2020 Year in Review

On the first episode of The Digital Shop Talk Radio in 2021, we are joined by William Rimmer and Ashley Payne from Cooper Lake Automotive to look back to 2020’s successes and challenges, and look ahead to what’s in store for them in the new year…and play for big virtual bucks in a “Millionaire-style” trivia game.

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. Who Wants to be a Digital Shop Millionaire? So you might remember when we had our Jeopardy episode with our three extremely brave contestants looking to gamify some of our best practice educational content. And so today’s episode we’re going to give it another shot with Who Wants to be a Digital Shop Millionaire. And we have a fab view list guest with us today, Bill Rimmer from Cooper Lake Automotive in Smyrna, Georgia. And he’s going to be joined by Ashley Payne. She’s busy, the shop is jumping like all digital shops should be and so she’ll be joining us here in a little bit and they are going to be our brave first contestants on Who Wants to be a Digital Shop Millionaire. And as always, we’ve got Uwe Kleinschmidt joining us. He’s going to be our expert panel of experts today and Bill Rimmer. Welcome buddy. Thank you very much for attending and being brave enough to be the first contestant.
Bill Rimmer (00:01:07):
Well, thank you. I didn’t realize I was the first contestant, but I’ll take, I appreciate y’all calling me up. I wasn’t planning on doing this, but I’m always up to talk about AutoVitals. I enjoy the product.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:21):
Well, and I’ll tell you what he didn’t even have to do. Well maybe they kicked it around for a second. Ashley said, I think Bill would be better. And Bill said, you know, why didn’t you ask Ashley? And I said, well how about both of you? And I got to tell you, we just got the thing hammered out and so I called him yesterday. And so that’s really appreciate Bill and thank you for almost without hesitation jumping in on short notice and coming on and share a little bit about your shop with us. How did 2020 treat you? How are things going in Georgia? You guys got a big, you’re making national news today. I think he got an election going on down there.
Bill Rimmer (00:01:54):
Yeah, we got this election. I’ll be glad when the election’s over, you can’t imagine the number of stupid text messages telling you how to vote. It’s ridiculous. But the Corona virus last year, I mean I was happy. We never had to close the day, didn’t have to lay anyone off and everyone made the same or more money than 2019. Wow. That was pretty important for me. Overall, the shop was down 8%. We had three employees including me, get coronavirus and I got it over Christmas, so it ruined my holidays. I’ve only been back to work for three days. Oh my
Tom Dorsey (00:02:35):
Goodness. You’re just getting over. Yeah,
Bill Rimmer (00:02:38):
Old man, it’s a lot harder than these young people. They get it. They’re like nothing. No problem. You know what I’m saying? So yeah, we were down over overall 8%, which I feel like it’s pretty good considering
Tom Dorsey (00:02:49):
Buddy.
Bill Rimmer (00:02:50):
One of the months we were down 60% because they actually locked down the state, which we were open. But if no one is driving or no one is going anywhere and everyone’s scared crapless because of the news, they’re not coming to get the car fixed. I mean especially when your car’s sitting there for three months and not even being drove. So when they started opening back up, it was wrecker city and so we were able to overcome a lot of the valley there, which I knew it was going to be. We had had six months reserves to make sure that we could pay everyone and pay everything if no one even walked in the door for six months. That’s what I had budgeted myself. I normally have more than that, but I bought a new house in 2020, so that took away some of my capital. But yeah, I normally try to stay at 20, at six full months of all expenses, all employees salary if we do no work.
Tom Dorsey (00:03:46):
That’s incredible.
Bill Rimmer (00:03:48):
And we were doing a little bit of work, so even though we were losing, that still extends my six months. Right. You’re supposed to do 10,000 a day and you do two that still extends you a little bit over time.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:02):
You must have a German ancestor.
Bill Rimmer (00:04:05):
Pardon me?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:04:07):
I said you must have a German’s ancestors with six months in the bank.
Bill Rimmer (00:04:14):
Yeah, well cash is king. Right,
Tom Dorsey (00:04:18):
Right. No, it’s brilliant. I mean it’s great that you were prepared for that. I’m sure the crew appreciate it. And it’s a common theme when we’re talking to digital shop operators is that really 2020 turned out in a lot of aspects to be an opportunity. Yeah. Sales might’ve been down or flat over a previous year, but I mean that’s a big win when you shut down the economy and like you said, nobody was driving and to come through that planning for growth this year, being able to keep people on staff, I mean that’s an incredible win. That’s a victory in the face of this pandemic, that’s for sure. And actually, bill, you’ve been with AutoVitals I think probably since the beginning of time. I know you guys went TVPX back maybe end of summer, and so you’ve had add your hands into the update. How’s that been working out for you?
Bill Rimmer (00:05:15):
Oh, it’s really good. We were just talking about before the podcast about the Facebook battles over the technicians putting arrows and stuff. I think the new system is way better than the old ones. I’ve been there so long, it’s so different than when I started that people that are signing up now wouldn’t even probably be able to use that old system. So don’t get me wrong, it was way better than what existed. But this system is far head and shoulders above the old system. So last year we also integrated, we also switched from all data managed to Protractor and the AutoVitals works a times better with protractors, it’s faster, the tiles are created faster, the whole stop is streamlined faster just because it’s just so much better. The ProTrac, the way that it puts the jobs on there and everything. Now don’t get me wrong, all be it would do some of that, but God, that system took forever to update compared to this system. So we enjoyed that
Tom Dorsey (00:06:20):
And that was a big part of the objective of creating the TVPX was just to get faster performance. It was kind of really clean it up and tighten it up and all those kind of imperceptible even changes. The stuff that happens in the back end have a big result on the front end when you notice the performance is increased, tiles don’t drop, you just get more efficient and that really was the key. And that switch to Protractor I’m sure helped a lot because yeah, like you said, we’ve got really robust integration with Protractor and it’s almost immediate. And then the data being able to feed back and forth is just really incredible. It’s leaps and bounds over, especially when you first got started with us buddy, that one a Kickstarter, you had to Kickstarter every morning. You had to make sure you pulled the choke half joke. Yeah.
Bill Rimmer (00:07:07):
Yeah. Look, the old system was still great. We made lots of money off there. So I mean there’s some things that I don’t agree with, but it’s always going to be like that. One of my suggestions is I think you’re underselling your value because for an example, we have about twice the deferred work of the amount of work we do. So if we have $180,000 month, we’ll have about 300,000 ish in deferred work. Some of these people, this kind of deferred work’s not something that you need to fix right this second. So they’ll save up six, do a big job, some of this stuff, they’ll save up six months come in, we don’t check the car. Well, we only do an inspection of course every car, but we don’t recheck that same thing. We just come and do whatever we recommended. That wouldn’t count on your AutoVitals how much money you sold.
(00:08:01):
It’s only within two weeks right when they come back. So if you do a deferred job within two weeks, auto valve counts that as from the inspection money earned. So a lot of our money has recurred to where we used to have flatter spots in the year because we had this giant fair we’d kill our business. Those days are long over now it’s more flattened our curve if you want to say. Now we take appointments about three to six days in advance. We used to not do any appointments, it was all like, but the deferred work and stuff has created so much more income for us and so much more work that we had to go to a scheduling system. And so we pulled ourselves out of stone age. We use a schedule now.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:08:55):
I really love that. How about we introduce a new KPI, we call that bookings and that’s the deferred work sold at the service advisor sales rate. So if you have deferred work worth 400,000 and the service advisor sells typically let’s say 40%, then your bookings is 40% of the 400,000 and you can track that. I love that. Consider it on the list. Love it.
Bill Rimmer (00:09:30):
Here it comes.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:09:32):
That was worth the price of admission right
Bill Rimmer (00:09:33):
There, Bill. Okay, another thing we just installed, so now we were down 8%, but those couple months there where they shut it down, I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind’s going to go back to that lockdown mentality. At least not over here in Georgia. And I can’t foresee that happening again, don’t get me wrong. I still have my six months ready to go, but just installed that hundred quick check. I’m sure you’re familiar with this drive through. It tells you if you need an alignment. But another reason I did it is because we’ve been really working on streamlining our inspections. My goal is to have our average inspection time, which I’m sure is not your best practice down to about 15 minutes on average. Now some cars take 45 minutes, an old one, it needs a ton of stuff. If it’s a 2017, obviously it’s going to be a very short inspection that only has 20,000 miles on it.
(00:10:36):
So that one will offset. But on average I want 15 to 20 minutes. So we’ve streamlined last year because we had some extra time. Every selection you make in the inspection automatically generates what job goes with that. So that’s fed the technician from having to constantly pick what they needed so that we also narrowed down our inspections to four basic inspections. So we have a quick inspection and entering inspection, a full inspection and a pre-purchase inspection. And they’re just like they found the quick inspection is you’ve been here less than 300 miles, you waited a month to get your car fixed or whatever. We’re not going to go through that whole huge RGA morro checking ball joints and all this other stuff. You’ve not even drove your car. So we started getting smart about that to just speed the whole process up. The hunter quick check.
(00:11:31):
One of the reasons I’m very interested in it is when you drive through it, it takes 46 pictures of the car. So we were manually taking pictures all the way around the car using the AutoVitals. So our picture count will be down. But I would like you guys to integrate because right now we have integrate the alignment specs, puts it on the inspection. I would like it to take those 46 photos, put it on the inspection because that will increase your photo count and they’re great photos of it shows your whole car every step of the way. I’m sure you guys have seen it. It’s new to us. So we’re very excited about it. We’re trying to up our alignment sales and according to these readings and we double checked it, we drove cars through that, had a battle alignment, put it on our hunter Elite, made damn sure it was the same reading because it seems impossible the way it works. Have you seen it?
Tom Dorsey (00:12:24):
Oh yeah, no, it’s an incredible,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:12:25):
It’s awesome.
Tom Dorsey (00:12:26):
It’s an incredible tool. And the thing I like about that is it gets more tire surface as you’re rolling over it than some of the other tools out there. So I mean at least from a motorist perspective, if you were selling me an alignment based off of those results, I would be more inclined to believe it versus some of the other kind of more narrow banded measurement tools. But no, we like a lot, believe me, we like to, I don’t know. I better defer to Uwe on the picture question because I’m going to get in trouble.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:13:02):
See, not sure. You’re always in trouble. So it’s constant situation. No, I wanted to mention three things actually. Have you looked into guided and carry forward? That’s going to help you tremendously in your goal of going for a more efficient inspection. And then what Tom I think refers to with the trouble is we try to look at this from a motorist perspective and more pictures is not better necessarily, but impactful pictures are better. So because you’re at the office, you get a text,
Tom Dorsey (00:13:46):
I was
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:13:46):
Just, you don’t want to look at 55 pictures, 15 are enough. If they’re impactful and you pick up the phone and say, bill, what is this? Take
Tom Dorsey (00:13:56):
Care of it. Do you want to capture those in the CYA file?
Bill Rimmer (00:13:59):
I’m sorry, I didn’t express what I actually wanted.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:04):
Okay, but
Bill Rimmer (00:14:05):
Right now center keeps those pitchers for 15 days and then they erase them.
Tom Dorsey (00:14:10):
Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, that’s right.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:12):
I see.
Bill Rimmer (00:14:14):
Go on the inspection but not where the motors can see it, where it just goes in there and they’re all
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:19):
Out
Bill Rimmer (00:14:20):
For the shop only because automobiles has it forever. Right. That’s what I meant. I don’t want to send So 50 photos of the car on the outside.
Tom Dorsey (00:14:30):
This is your doorknob,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:32):
Right? It’s Chrome.
Tom Dorsey (00:14:33):
No, definitely. Yeah. But archive it in some type of a CYA file that’s accessible when you need it. Right. So
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:41):
Only
Tom Dorsey (00:14:42):
That’s really interesting. Yeah. Real quick too, Bill, before we move on is Matt Fowler’s got a couple questions. He would like you to elaborate a little bit more on what inspection your four versions, which inspection is going to be taken 15 minutes and how did you get it down? And I think you said that was your goal. You’re maybe not there yet, but you’re looking to get there and I know a lot of our Meineke operators and some of our quicker service operators are running I think as a best practice, we’re talking the courtesy inspection or a preliminary inspection that’s right in line with best practice, right? Your comprehensive inspection is going to take more, but you’re looking and you’ve already kind of got an eye on a target.
Bill Rimmer (00:15:28):
Well we were doing a full on comprehensive inspection and we would do it every 3000 miles or six months. So however long the car was, covid has changed our thinking on using time. We no longer use time. So now we use a, within two weeks it gets, I’m sorry, under a thousand miles it gets our quick inspection. Hardly any cars get that. The quick inspection is basically check the fluids, check the battery, check the bulbs, look at the tires, warning lights, readiness monitor. That’s basically it because they were just here less than a thousand miles ago. Every 15,000 miles we do a full on inspection. So one of the ways I think I’m going to get it down to 15 minutes is we’re going to take away the walk around photos, right? I’m thinking those take two to three minutes to walk around the car and take all the photos, at least in our shop the way it is and everything.
(00:16:28):
You got to get back and all this stuff to get a good photo. And so the quick check is going to take over all that because it’s going to show any damage. And I don’t think those pictures actually help the customers because they’re just pictures of the outside of the car for our insurance. I mean they’re just so that people come in here. We had a lady come in here and call 30 days later and said We got paint all over her car. We ran through paint on the highway. Well the photo showed there was no paint on her car when she was here, but just the craziness of waiting 30 days to tell me that we’ve saved ourselves thousands of dollars in repairs with the photos before. People saying my car didn’t have a scratch there. Well here’s a photo and I think now you’ve just added timestamps because you didn’t use to have timestamps and that was an issue. They said you took it afterwards, whatever. Okay, but go back to the inspection. I’m sorry to change the subject. So we have a full inspection. We do over 15,000 miles. So that includes full line checking ball joints, checking all the suspension.
(00:17:39):
We have three. We’ve got a drive in, we have underhood, we have an under car. We’re checking the turn signals, all the bulbs, cabin air filter, air filter, I’m sorry, cabin air filters on the drive-in checking the parking brake, the hood release. The main thing we’re checking to cover our ass is the readiness monitors because it’s very common for people to go. We have an advance next door, they go next door, get a battery. The check engine was on to come over here, get an old change when they drive away and say that we call the check the check engine light, right? So that’s the one we do. We take a picture of all the warning lights and of course if it’s got A-T-P-M-S, it auto-populates to do that job. We do have cranking, if it’s cranking slow and stuff like that, winter washers wipers the horn, the rear wiper if it has a rear wiper. And that’s basically our drive-in. And it sounds like a lot, but that particular thing you can do very fast. Now the cabin air filter, I’ll tell you this. If it’s one that’s really hard, that’s two hours labor. We’re not checking that one. We’re checking the ones. We just open the glove box. They’re easy to check. So then under the hood, we check all the fluids, belts, photos that everyone has a 15 photo minimum.
(00:18:57):
We take pictures of some stuff that’s good. We take a picture of the belt if it’s accessible no matter what. Look at the battery cables. You’re doing a lot of just visual looking at stuff. Now something we’ve added is if it’s direct injection at 30,000 miles, we suggest a direct injection service because we’ve had lot of no starts coming in with high miles, carbon built up. But things like that don’t take any time. Basically you’ve got to know if has direct injection, you’re a mechanic, you should be able look at the engine and know like that. I mean it’s not a fricking hood. Struts, coolant, all the fluids, the battery gets checked on every car and then under the hood is the one that actually takes the long. If you start jacking up checking ball joints, we have to use a drive on for it. Checking all the suspension, the control arms, all the axles, all the fluid leaks. We look at the brake pads as long as we can see them to try to guesstimate whether they need to be checked or not. If they look like they’re low, because sometimes the shadows and stuff, it’s kind of hard to see. But if it looks low at all, we suggest a brake check.
(00:20:03):
We cannot remove wheels and take comms off. I mean the inspection is free. If I tie a guy up for an hour on every inspection, we’ve only got 10 hours a day to work. Okay? So when we’re having 20 cars in here, that’d be 20 hours gone. You see what I’m saying? So we used to do these big long ones where we were just doing everything under the sun first when we got it and I realized we were wasting a lot of, it’s maybe not wasting, but it’s using a lot of hours that now that all this deferred work is here, we typically can’t do it.
Tom Dorsey (00:20:40):
And are you paying the tax a couple tents to do those inspections?
Bill Rimmer (00:20:45):
No, I’m not. No I’m not. So my techs are.
Tom Dorsey (00:20:50):
So then you get that you probably don’t get the results you wanted. If he’s trying to spend an hour or 45 minutes,
Bill Rimmer (00:20:58):
That’s not the case. So we have really people who have really bought into this, they are all about it. In fact, the internet doesn’t work. They don’t even want to work on the cars because they want to do the inspection because they’re making the inspection. Whoever does the inspection gets the work. This dude worked 45 minutes on inspection. We don’t give it to this guy. You know what I’m saying? He did the inspection, he gets to work. So also, I don’t know about the whole country, but for where we live, we pay pretty high salaries. I guess you could say. We have 401k, we have matching 401k. I pay 80% of all the health insurance, whether they’re family or individual, they make $40.50 cents per flag hour. So they really don’t have much to complain about. We have varying labor rates. We have four different labor rates because we called all the dealers in our area and found out how much all the price were divided, the cars up that way and protractors so handy, you can assign a labor rate to every car.
(00:22:10):
So it’s always correct. Anyway, so that’s our main one. Now what the difference is our intermediate one, which is the one that gets done the most, it has, we don’t check the suspension. We do all the other things. I mentioned we don’t check the inspection, I’m sorry, we don’t check. We don’t pull on the drive on, jack it up, do all the ball joints because it takes two people. Someone’s got to wiggle the wheels. One person’s not checking a front end, you check the ball joints, but the tie rod is the stuff to see what’s actually worn out takes two people. So we basically cut that part out. Everything else is there. Fluid leaks, axles. You can do that on a normal two post, right? You got it in the air probably. Anyway, whatever you’re doing. Something else we streamlined with, we used to have just oil change technicians.
(00:23:01):
We changed because everyone’s doing an inspection. Every car’s getting raised in the air instead of split ticketing. We all now have all one tickets. So the technicians are doing the oil changes because it’s only about seven minutes longer because you’ve already got the car in the air, you’ve already checked everything. Drain the hole, put the filter on there, check the tires. You know what I’m saying? So that’s actually, now there was some grumbling about that. Now I’m not going to lie, I mean that was a hard sale. But since we’ve implemented that, they’ve all turned more labor. The shop turned more labor because we don’t have guys pulling the car out, pulling the car in. All that takes time when it’s already in the air, you can just drain the oil and you’re good. So at first there was some resistance, but now they’re all in on it and inspections from day one.
(00:23:54):
Now listen, we’ve had employees work here that did not like the inspections and we’re exactly like you’re saying, I’m not getting paid to do this inspection. I don’t want to do it. Those people are no longer with us. I need people. We’re in a big boat here in Cooper Lake Automotive and we want to row in the same direction because a lot more stuff. Now we have meetings and we have suggestions. The good suggestion we implemented the oil change idea actually came from a technician. So we implemented that about halfway through the year last year. We had a lot of time to implement things last year in 2020. But that’s how I’ve gotten the inspections sped up because the majority of our inspections are just intermediate inspection. First time customer gets full inspection, right? They’re good for 15,000 miles because now if you see a wheel smashed in, they will jack it up and check the front end in their best interest to find some kind of components messed up. And now we have the quick check. It’s even better.
Tom Dorsey (00:25:03):
Yeah. Well I want to thank Matt Fowler for asking that question, buddy. Appreciate it. Happy new Year. Matt, good to see you in the audience. Matter of fact, I got to ring you up and bring you on for a round of who wants to be a digital shop millionaire. So guys, I think let’s jump right into the game from this intro. I would say Bill probably already some digital shop multimillionaire, but we’ll see how it goes and hopefully Ashley can join. She can be one of your lifelines buddy. For folks in the audience, just so you know, especially in the live audience, we’re going to have you kind of on the expert panel of experts. One of Bill’s lifelines is ask the experts. And so don’t chat in the questions yet until he asks for that lifeline. Okay, no cheating. And so that Bill, we got the standard kind of 50 50 lifeline. Let me just go ahead and get my screen share here so we can get started and then you’ll have the ask the expert lifeline as well.
Bill Rimmer (00:26:14):
I highly doubt I’m going to win this just for the record. Okay, so
Tom Dorsey (00:26:20):
Oh, we shall see. Alright, are we ready? Can you guys see my screen? Does everybody see a, who wants to be a digital shop? Millionaire intro screen there. Yep. Alright. You have to imagine the amazing background music. Here it comes. And I’m going to do it in the slum dog, millionaire voice who wants to be a billionaire. Let’s get started. So standard game, you’ve got several levels, the questions are going to get exceedingly more difficult. And also Bill, we’ve got some kind of expert now analysis type question, some deeper dives that we want to talk about. And in one instance we’re going to ask you to share some of your data from your shop if that’s okay with you.
Bill Rimmer (00:27:13):
Yeah. Let me
Tom Dorsey (00:27:15):
Add your tech effectiveness report
Bill Rimmer (00:27:17):
Sales or
Tom Dorsey (00:27:19):
No, it’s a tech effectiveness report. It’s something simple. And I just got to tell you, Uwe came in jumping like he’d just been walking over coals with all of the nuggets of information that he was able to extrapolate out of that report. So we’re going to be sharing that probably on the second question. But let’s get started, sir. No pressure. No pressure for $100. What does TVP stand for?
Bill Rimmer (00:27:46):
Oh my god, I got to use a lifeline. I have no idea what TVP stands for.
Tom Dorsey (00:27:53):
Today’s vehicle paid
Bill Rimmer (00:27:55):
TVP before, so I have no idea what it’s called. I mean, I told this. Let’s see. Today’s vehicle page,
Tom Dorsey (00:28:03):
You got it.
Bill Rimmer (00:28:06):
Today’s vehicle page.
Tom Dorsey (00:28:07):
Final answer,
Bill Rimmer (00:28:08):
Multiple choice.
Tom Dorsey (00:28:10):
Yes, it is a good thing. It’s multiple choice for $200. Where do you find the technician effectiveness report in the TVPX?
Bill Rimmer (00:28:22):
What are my choices?
Tom Dorsey (00:28:25):
A in business control panel B.
Bill Rimmer (00:28:28):
I love that right there. The business control panel BI got to say a great addition to the system. Yes,
Tom Dorsey (00:28:36):
It is. Business control panel is awesome. Let me finish reading all the questions just because something might come up that is a better or a more. B is email inbox. C is, it’s a menu item on the TVPX menu bar or D, time is up. How did that happen?
Bill Rimmer (00:28:59):
Oh, I’m sorry.
Tom Dorsey (00:29:01):
No, it’s my fault. Let me restart us because it was me blabbing too much. Let’s get back to that question because you got plenty of time. No pressure. No pressure.
Bill Rimmer (00:29:15):
Okay.
Tom Dorsey (00:29:26):
All right. So we already got this one out of the way. All right, here we go. So do you want to get a 50 50? Is business control panel your final answer?
Bill Rimmer (00:29:41):
It’s be menu item.
Tom Dorsey (00:29:43):
Okay, let’s go with menu item as final answer. Winner winner. Chicken dinner. Great job, bill. Next question. For $500 on the TVP, what does it mean if the text time is flashing in red?
Bill Rimmer (00:30:01):
Okay, before you start this question, this red, okay, this didn’t used to exist. Now it did. It’s newer to me compared to the old system. This is why we’ve been working so hard on streamlining the inspection. This exact question.
Tom Dorsey (00:30:17):
Is that right? Because you were seeing a sea of flashing red and then you had to find a solution for it.
Bill Rimmer (00:30:24):
They were all going red.
Tom Dorsey (00:30:26):
Wow,
Bill Rimmer (00:30:26):
You’re going to go red on some things. Oil change, it’s only an oil change. Yeah, you’re probably going to go red, but you’re doing a two hour job, you shouldn’t be going red. Know what I’m saying?
Tom Dorsey (00:30:36):
Yes. That’s awesome. And that’s exactly the purpose of that function was to do exactly that. A, you identified it, help you identify that there was a problem there and for years you’d been operating and it would’ve been flashing red, you just didn’t know it and it was just part of doing business. And then once it was red, you said, Hey, I hate this red. I got to figure something out here. And you put in processes, improvements and efficiencies that turn into dollars. So that’s fantastic. So let’s go ahead and start the question. Does it mean A actual hours are greater than or equal to 95% of build hours? The tech forgot to hit complete on the tablet. C, the technician has a question or D, the tech is late for lunch.
Bill Rimmer (00:31:19):
A
Tom Dorsey (00:31:23):
Actual hours are greater than or equal to 95% of build hours. Fantastic.
Bill Rimmer (00:31:29):
It’s a great feature. It’s a great feature.
Tom Dorsey (00:31:34):
Okay. Now here are you using the guided mode?
Bill Rimmer (00:31:40):
No, we do not use the guided mode. We’ve tried the guided mode. The guided mode is slower than the method we’re doing. I hate to maybe disagree with the expert, but from our experience,
(00:31:59):
I have a great idea how to make it way faster than it is, but it is carrying you through so many more steps. Now listen, if you’re not experienced with the system, you should use it. As soon as you buy this, you should all in. But if you have experienced techs who have been using this system, we don’t have any turnover. So I want to say the shortest term worker is seven years here. I don’t even six years, I don’t even know. So they’ve been through all the progressions of TVP, everyone that works here, they are pretty experts in using the tablet side of the software. So in my opinion, an experienced person knows what they’re doing, knows what’s on the inspection, knows what they’re looking for. Looking over the car is going to do it faster than that guided mode from my experience. I’m sorry.
Tom Dorsey (00:32:55):
Oh no, that’s
Bill Rimmer (00:32:55):
Fine. I know I’m going to get in trouble for that, but I’m sorry.
Tom Dorsey (00:32:59):
We’ll see if you get the question right first.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:33:01):
Wait, wait, wait. Your honor, I have a question. Sure. Can we share Bill’s technician effectiveness report before we
Tom Dorsey (00:33:12):
Go back to guide it? Yeah, I know I blew, right? Yeah, because you’re right. That’s brilliant Uwe. Lemme stop share. Do you have it loaded up?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:33:22):
I have it loaded up.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:23):
Okay, let me stop sharing. And you go ahead and share.
Bill Rimmer (00:33:28):
I’m sure it’s terrible.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:33:30):
No, no, no, no. There’s nothing terrible.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:32):
Not at all.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:33:32):
Not at all. There’s nothing terrible address it.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:35):
It’s amazing.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:33:41):
Is it big enough for everybody?
Bill Rimmer (00:33:44):
I can see the whole screen. I don’t know how you made it that big, but this is bigger than what I was looking at.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:33:50):
Cool. So all the experience texts know exactly what they’re doing, right?
Bill Rimmer (00:33:58):
Yeah.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:33:59):
Like Rachel loves cabin air filters. Sherman not so much. Do you see
Bill Rimmer (00:34:04):
That? Okay, hold on a second. Sherman hasn’t been here, he’s been out.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:10):
Oh I see. How does he recommend then a third of all cars have an engine cooling problem.
Bill Rimmer (00:34:18):
Obviously I need to talk to Sherman.
Tom Dorsey (00:34:20):
Well, and if you look at it, so in the very first column you see number of inspections. So he pulled the timeline. So Sherman’s got 67 inspections in here. Patrick has 90, he’s about equal with Rachel and David as far as inspections go in this data.
Bill Rimmer (00:34:35):
Right. And what date?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:39):
That’s beginning of October through end of December. Okay. And that’s your full inspection you were talking about it’s 47 topics. You see that up here?
Bill Rimmer (00:34:51):
That’s my full one. Okay.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:54):
Yeah. Alright.
Bill Rimmer (00:34:56):
You have the media one or not?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:58):
Say again?
Bill Rimmer (00:35:00):
You have the intermediate one or this is just the
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:03):
No, we can also do the intermediate one if you feel that’s more telling. Should I switch? I just
Bill Rimmer (00:35:12):
Know we do more of them. We should be doing more.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:15):
Okay, no problem at all.
Tom Dorsey (00:35:18):
The way I look at it Bill, is it really looks like you see shop policy in there, right? You have specific policies because for the most part in, what was that fluid leaks or air filter, you can really see that they’re following up the policy in some other areas. Well it’s a little bit more open to interpretation,
Bill Rimmer (00:35:44):
Right?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:44):
Yeah. So from that you see it’s really interesting. Rachel and David do three times as many
Tom Dorsey (00:35:58):
Of the
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:58):
Intermediate inspections compared with everybody else on the intermediate. Whereas on the full it’s more balanced but even that, right?
Bill Rimmer (00:36:10):
Right. They still do the majority of the oil changes.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:36:15):
So my guess is you have a shop policy on fluid leaks,
Bill Rimmer (00:36:23):
Correct?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:36:24):
Right. So David identifies half of all vehicles have a fluid leak, whereas Sherman says a third. Right? Rachel loves tires,
Bill Rimmer (00:36:39):
Right? Well that’s only the left front tire.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:36:42):
Yes. Only you can tell us why that is.
Tom Dorsey (00:36:47):
Only the left front.
Bill Rimmer (00:36:49):
Only the left front,
Tom Dorsey (00:36:51):
Right front not so much.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:36:53):
Right. And David and Rachel and Patrick are great in windshield washer fluid. That seems to be a quick win. Whereas Clay and Sherman just skip it.
Bill Rimmer (00:37:08):
Right?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:37:10):
So I don’t want to toot the guided horn, but actually I do want to course because all the imbalances you will see here will maybe not eliminate it, but at least clearly balanced out more. I would venture out to say, and if you are open to it, I would love to have Bill Connor give you a call, show you the guided benefits again. And I would really love to do a raise between 20 inspections on guided versus 20 inspections non guided, same inspection sheet.
Bill Rimmer (00:37:58):
I’m willing to try it. No problem. Now I’ll say have you made changes in the guided recently?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:38:07):
We have made a few, yes.
Bill Rimmer (00:38:10):
Okay. Because we tried it first when it came out and
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:38:13):
Not Oh yeah. So I agree with you. You were not the only one giving us feedback that there’s potential for improvement to make it faster. And I think we have a few people in the audience who can attest to that, who gave us very direct and clear feedback about that
Bill Rimmer (00:38:36):
When it first came out.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:38:38):
We used
Bill Rimmer (00:38:38):
A question that came out and it wasn’t very efficient, I would say.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:38:45):
Right? I would agree with that. Cool. But to the more general point, the technician effectiveness report gives you a very clear picture on behavior and sweet spots. Technicians have sweet spots and our recommendation is to review it with red. Doesn’t mean always bad. Bad is if some people are red in one and then not in another and you have inconsistencies, then the consistency of your inspections has potential to get better. So that’s the huge benefit of this report.
Bill Rimmer (00:39:28):
Yes, I like it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:39:30):
Back to Tom.
Tom Dorsey (00:39:33):
Alrighty, so now let’s actually ask the question in the game. Let get back here. All right, let me know when you can see my screen. Everything look good? Can you guys hear me? Yes. Okay, perfect. Okay, so Bill for $1,000, what is guided mode?
Bill Rimmer (00:40:07):
It says itself B.
Tom Dorsey (00:40:18):
A Tech hours are automatically submitted for payroll B. The service advisor.
Bill Rimmer (00:40:23):
D
Tom Dorsey (00:40:28):
Cha ching. $1,000 now for $2,000 Bill, how many special markers are available on a vehicle tile?
Bill Rimmer (00:40:40):
Jesus Christ. I don’t do that part. I work in the back. That’s my part.
Tom Dorsey (00:40:46):
Where’s Ashley? What happened to Ashley? I
Bill Rimmer (00:40:48):
Like the back better. I mean I hate the front. I never worked. No customer know that I even exist. I mean I’m like a ghost. No one even knows who I am. So I have a giant firewall. You cannot get me on the phone. It’s impossible. That’s
Tom Dorsey (00:41:04):
A great way to,
Bill Rimmer (00:41:06):
So that I can have less stress in my life.
Tom Dorsey (00:41:09):
I
Bill Rimmer (00:41:09):
Like to this and that’s what I do. That’s my favorite part.
Tom Dorsey (00:41:12):
So remember we’ve got a 50 50 lifeline left and anytime Bill, you can just ask the expert and no shame in your game. So let’s go ahead and get this one started. We’ll see what the answers are. A six tiles, B five C3 special markers or D four special markers.
Bill Rimmer (00:41:39):
It’s a C
Tom Dorsey (00:41:42):
You know this stuff. I was
Bill Rimmer (00:41:46):
Worried you had changed how many were on there from before? Because I used to use it all the time, but now it’s a whole new thing. So I’m like, damn, we change that then I don’t know. And there’s a million customizable ones you can put on there. I mean we use those a lot because we have two service technicians. We put a little phone on there. I know there’s another symbol to see when a car has been called now it didn’t used to have that. So we still use our old, they put a little phone on there, which knows the other technicians. The other service runner knows someone’s called pretty fast. It’s big. So I like it. Yeah.
Tom Dorsey (00:42:22):
And that is folks that is, you don’t get to kind upload your own icon anymore, but you can still create all your special markers that you need. Custom, special markers, Uwe, what would you say are some of the most important special markers that shops should be using?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:42:41):
Oh, the ones I like the most is, which are linked to a countdown. When you have a customer coming in, a walk in and it has to be done in two hours. You just put a waiter 120 minutes and you see exactly how far you are off from the promised time of two hours, right? Everything which has to do with things in the future. You want to hit like a POS delivery or the customer I just mentioned. Smart markers are amazing. The other one I really like Bill just made that is the alert for the tech as well as the ones you can connect to a job. So you just link that to a job and automatically the inspection is being chosen or the markup pops up because of we identify a certain job is on the work order. You have to do an alignment. So you show the alignment mark marker. Everybody knows you need the alignment machine just by doing nothing. Just having the alignment job on the work order. Those are my three favorite ones.
Tom Dorsey (00:44:01):
Awesome.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:44:02):
And I just want to say I cannot remember exactly what CHOP it was, but our absolute top winner of the most customized special markers created 400 markers, 400 every POTS delivery down to the minute it seemed was managed with it. I mean unbelievable. That’s how helpful it can be.
Tom Dorsey (00:44:41):
Yeah. Okay. I mean that would take some orientation training. The service writer would take an extra week. You got to have a glossary. You have to have a special marker for the special marker glossary.
Bill Rimmer (00:44:56):
Lot of
(00:44:57):
To be able to create 400. That’s a lot of work. I mean
Tom Dorsey (00:45:01):
Put in work
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:45:02):
Now it’s not anymore with the new TVPX, it’s not as, you don’t need to look for pictures and stuff like that. But still I agree. But as you know, if you put the work in for preparation and it pays off with every vehicle, it’s worth doing.
Tom Dorsey (00:45:18):
Yeah. And a lot of those things, it’d be nice if it was available in kind of how the inspection library sheet library is, right? If special markers could even be shared and then be
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:45:29):
Shared. Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (00:45:30):
Downloaded. And by the way, in chat earlier, Tony Denberg was asking, it’d be nice if the technician effectiveness report was available for download and print. I mean Tony, you can always screen grab. I thought we exported that one.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:45:48):
Uwe. No. No, I don’t think we did.
Tom Dorsey (00:45:52):
Well now you got a future request hashtag request. Alright, perfect. We got 15 minutes left. So we better roll through some questions because we can’t send Bill out of here with only $5,000. He’s got to leave as a digital shop gazillionaire. So Bill, in guided mode, and again, remember you got your lifelines in guided mode. What must be done by the technician to submit the inspection to the service writer? What must be done pushing the wrong mouse? A complete all mandatory topics B, take a picture on every topic. C, pick a condition and action on every topic. Or D, hit the submit button on the tablet.
Bill Rimmer (00:46:37):
Lifeline. I don’t mean lifeline.
Tom Dorsey (00:46:41):
You want a 50 50
Bill Rimmer (00:46:46):
A
Tom Dorsey (00:46:47):
Boom right in the nick of time. Look at that. Clutch under pressure. Great job. Congratulations on $5,000 in digital currency. I think Uwe’s got the check in the mail already. So for $10,000 on the tablet, how does the tech review the pictures that have already been taken? A tap the camera roll button. B, shake the tablet up and down. C, the tech can’t see the pictures. Tough luck. A Cha Chang. Winner. Winner. Chicken dinner for $10,000. It’s $10,000 in AutoVitals bucks.
Bill Rimmer (00:47:30):
This is a question for Ashley Dan.
Tom Dorsey (00:47:33):
Oh yeah, we want to see Ashley. You can’t hide back there forever. Yes, this is a good, this is a lot of people are going to get this one wrong.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:47:53):
I don’t think so. It’s so easy.
Tom Dorsey (00:47:58):
Uwe is throwing down the gauntlet.
Bill Rimmer (00:48:02):
Alright, answer this question.
Tom Dorsey (00:48:05):
Hi Ashley, welcome to Digital Shop Talk Radio.
Bill Rimmer (00:48:09):
Hello. Good.
(00:48:10):
Are you
Tom Dorsey (00:48:11):
Great? We appreciate your time. So real quick, Bill’s got a lifeline going here. The Ashley Lifeline Ashley on the TVP. How do you see vehicles scheduled for tomorrow? And here are your questions. No pressure. It’s for $25,000. A do you search for tomorrow in the search bar? B, click the plus sign next to the dropdown in the first column. C. You can’t see tomorrow’s vehicles on today’s vehicle page or D, add a column for tomorrow’s appointments.
Ashley Payne (00:48:48):
I mean for us personally, or you’re asking best practice or
Tom Dorsey (00:48:55):
Congratulations, I’m sorry.
Bill Rimmer (00:49:05):
Scheduling. We use pro for scheduling. Just for the record,
Tom Dorsey (00:49:10):
The timer was about to run out and I couldn’t let Bill fail. He had so much money riding on that. That was for $25,000. But if we could Uwe, if we could go into a little bit of more kind of detail there. What that question was about is just to say that you can add columns, right? You can expand your columns on your TVP
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:49:32):
Book loaded. Yep.
Tom Dorsey (00:49:33):
And you can see tomorrow’s vehicles. You can see the day after tomorrow’s vehicles. Okay. And you can also see your no-shows as well. Is there anything Uwe that you wanted to add to that?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:49:45):
Yeah, just as a best practice, some shops are that bold and put the workflow TVP in their office, including waiting rooms so everybody can see what vehicles and what workflow steps including the appointments. And that’s unprecedented transparency.
Bill Rimmer (00:50:05):
I agree. What happens when you’re doing a job and that tile’s up there, the job’s 12 hours or something and the guy does it in eight, what do you do then?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:50:18):
You don’t see that on the TVP in this level of detail. You would not see and you have always more than one tech on a car. That’s a very easy explanation.
Tom Dorsey (00:50:30):
Yeah, from the tech view. Alright, Ashley, what is the minimum goal for motorist research time? This is for $50,000. No pressure.
Bill Rimmer (00:50:44):
Okay,
Tom Dorsey (00:50:46):
Is it a 240 seconds B, two minutes C 24 seconds or D 24 minutes?
Ashley Payne (00:50:55):
I’d say the most available, which would be
Tom Dorsey (00:50:56):
Two hundred forty, two hundred and forty seconds. You guys are just killing this game today. $50,000. Congratulations. I’m sure Bill will have that in your next paycheck. In T-V-P-X. How do I go back next to the customer? In TVPX, How do I send a text to the customer? A, do I go to the text opt-in screen and select their mobile carrier? B, click the message icon at the bottom of the vehicle tile C, click the plus sign next to the calendar icon on the vehicle tile or D. Use search to look up the customer’s phone number.
Ashley Payne (00:51:39):
C.
Tom Dorsey (00:51:41):
C, it is for $100,000. Chi ching.
(00:51:47):
Incredible job. Incredible job. You can’t hear all of the background music, but it’s going crazy. And the audience is screaming in the workflow. This is for 250,000 digital AutoVitals bucks in the workflow view of TVPX. What does the number dropdown next to the column title mean? Right? So on the top of the column you see the heading of the column, and then there’s that little number with a dropdown next to it. What the heck is that? Is it A? How many cars the customer owns? B. The number of no-shows for today. C, how many times that column appears on the page? Or D, how many vehicles are waiting for inspection? C? Ashley says C. And she is correct for $250,000. That is incredible depth of knowledge. Ashley. Now I see why Bill Hadie has a ringer.
Bill Rimmer (00:52:46):
She works in the punt.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Bill Rimmer (00:52:49):
People up front and the ugly people in the back. I mean that’s the key, right? I mean you got the pretty people up front on display and then you got me back there sweating, turning riches. That’s much success. Remember that?
Tom Dorsey (00:53:04):
Well now we’re getting into your territory Bill. They’re not going to be as easy as these last few. And Uwe wrote ’em. So for $500,000, how do you know when the motorist has studied the inspection results? How do you know that they’ve looked at their inspection? A, the vehicle tile starts to flash. B. I’ll ask him on a phone call. C, the customer calls you or D, the number of seconds appear on the tile.
Bill Rimmer (00:53:35):
D,
Tom Dorsey (00:53:37):
It’s D. Look at this. For $500,000, that’s incredible. Congratulations. No pressure. 600,000. What is the KPI to gauge customers approving more work? So Bill or Ashley, what KPI would you look at to know that customers are approving more work? Is it a length of phone call with the customer? B. The ARO C-WTF. That’s a work total found. Or D MRT motorist research time.
Bill Rimmer (00:54:17):
Oh, I use that. ARO is my most important, but maybe I’m wrong.
Tom Dorsey (00:54:27):
Help them out. Ashley D. It’s
Ashley Payne (00:54:32):
Okay. D.
Tom Dorsey (00:54:33):
Right at the last motorist research time, that’s the most important KPI to look at. That tells you that folks are searching, studying the information and contemplating. And we usually see higher motorist research time connected to higher approval rates. So focus on getting that motorist research time up if yours is not. And as Ashley told us a little bit ago, a good number to shoot for your minimum goal should be 240 seconds of motorist research time. Fantastic for 750,000 AutoVitals bucks. What point of sale has the deepest integration with AutoVitals delivering the best results for the shop? And this one might just be right up your alley. This might be a lay down for you. A, is it Garage Operator B? Is it Protractor and Shop Ware C Mitchell and ARO writer or D Mitchell and WinWorks
Bill Rimmer (00:55:35):
Protractor? I don’t know what shop wear is. Is that new? Did you guys always integrate with Shop Ware?
Tom Dorsey (00:55:42):
Look at that. Oh, it’s brand new.
Bill Rimmer (00:55:45):
New, right? When I called you guys and asked which system to go with, you recommended Protractor. They didn’t even talk about that one. That’s a new one, huh? Okay,
Tom Dorsey (00:55:57):
Just got,
Bill Rimmer (00:55:57):
Don’t get me wrong, there’s so much work to change. I’m not interested in changing.
Tom Dorsey (00:56:01):
And a matter of fact, the pitch of future episode on February 10th, we’re going to be having Carolyn back on with Uwe and we’re going to be talking about
(00:56:09):
The next level of integration with Shop Ware. So mark that on your calendars. Those of you that are interested in taking a look at shop wear, that’ll be February 10th episode of the Digital Shop Talk Radio. Alright folks, I mean right at the perfect time too. I mean we’re going to hit the mark exactly for 1 million. This is for all the marbles, no pressure. Ashley and Bill, if you wanted to increase weekly revenue and you have two service advisors and tech and six technicians, what should you do? Well, let’s find out. A, you introduce a production manager or slash foreman B, you change the bonus structure. C, you hire Uwe Smart, asked to tell you what to do, or D, hire another service advisor for the front counter.
Bill Rimmer (00:57:06):
I imagine the answer is A,
Tom Dorsey (00:57:10):
Is that, how do you know? Is that your final answer?
Bill Rimmer (00:57:14):
Yeah, I think it’s a
Tom Dorsey (00:57:17):
And it’s a, for all the marbles $1 million. Who’s got the AV digital bucks Check in the mail. Congratulations. Bill Rimmer and Ashley Payne, you are now or you have been Digital Shop Millionaires. Congratulations. Congratulations.
Ashley Payne (00:57:40):
Thank you. Thank you.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:42):
You guys did great. You did really good. There was a couple on there. I figured, you know what? And this, I don’t know, I didn’t plan this, but you just happened to be on TVPX. You weren’t using guided, which I thought was going to trip you up a little bit. You’re on a protractor shop already. And I thought to myself, well there’s got to be one or two things in here, but obviously you can tell runs a tight ship over there. His folks are trained up well, they’re using the program. You heard the results from 2020 that Bill told us about. I can only imagine what’s going to happen in 2021. And Bill, I got to tell you, Ashley, I look forward to having you on a future episode and giving us a follow-up to how that new TVPX and some of these new goals that Bill has put in place, reducing that inspection time and some of the other follow-up taking care of that deferred work, how that’s working out for you in 2021. Thank you very much for coming on and playing. Congratulations for your resounding victory.
Bill Rimmer (00:58:43):
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us on. It was very fun. We learned stuff. Well, I learned something Slacker here wasn’t here, but Judy called. Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (00:58:52):
Ashley was busy taking care of business. She was down there. That’s what Ashley was doing. But now you guys we’re going to
Bill Rimmer (00:58:59):
In guided mode, just so you know. And try it out and see it
Tom Dorsey (00:59:04):
Goes, I think
Bill Rimmer (00:59:06):
You know what? I’m going to make it a punishment for the people who aren’t doing those cabin air filters. So be pretty easy.
Tom Dorsey (00:59:14):
And as we learn today, check out that technician effectiveness report. You know exactly who’s taking care of cabin air filters and every other topic on your inspection. And if you have any questions about that, post it up on the Facebook form, contact your AutoVitals advisor. They’re there to help you. Thousands of shop owners are waiting for some questions to answer on the Facebook form. Take advantage of that. Tune in next Wednesday, same time, same place. 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern, where we’re going to play another episode of Who Wants to Be a Digital Shop Millionaire. And we’ll have another fabulous guest on probably with the same success story as Cooper Lake Automotive, but you’ll have to tune in to find out. Thanks a lot guys. Appreciate everything. It was great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, you’re very welcome.