you should have fixed it.
Tom Braun (00:56:46):
Having the time and date stamped on the pictures right in the system is brilliant. I mean,
Bill Connor (00:56:51):
So one of the things that Uwe actually said just a minute ago is really important to realize. We always talk about building trust with the pictures, but if you go ahead and take into consideration that if you have the groove glove or hunter or whatever, a picture with a measurement not only is building trust, but it’s something that can be verified and repeated if they want to go get a second opinion somewhere else. So having that picture with the measurement on it that can be acquired really quickly is worth a hell of a lot more than even a picture that we already know is highly valuable.
Tom Braun (00:57:23):
Right.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:25):
That’s a great point. Gosh, we’re at top of the hour, guys. We’ve got about three minutes left. If anybody didn’t get your questions in or have comments or questions, chat man hit that chat button or the q and a. Oops, I got a question in, and here I am.
Bill Connor (00:57:41):
I’m answering
Tom Dorsey (00:57:42):
It. Oh, okay. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, asking to publish the inspection sheet. So we’ll get that out to you, and it’ll be in the link there, Tommy. I really appreciate it.
Bill Connor (00:57:56):
I believe Tom is actually using the AutoVitals X Vehicle health inspection in the library.
Tom Braun (00:58:02):
That’s the guided form that we’re using.
Bill Connor (00:58:04):
Yeah, the guided one.
Tom Dorsey (00:58:05):
Yeah, the guided one. And we
Tom Braun (00:58:07):
Added to it, Bill, remember, we added the exhaust onto it. So it went from 30 to 36 points. We added a couple things.
Bill Connor (00:58:14):
Oh, just because you live in a rust area,
Tom Braun (00:58:15):
Area. Yeah, we live, yeah.
Tom Dorsey (00:58:19):
But for all of you shops that live in the Rust belt right there in your library, and I was going to bring that up earlier when you were talking about that, how you went and Secret Shop to collect all of those inspection results. Another kind of side benefit of being an AutoVitals customers, we have a huge library of folks like Tom and everybody else out there, and thank you. If you’ve done so, you can share your inspection sheet. And so when you’re new or when you are looking for specialization, it’s nice to be able to go in and see this shop did a heavy duty inspection, an electrical suspension inspection, and created those. And then you can just add and subtract things like you added exhaust and make it your own. And so not only do you get a great perspective of how other people are doing it and how other shops are kind of thinking and solving those problems, but you get a big head start and it’s a lot less work to get it done.
(00:59:12):
Now, tackling, recreating the guided inspection is a whole other animal. But I mean, the payoff is huge when you look at the potential that you get out of doing that because you’re adding the images and you’re adding the notes, and you’re adding all of those things that are canned to help the technician become more efficient. And so it’s really a good investment in time because the payoff is evergreen, right? As long as you continue to use it, it’s going to continue to pay for you, pay off for you. So don’t be shy. And then of course, talk to your AutoVitals advisors. They’re old hats at this stuff. They’re going to help you out. They’re going to give you good guidance. Get in the Facebook forum and ask some questions. Don’t be shy because folks have gone through it and they’re going to give you and point you in the right direction, help you to avoid some of them pitfalls and give you some really good tips on how to create the most comprehensive and effective inspection program, if that’s what you’re looking to do.
(01:00:13):
Tommy, anything else before we get, I mean, like I said, I could do a whole other show. We’ve only just scratched the surface really on some of the, I think really the insights that you can provide and that you are providing through this take no prisoner attitude decided I’m going to have this thing and nobody’s going to tell me no. And then here we are. And it’s really, like I said, I’m really excited to see the next level. I mean, we’re already at four and a half, six and a half I think is right around the corner once you really get all those processes in place. And it sounds like you’ve got a great team in there backing you up.
Tom Braun (01:00:50):
Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s huge. Having a great team. Just explain for me too, my advice would be to new people who are going to be using this or thinking about onboarding with it, is just be honest with your staff about what you’re trying to do, what your goals are, get ’em involved in it, and Bill’s favorite thing, trust, but verify. The systems are there, they work. But Bill says, don’t take my word for it. Prove it. And they do. And over and over Bill has proved to me, and AutoVitals has proved to me that the programs there, the systems work, and they’ve proven it. And I’ve proven it to be true in my shop.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:35):
Yes, buddy. That’s right.
Tom Braun (01:01:36):
Trust the systems.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:37):
Proof is in the pudding. Proof is in the pudding. So Tom, we really appreciate you coming on. We’re excited to have you on and really get this kind of story told, and I’m glad we got it done, buddy.
Tom Braun (01:01:49):
We’ve only just started. We got plenty more to go.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:53):
Yeah. Be careful what you wish for because now the heavy lifting starts, but it’s good lifting. It’s building those muscles and preparation for multi centers and just continued success, man. I mean, it’s not like I got to wish you anything. It’d be hard to stop you. I would imagine you’re like a dog off the chain and you’re going to go get it. So looking forward to having you back on and kind of follow up to see where you increase. Maybe we’ll give you a few months sometime in the summer, something bring you on and see where we’re at because that’s good stuff. Uwe, you got anything before we get?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:02:26):
No, I’m blown away, Tom. It’s really heartwarming to see that, like Tom said, you didn’t take no phone answer and just showed in a really, really short period of time what’s possible and you haven’t even scratched the surface. Right? Right, and that’s just all the time we spend and I hope I talk for Bill too with the results like that. Congratulations.
Bill Connor (01:03:01):
Thank you. As long as he keeps scoring them touchdowns and then moving the goalpost, then I’m happy for him. Exactly.
Tom Dorsey (01:03:11):
Makes all that time and effort worthwhile, right? We get to see another great success story, American Small Business, and for all your other Tuffy locations out there, if you’re in a similar franchise, it doesn’t have to be franchise. You think you’re in a quick serve type business and you can’t sell that maintenance and repair, right? Here’s the guy who’s going to prove you wrong. Follow in his footsteps. Just take that leap. We like to say reach out to us, reach out to Tom Braun. He’ll tell you all about it, and he’s not shy. You can find him Tuffy in Clinton Township, Michigan, Google him and give him a call. Reach out on Facebook forum talking to other folks that are in the same boat and just see what the potential is. Give it a shot. I mean, what’s worst going to happen doesn’t work for you.
(01:03:51):
Okay. You tried find something that will Tom Braun did. He said, I’m going to make this work for me, and here we are, and I mean 80, 90% increase in ARO actually with less people on the team, same car count. I mean, that’s all money that he’s hauling to the bank, getting ready to open up. You can do it too. You just got to pick up the phone and get started. Okay. Next week we’re going to have Jill Trotta on coming to us from Repair Pal. We’re going to be talking again, a nice segue off of this. We’re talking transparency. We’re talking digital consumer transparency and how important it is and why you can’t avoid it and you can’t fight it. Just like your digital inspection that’s helping you. We want to see a digital consumer really wants to see that full bit of transparency and the good shops that are out there take advantage of that, and so we’re excited to have Jill Rado on next week. Tune in for that 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. Until then, get out there and make some more money like Tom Braun did.
Bill Connor (01:04:59):
Awesome.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:05:00):
Thank you, Tom.
Bill Connor (01:05:01):
Thank you.