Episode Description
Producing consistent Digital Vehicle Inspections (DVI) is pivotal to generating the maximum benefit of going digital. In the past, reaching that level of consistency took a lot of time and effort. Join us to learn how the new features in AutoVitals’ Guided mode enable this shop to deliver high-quality, consistent inspections at a rate faster than ever before.
Here’s what you can learn:
- How shop owner Neil Daly (Oceanside Motorsports, Oceanside, CA), a seasoned DVI veteran, used AutoVitals’ Guided mode to increase his ARO by over $100
- The simplicity of the new tools, features, and techniques that make DVI easier, and more profitable, than ever before
- Why consistent DVIs can have long-term benefits in your shop
- Data showing just how impactful and simple Guided mode can be to use
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].
Tom Dorsey (00:00:03):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey and I got a great show for you. We’re talking about achieving more consistency and even more time in your inspection process by using some best practices and some new features and functionality that AutoVitals is coming out with. And I’ve got the fantastic, the best guess I can think of to have on for this topic. Welcome back, Neil Daly, the man, the myth, the legend from Oceanside Motorsports and beautiful Oceanside, California.
Neil Daly (00:00:35):
Man, you’re Talk me up a little bit too much.
Tom Dorsey (00:00:38):
I could keep going buddy. I can keep going. And as always, I got my expert panel experts up there on this side, maybe in those little boxes, maybe up in their cages there, maybe dusted in the future. We could get some graphics on there, some bars across those boxes up there for Uwe and Bill Connor. Welcome gentlemen. Thanks for coming on.
Bill Connor (00:01:00):
Howdy, welcome.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:01):
Got it. I got ’em. Caged down just for you so that they can bring some of these best practices and this information to you in preparation of AR release and the new TVPX and some of the new and exciting tools that we have coming out for you. And a lot of the best practices that we are learning together over time to help you be more efficient and more effective in your digital communication with your motorists. And so we got a great show today because we’re going to be talking about our guided functionality that’s coming out, which is a fantastic tool to help training. And so that’s why I love Abne O’Neal has been participating in our pilot and kind of testing out, and I got to tell you more than anybody to have on this show who’s going to tell you like it is and pull no punches. And that’s Neil Daly and these two gentlemen up here, Bill and Uwe can confirm that because I think he’s got ’em jumping each and every day on feedback in the Turbo Group. Would you say it’s about accurate, Bill?
Bill Connor (00:02:03):
Yeah, it is. And it is greatly appreciated feedback too. I might add.
Tom Dorsey (00:02:08):
We love it. Yeah, that’s exactly how
Bill Connor (00:02:10):
We get. I would change the picture. We are dancing together. How’s that? Yes,
Tom Dorsey (00:02:15):
Yes,
Bill Connor (00:02:15):
Yes. That’s not a picture I want to see. It’s
Tom Dorsey (00:02:18):
Like a punk rock ballet. It’s like a punk rock ballet. If you can imagine that in your head. That’s kind of what’s happening back behind the scenes. And that’s how we bring these tools to you because if somebody just sugarcoats everything, well then we just get something that’s, it’s just not going to be to the level that AutoVitals is going to put its stamp on. What we really need is that direct feedback from guys like Neil that help us and hold us accountable and force us to think beyond some of our preconceptions. I’ll put it that. I’ll put it like that. I mean, would you say that that’s been kind of the mission and goal behind Turbo and the relationship that you’ve developed over time with Neil and the other turbos?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:03:00):
Oh, for sure. I mean, we wouldn’t be where we are if it wasn’t for that collaboration. And it’s, as Bill said, it’s so highly appreciated. The key is really, this is not just a webinar where we show some interactive prototypes and then people say yes or no. It’s really the 12 shops use it productively in the shop in production. There is no alternative. There is no safety net. So we have to deliver and that feedback is invaluable.
Tom Dorsey (00:03:37):
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And so Neil, from your perspective, buddy, I mean it is not always sunshine and butterflies. It gets rocky. I mean I know a couple of times you wanted to bounce out of there probably just because of you have to operate, right? You got to keep your guys happy and you got to keep them motivated and we put some demands on you and you know how it is when you’re building something and it’s not perfect all the time in the first shot. Tell us a little bit about, because for folks that might be thinking about coming on Turbo and being able to participate because really where else do you get a chance to build the tool for your shop and use us to do that? And so that’s kind of the give and take on, yeah, there’s some extra time and work involved and it’s frustration, but you really get direct input on development of the product. What’s that been like for you? I mean you guys kind of, it gets heated, there’s no doubt about it.
Neil Daly (00:04:31):
I mean we tend to give you guys feedback. I’d say in waves. We will go a couple days just kind of doing our norm and then all in one day we’ll try to do a bunch of new stuff and then we’re like, oh my God, this is all the stuff that you’ve got to fix. And so thank you guys for processing that the way that you do. But I mean the best thing about it is you guys really upped the support on the turbo side of it. And that’s what I like. I’ve thought lots of times in the past how cool it would be to just build my own software for our shop, which isn’t really doable and you’ve guys put us in a position to where we can at least have a lot of voice into making it work perfectly for us. So that’s been great. But yeah, the support is just, it’s killer.
Tom Dorsey (00:05:19):
And that’s really to segue into what we’re going to be talking about because I want you all to make sure you got paper and pencil with, you’re going to want to take notes here because there’s some information and preparation things that you can do in preparation of when you are able to use some of this new functionality. But most importantly is the best practices that Neil’s going to put on us because this is literally how this function, this tool got developed. And like I said, it wasn’t just a straight line, it was a lot of experience and mistakes and feedback and try iteration and try something else and get more feedback to get to the point where we’re at right now. And also really an important topic I want to explore Neil with you is that you’re no spring chicken in this business. You’re second generation, you’ve been shop operations inside and out and a lot of people, and I think when they first hear, oh, guided on the tablet, you think, well, I don’t need that.
(00:06:24):
That’s for basic learning, that’s for rookies, that’s my guys are here, we’ve been doing this forever, whatever it might be to where you’ve become a convert to say that, hey, that consistency of that process is a more beneficial, but B also saves time in the inspection process and that almost sounds antithetical. You say, wait, you’re going to make me follow instructions, but it’s supposed to be faster. How does that work? But I think that’s the results that we’re seeing across the shops that are using guided and a lot of shops are turning it on and don’t want to turn it off. And so I really want to talk about that throughout the show today to get folks a prepared for when that’s released and really give it the best shot, turn it on, implement it, follow the plan, and give it a chance because good things happen.
Neil Daly (00:07:22):
Yeah, it’s definitely, it’s really nice that you can turn it on and off right now. I see you are going to want to have a shop that’s either fully on or fully off in the future, but it is a huge adjustment and you guys kind of did it. You took one of my favorite features, which was Carry Forward and made it so you had to use guided mode, which I disliked from the beginning. And I see after you put the work into it, I see where you guys are going. You had a vision a little bigger than mine and it’s like when freaking Apple took away our headphone jacks at the beginning, you’re like, what the heck guys? What am I going to do with all these headsets? But then we just got used to it in this part of life. So I kind of see, I get where you guys are going with the guided mode and yeah, there’s a ton of potential with it.
Tom Dorsey (00:08:12):
So if we can, yeah, thank you. And it’ll grow on you, it’ll grow on you. Hopefully it doesn’t grow on you like mold, but it’ll grow because yeah, that’s exactly, Neil hit on the head, carryforward is vastly improved over the old style. Carryforward is a critical function, especially if you’ve got a nice big database that likes to come back and see you a lot of times and it’s something that you really are going to want to use and consider. So thank you. That’s the second big kind of takeaway today is if you’re not using Carry Forward, you haven’t looked into Carry Forward yet, check it out. Just start out with watching the videos, listening to Neil, reach out on Facebook, whatever you got to do, but you want to start to consider in your business, because again, remember we’re talking efficiency, productivity and we’re talking giving back technicians control.
(00:09:01):
The technicians traditionally always rely on the service advisor. And if you’re not paying your guys, if you’re paying ’em a couple tents, whatever it is, and they’re out there and day after day they make these recommendations, but they just don’t see the conversion to the sale, they’re not getting the jobs back over time, they’re probably going to start doing less and less and less. And then that’s where pencil whipping might start to develop and we really kind of throw all that out the window with the digital inspection and being able to add in the guided and the Carry Forward because now the technicians can efficiently and effectively control that presentation. I like to talk about it, about writing that novel, create that rough draft and send it over to the service writer for publication for editing and publication. And when that happens, all that stuff comes over and the service advisor is, I mean really he has to start to delete stuff to cherry pick and to go kind of back to that old style.
(00:10:07):
So now the technician feels much more empowered and they’re much more likely to do a thorough and consistent inspection each and every time. And well with guided, they have no choice. So there’s that. But Uwe, if you can start us off, kind of tell us how A, because pencil whipping is something we’ve been fighting at AutoVitals or at least trying to solve and eliminate is almost like polio, right? We’ve been coming up with a vaccine since 2013, 2014, and it’s still kind of a constant battle in iteration. If you could tell us a little bit about how you perceive, what do you see as the biggest risk and downside to pencil whipping and give us some insight around how this next release is your latest iteration and solution to control that pencil whipping.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:10:58):
Sure. Pencil whipping is just a response by the technician to gain time for productive work. That’s probably the best summary. It’s not a malicious act by anybody in the process. It is simply over the years, it was very clear that a technician is trying to use the time the most effectively, so it’s good for the shop and good for his wallet. That’s the bottom line. And if it turns out that the inspection results where he put time in day after day have not been sold at the level he would expect, he takes shortcuts. It’s just kind of human or that there is the clever kind. Once you work long enough with the service advisor and you know what they can sell best, you just check those boxes a little bit more often because then you can get at least a short term benefit because that work comes back more often to the back shop and you make money. But that is what just in the paper world has been a normal process. And yes, it’s the skeleton in the closet kind of, but everybody’s nodding when we talk about this.
(00:12:42):
That’s kind of a thing in the paper-based process. And so all it takes is basically create a solution which shows number one that the technician time is spent extremely effectively. And number two, get the team between service advisor and technician as a team to make the highest impact. That’s what we’re trying to do. And so that’s what we try to do. Technicians also through the nature of the work jump back and forth, skip inspection topics because they just see something and go there, record it, or some even don’t even take the tablet to the car, leave the tablet on the toolbox, go to the car, then memorize the findings, go back and record them just like you did when you had a piece of paper. And so we felt, and it was proven through the results of many, many shops, Neil’s, that the moment you have a consistent process and you can develop second nature kind of things, fundamentals like you do in sports or anywhere, it becomes so easy and normal and predictable. And so everything we invested was how can we create consistency and how can we save the technician the most time? The consistencies in guided saving time is in Carry Forward. I hope I’m making sense.
Tom Dorsey (00:14:23):
You are. And Bill, what would you say what’s the greatest impact when we can’t either identify that the ticks or pencil we don’t really have a solution to? Because to Uwe’s point, it’s just human behavior. I mean it’s natural that you would find that best and easiest and most efficient path for yourself and there can be a negative side to that and a positive side to that, what’s the consequences of that negative side?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:50):
So the
Bill Connor (00:14:50):
Consequences of negative side is a very, very quick downward spiral to going completely backwards from wherever you’re at. So whenever the technicians, the service riders and everybody in the shop doesn’t work together as a team to educate the customer and get sales, the wheels can fall off the wagon pretty quickly. They do. So that’s the biggest consequence, going ahead and going back to the dark ages on a quick pass and nobody wants to do that. We always got to look forward and measure our success and plan to be successful. So the guided mode and what we’re talking about today can be really a key to consistency, time savings, working together as a team. It can all be built into just using that one piece of the tool properly and every time.
Tom Dorsey (00:15:41):
And hey Neil, I mean you guys have had a strong shop process and been just top operators for quite some time. I mean, is that a reoccurring process? How has pencil whipping, I guess what my question is to you is how has that affected you? How have you dealt with it in the past and then how do you manage that now with TVPX and guided and Carry Forward? Well, I guess they can’t, but you know what I mean? Maybe before TVPX when you were digital, but still it impacts your businesses. We just heard Bill talking about how did you make sure that that wasn’t taking hold in your shop?
Neil Daly (00:16:32):
You’re basically talking when we see the same or two inspections on the same car that come out a little different.
Tom Dorsey (00:16:39):
Yeah, sure. It could be inconsistency or it could just be somebody checking all the boxes, everything’s good because you’re never going to sell it anyway, so why should I even inspect it or more than eyeball it
Neil Daly (00:16:53):
Just like you said, it’s not really just a malicious act on the tech when they’re doing that or anything like that. I do see it when they’ve done the same inspection on a car and we haven’t been able to fix any of those issues. The inspection is definitely going to go down every time. So yeah, there’s two main benefits to the Carry Forward and one of those is that they don’t have to take the same pictures over and over and over. They can just say, yes, it looks the same, or they can take a new picture of it and for them they see the work that I’ve done in the past is still here and relevant because I see the inspection I did last time, I don’t have to start from scratch every single time this car comes back. But then I think a bigger benefit of that is on the customer side, building that story like you were saying.
(00:17:42):
And that is just so important. And it happened recently when we were not using guided mode on something where we gave someone an inspection and the service advisor came to me and they’re like, how do I tell ’em? It’s so different from last time we realized it’s time to have another clinic. We had two different techs inspect that car and they didn’t use guided mode and there were different greens and reds and that was a car that had everything, a lot of items to talk about. So I get it, but that’s where the Carry Forward really, really, really helps. And that happened to me too. I took my truck to another shop. There were a couple things wrong with it the first time I got it there and I was like, cool, I’m going to take care of those. And then the next time I came in everything was green and it just showed that they half-assed the inspection the second time around and it didn’t look good on them. And basically the Carry Forward allows us not to do that. The information is always going to be there.
Tom Dorsey (00:18:47):
Yeah, that’s a brilliant point and how that translates into whatever happened to Mr. Jones, haven’t seen him, haven’t seen you in a while, Mr. Jones, if they’re not going to come and give you that feedback that hey, there was this discrepancy here and you ain’t catching it, then you, you’re just wondering why you’re losing customers.
Bill Connor (00:19:08):
So Neil mentioned a word there that I’m unfamiliar with, he said clinic. So is that something where you send your employees to when they’re not healthy or did you have more that you need to explain on that?
Neil Daly (00:19:18):
That was a super valuable thing than we did and Dustin sent me the article that you guys put together from when I first talked about that and it reminded me that we need to have another one. It has been a little while, but we’ve tried that a couple times and the best way we found to do it is to just have every tech inspect the same car on the same day. So for us, the inspection takes about 30 minutes, so you’re taking about 30 minutes per tech out of their day. And when I did this, I told ’em about it in the morning. I said, Hey, I got a good example for this. I need you guys to play fair with me and don’t look at the previous inspections, just do what you would normally do for an inspection for me. And then we had an hour long lunch meeting the next day where we basically just reviewed the customer view of everyone’s inspections.
(00:20:08):
From that we really don’t have to do too much coaching because the technicians get to see what the other guys are doing and they can see what they’re doing better or what they like about it. Like, oh, that camera angle’s better. We found things that certain techs were just better at finding on a car and it just kind of levels everybody on the same page after that. And I’m going to make it a goal to do that once a quarter. I tried it in a team environment too where we all went through an inspection together and that was really ineffective and just didn’t work for us. We probably got through three lines and we were already an hour in, so we didn’t make it through the whole
Tom Dorsey (00:20:46):
Inspection. You arguing like this, not like this.
Neil Daly (00:20:51):
We got held up on brake measurements, so we couldn’t believe how they all came out different when we’re literally all right here
Tom Dorsey (00:20:58):
Turning into a class on how to read a micrometer.
Neil Daly (00:21:00):
Yeah,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:21:02):
I remember you telling us that stuck in my head that the difference in estimate value between the inspections was a spectrum of $6,000 if I remember that correctly.
Neil Daly (00:21:20):
So after you have all the texts do the inspection, you build out an estimate for the best one and the worst one. And you’re right, it was a $6,000 difference and $6,000 worth of information that customer didn’t get. Potentially it’s our duty to have to supply all that. So yeah, it translates to dollars and then the tech C like, oh wow, it’s a lot of work that you could have sold on top of that. But yeah, it is just information that we’re obligated to educate our customers on
Tom Dorsey (00:21:55):
For sure. And we’re going to show a demo of that here pretty quick. Bill’s going to set that up for us. And while he’s doing that, we got Chris Mirad in the house and Chris is asking when they jump on and off cars, does the inspection keep time of the hours that they are on each car?
Neil Daly (00:22:18):
Yes.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:22:19):
You have two choices. So yeah, either if you really want to be interested in the time on inspection, you use the timers for this, the tech has to do additional start and stop tabs on the tablet. If you don’t do that, at least every time you open the other work order, when you go to the other car, the timer stops, right? So the work order time will always be right. If you really want to drill it down to an individual job, you can use the job timers.
Tom Dorsey (00:22:52):
Yeah, yeah. It’s not going to run in parallel. You can’t have one vehicle drain in and the timers running over there when you’re over here swapping out some brake pads on another vehicle and you’re running time on that one too, you’re going to stop the job here. When you go back into it, it’s going to pick it right back up. It’s just going to start the clock again and then we’re going to add it all up at the end of the job. So we do allow checking the time between the vehicles but just not at the same time.
(00:23:23):
Great. So if we can, let’s talk a little bit about Uwe, if you want to set up Bill in the demonstration and talk about what are the basic steps because really with the guided functionality it’s pretty straightforward, right? You select your observation, you make your recommendation, you see an image, and so you try to replicate that example image as best as possible and it’s got good lighting, good focus, it’s zoomed in all that kind of best practices in the picture, recreate that and you’re pretty much done, right? Move on to the next topic because one of the big time saving features that we have in there is that we’re able to pre-populate a lot of the technician notes and Uwe, what would you say on average is the results in the data from folks that are using guided as far as completion time of inspections?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:24:26):
So there’s a combination of the guided mode with the preparation of the inspection sheet. So in guided mode, an inspection sheet can be configured in a way that each condition has already the motorist language for the recommendation and the condition. So all the tech needs to do is basically hit a condition and take a picture if mandatory or a video, that’s it, and then go to the next topic. And so we estimate and know that the benefit can be around 10 minutes per vehicle in saving time and 10 minutes is a lot of time.
Tom Dorsey (00:25:15):
And do you back that up Neil? Is that a verified claim?
Neil Daly (00:25:22):
We haven’t verified it yet, but I see it, I see the potential because we also aren’t using your inspection sheet that we,
Tom Dorsey (00:25:29):
You got a custom
Neil Daly (00:25:29):
Our it’s much longer than the basic one and we did go in and we did a first round of putting in all the recommendations and actions. We need to do another round of that to make it totally efficient, but it’s just making it too complicated on ourselves.
Tom Dorsey (00:25:44):
I appreciate that. And that brings us to a great point is that with the guided, you can use custom sheets but you have to build them out with the guided stuff, you got to add the pictures and the can notes and all that stuff. So there is some setup, there’s some work involved, but it’s going to be just as flexible it is now, but that 10 minutes, even if it’s five minutes each and every time, that’s going to pay off for that initial work and setup in spade. So get the work done. I mean it’s not like you haven’t done it in the past, setting up your can jobs and that kind of stuff similar, you reap the benefits of the work forever. So what are you showing us, Bill? This looks pretty amazing for any of you. I haven’t seen the new TVPX and smart flow X app layout. This is a great view of that. This is a technician’s tablet and are we in guided mode?
Bill Connor (00:26:45):
So this is in guided mode right now and what I’ve done is I just went through the first topic so we can go through here. So this topic here that I’m going to actually go and tap on it that the check engine lights on and when I touch it with my finger, it’s going to go ahead and automatically go ahead and select the correct job that should be, which is to diagnose that I’m going to go and press next and it’s automatically going to go and provide the best practice of putting the customer notes in there. It tells the customer that your vehicle system has failed itself and we need to find out why. And then when you press next, it’s going to go and pop up and it’s going to go and show you a reference picture of what the end product should look like.
(00:27:27):
And of course I don’t have a check engine light in my office here, so I’m going to just grab something else and it’s going to go and put the right color arrow on it. Where else the technician has to do is drag it to the right place and then when they press next, it’s going to go ahead and actually propose the proper text that should be on the pitcher. So based on best practice, the pitcher should always have area focus, what it is, what needs to be done and the reason to buy today. So these are already filled out on here where all the technician has to do in most cases is just accept it and press add and then go on to the next topic if they don’t have any other pictures to take. And so it’s like a rinse and repeat. They just go through and really quickly be able to be guided through.
(00:28:07):
If it’s a topic that doesn’t require a picture, they just say, I don’t want to take one and skip it and go on, they can go to the next topic on it. And so in this case I’m going to go ahead and say that let’s say left low beams out, I’m going to press next. Again, it’s going to go ahead and pre-populate the proper customer notes based on the condition it’s going to show them again a reference image and draw the arrow to the right place. There’s your note on the bottom and so on. So it’s just a really quick way to go ahead and do it. And what even makes it quicker, which I can’t show now, is that when it comes time to go ahead and do that next inspection, all the proper information is there where they either confirm it or they don’t confirm it and just go ahead and reinspect that one topic.
Tom Dorsey (00:28:59):
Yeah, that is pretty amazing. I mean raise your hand if your tech can push a button and populate all that stuff and send it up to the service advisor all. So Dustin, everybody’s got their hands up, he needs to buy AutoVitals today or upgrade up. See I saw Neil, but seriously pretty amazing stuff being able to populate and you’re in full control of how you set up those tech notes and what those say. That’s just that setup we were talking about a little bit ago, but now you can really see how that time savings can start to add up. You’re not having to rely on typing those notes out or even the voice to text anymore. Service advisor can always add and add its personalizations, Hey Bob, here’s some info, whatever he wants to do on his publishing, but from a text perspective and from a consistency perspective because that’s one of the biggest time killers. Yeah, Bill is that when you leave it up to the inmates in the asylum, well they’re going to run and yeah, they’re great at their jobs, they’ve been doing it forever and most of the time they’re consistent, but saying most of the time you’re consistent means you’re not consistent.
Bill Connor (00:30:09):
They could consistently use the wrong language and things like that too. So again, having it built into the inspection sheet is really a key to speed and consistency, a uniform message to your customers. I mean if you’re a franchise and you want to have a McDonald’s footprint across your whole network, the guided inspection sheet is your tool and it probably needs to be defined at the corporate level and just turned on and locked on.
Tom Dorsey (00:30:36):
Yeah, yeah, I think over time that’s our position. I think our best practice, we’re really exciting. We’re getting in a lot of feedback and the data and stuff like that is more and more shops are able to use the guided and the Carry Forward together. But one of the biggest things, and a lot of times you don’t realize it, but if we’re hopping around from point to point or matter of fact I was in a shop, I’m not even going to say the name,
Bill Connor (00:31:08):
But it was,
Tom Dorsey (00:31:09):
And I watched this poor guy and they were so tunnel vision in how he did his job. He went tire, tire, tire, tire, brake, brake, brake, brake. I mean this guy walked around my car so much thought I was going to spin around on the lift and so I went over and at the end and I just was told, Hey guys, one of the things that we would like you to do and you can change this was a customer, of course I only do business with AutoVitals customers by the way, and my cars break down all the time, but wait, no, I take that back, they never break down. I just have lots of cars and I just kind of gave ’em some pointers and said you can adjust those topics in the order that you go in so that you cluster that work, take care of everything at the left front, take care of everything at the rear left and that kind of the light goes off.
(00:32:01):
Well that’s exactly what the guided does is the guided allows you to kind of like Uwe said, the dance, right, the ballet make the choreography on how you get through that inspection a consistent a hundred percent of the time but in the most efficient time possible and that guided will really help you in that to achieve that goal. So if you could, now I know Neil, this is near and dear to your heart buddy is let’s talk Carry Forward. Let’s talk about the next step to give that efficiency and those time savings back to technicians and that’s putting it in concert with Carry Forward and a lot of people maybe tried the Carry Forward before and it was first we were introducing it and there was some not going to sugarcoat it. There was some, it was maybe difficult to use and we’ve worked on it and worked on it and kind nibbled away and made it a little bit better. But now I mean it’s like night and day. I mean would you say, so Neil, because you used Carry Forward before Yeah. And now the way that Carry Forward’s working now, what’s your kind of impression of it?
Neil Daly (00:33:15):
Well, ones the best thing that you guys do. It’s the best feature I think of AutoVitals and you guys have a lot of good ones, but I mean it is just a lot easier to use. I’m trying to remember some of the issues that we had with the last one. Everybody and the techs appreciate it too just because of the time savings and the consistency and also we note a lot of minor issues that’ll be in yellow like a stage two bushing crack and when the text sees the picture of that from last time and now it’s a stage three and it has play, we can update the picture, show the customer, both of ’em and hey, within three months this got worse. We need to take care of this today. It just is so much more information to help you fix that car. Yeah, just saving all the information is huge, not having to start from scratch every single time you do an inspection.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:13):
So I have a question, Neil then do you give specific instructions to show where through Carry Forward? Yeah,
Neil Daly (00:34:25):
So are you talking about our stage twos and stage three type stuff
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:34:30):
Or break measurements or tread depths or whatever? Is there a certain policy you have applied to the shop so you can after after the third visit of a customer, all the inspection sheets using the Carry Forward feature, have a little history of and trends in the one inspection sheet or inspection resolved
Neil Daly (00:34:55):
And I like how you guys have incorporated being able to add that process into the inspection where you measure brake pads, here’s a picture of where we should be doing it. That’s nice. And then having a standard between what a stage two and a stage three looks like. We haven’t added that into the inspection, although I will because yeah, there’s a ton of value in that. Okay, just got to do more work on our inspection sheet.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:35:25):
I mean the beauty for the service advisor must be that the moment you have trends, like you said, that there’s no escape for the customer to acknowledge okay there is, I don’t know, breaks are down or whatever else it is.
Neil Daly (00:35:48):
Yeah, I mean it just shows such sophistication for us when we’re tracking, we’re not just telling you what’s wrong with their car today. We’ve been tracking it and we’re putting it together and we really know this car now and this inspection report shows it. It’s just a really good place to be for our customers because they shouldn’t have to worry about this stuff. It’s on us and people love it when we’ve been tracking something minor and basically giving ’em notice like, hey, when this goes into a stage three, we got to take care of it that day they’re ready for it. It’s not a surprise they’ve been planning for a year to fix that bushing and here it is.
Tom Dorsey (00:36:31):
And you can even start to have that conversation, Hey, here’s some things you can do, keep your air, your tires inflated at the proper pressures and things like that that can extend that yellow, it can push that date out a little bit and people really appreciate that, just like you said. Yeah, they’re planning on it, they know about it and now they’re actively engaged in maintaining their vehicle and try and extend that as much as possible, but you know who they credit all that to as you so they know it’s going to have to be replaced eventually. Where are they going to go? They’re going to go to the person that they valued and that they credit with keeping them in that kind of mindset and saving them that money and saving them that time. And then once they have that trust built in, everything you tell ’em and show them through the digital inspection just becomes not an if but a when.
Neil Daly (00:37:24):
Go
Bill Connor (00:37:24):
Ahead. We also talk about retention starting right from the first time you do that first inspection and now when the guided where you can show them trends over time, now you’re locking that customer into seeing them a couple three times a year to show them not only what’s wearing but to predict the rate that it’s wearing at in case they want a budget. What a perfect way to do it.
Tom Dorsey (00:37:48):
No, that is awesome. So we’ve got Bill, can you give us a little view of the Carry Forward?
Bill Connor (00:37:57):
I do not have the Carry Forward up because I don’t have a inspection that was done in the test shop.
Tom Dorsey (00:38:02):
Oh,
Bill Connor (00:38:04):
It’s going to look exactly the same except it’s going to have a button on it that you just click and it basically says, are you confirming it? If you confirm it, you go on the next topic. If you don’t confirm it, if you change the condition, basically you press a button and it wipes out that one topic only. You reinspect that topic and then you go right onto the next one
Tom Dorsey (00:38:25):
And something that’s in that reinspected and confirmed bank timestamp. So from kind of a CYA perspective, right, it’s not going to because initial the image going to say this picture was taken in May, but today I reinspected and confirmed. And so we’re not trying to trick ’em or say that we replaced this image today. No, it’s still that same information but you’re still with specs and you’re good to go or not. And like Bill said, then it’s really simple as to say, boop, update this one that gets redone and then move forward and through the guided you don’t lose your place. It just takes you right to the next one, next one, next one. And your job is to set it up so that you’re the most efficient path around that vehicle each and every time through that guided process and that’s where you’ll catch that 10 minutes. That’s our big goal and promise to you and put that back in and out again. That’s 10 minutes per vehicle for each and every tech. With that time do what you will. You can have a pillow fighter or you can sell more work. It’s all, it depends on I guess your shop culture. I think over at Neil’s they lean more towards pillow fight.
Neil Daly (00:39:44):
Yeah, we had a disco ball in the shop, so that’s also a huge savings for the green items because a lot of shops are taking pictures of things that are good on the car and if you don’t have to take those every time you’re saving that time and also once it goes from green to yellow, you just have that story behind it. So yeah, just value everywhere with Carry Forward.
Tom Dorsey (00:40:11):
Tony Denberg said she came in late and Tony will never forgive you, so I just wanted to throw that out there. But what she’s asking is will it be easier to see the topics that had previous future or immediate attention so the technician doesn’t have to go through each and every topic.
Neil Daly (00:40:29):
You still got to go through every topic. You still have to do a full inspection on that car, but it saves you time in noting it. Right. We still got to check everything, but if it looks the same as last time, you can just reuse the image and the notes that you did last time so you don’t have to redo that work.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:40:47):
Just one tap with one tap, right? That’s all you do.
Tom Dorsey (00:40:51):
Yeah. Yes. What I was going to say, verify the app. Next topic.
Bill Connor (00:40:54):
Should we share the graphics so we can talk about what it was in the past and what it is using to Carry Forward? If you’re ready.
Tom Dorsey (00:41:00):
Yeah,
Bill Connor (00:41:03):
Let me go ahead and find it over here. There you go. Uba, if you want to go ahead and walk through that.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:41:17):
Sure. Are you scrolling down for me please? To the first topic? It’s kind of a summary. Thank you. So really in the, it was often, and that’s actually not only paper, but also if you look at the digital inspection as the ability to take pictures and send it to the service advisor, this is what a lot of digital inspection solutions are. It really allows a certain, okay, let me check out the car. Oh there’s something I might be able to sell. And then the digital inspection is applied after the car has been inspected. That saves a lot of time because you go cherry picking and you hit the bullseye every single time, but there’s no consistency with all the challenges and problems we already discussed in the guided, you set the condition, take mandatory picks, move to the next topic, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap notes are already there. If you want to change the notes, you can do that also right there. If you change them very often you might want to go to the person who created the notes, whether that’s the AutoVitals sheet or your shop foreman or Neil and say, I would like to reword this a little bit and then from next on, next time on it will be better. So that’s the absolute simplest way of doing the inspections. Guided very few actions. If you could scroll down.
Tom Dorsey (00:43:23):
Hey, real quick, Adam bench has a question and he’s asking, huh?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:43:28):
Go ahead.
Tom Dorsey (00:43:29):
Oh, he’s asking when you turn on the Carry Forward, is it going to have the previous inspections from the inspection history available as soon as I turn it on or does it start from when I turn it on and I have to do some inspections to then have them Carry Forward? Does that make sense?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:43:50):
Yeah, at the moment there is a previous inspection at the previous visit it’s available.
Tom Dorsey (00:43:57):
Yeah,
Neil Daly (00:43:59):
I think the issue with that is if you start using the new template that you guys made, it makes it so you can turn on guided mode much easier. That’s a different inspection sheet, so the history wouldn’t really be there. So if you want all of the data that you have to still Carry Forward, you would have to just make sure you put the work into your inspection sheet so that it works with guided mode.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:44:24):
That is correct.
Neil Daly (00:44:27):
So that’s where you may not want to switch to the your is great and you can use a lot of the topics and use it as a guide to build your inspection, but to use it, you still have to put the work into your inspection sheet.
Tom Dorsey (00:44:42):
Yeah, definitely. But it is time well spent because I mean like I said, you just reap the benefits forever and ever.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:44:55):
Okay, so we mentioned that before and just Neil made an excellent point investing in the nodes. It might be some work over the weekend or in off hours, but it pays up big time. I mean just think about the 10 minutes per vehicle and that justifies it. You’ve seen in the demo how reference images help tech to take consistent images. That is so important because then the same problem is described the same way across text and I have to tell you a little secret, it will also help us tremendously because we’re working on a feature where we will automatically compare mint condition pictures with real condition pictures. So we are trying to create the most effective way and that is contrast and compare and the more consistent the images are being taken, the higher the chance that we can just build automatically through the software. A mint condition pictures next to the real condition pictures and then advancing through the topics is just very smooth. It’s the same rhythm, you don’t even need to think about it.
Tom Dorsey (00:46:37):
And so all the cool stuff that the guided and Carry Forward does for the tech think of that is some cool stuff for the service writer helping him to publish that story, that compelling and effective digital inspection that he’s working on by being able to add automatically, just like you saw those notes populate in the demo Bill did for us, those compare and contrast type images and you can help us out, take lots of pictures of mink condition stuff, get that into the data and help us to compile a library of M condition images so that we can deliver that faster. Yeah, I mean uwa, would you agree with that? Is there anything else that you would say folks can get involved to help us to expedite the ability to deliver that?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:47:29):
I mean the best way would be check out our default AutoVitals inspection and make a serious consideration whether that is going to be your standard inspection moving forward. And if you see things you would like to change, hop onto the Facebook forum and talk about it, what you would like to change. Because then any future feature we build on top of it will allow you to take advantage of it. So you see it here in this case, right? This is the way you edit the default caption of the first image. Just imagine how big, why it’s really hard for the technician to write a node to every picture. They just want to go through that smoothly. And the same for the service advisor. And so here we just create a caption for the first image taken and when that image is being tapped on by the motorist on a mobile phone, that’s all they see.
(00:48:54):
Then you can have everything in one language and you invest it exactly two minutes somewhere when you prepare the inspection sheet. No repeat editing needed anymore. So we see that as a huge benefit. I would like to add one more thing. There was a discussion about should we reuse pictures from old inspections and give them a new timestamp pretending that’s how the vehicle looks still. And so we have clearly decided not to do this. You reuse the image and then we say reinspect it and confirmed there is no new timestamp on the image, which was from last time. So we believe transparency is the absolute best way of creating trust. So making up a timestamp pretending it’s from this visit would backfire in our opinion. So we don’t support
Tom Dorsey (00:50:02):
That. I try that every year on my birthday I try to get a new timestamp but can’t you tell it’s working out for me. Look at this baby hairs right here. Beach bugs, it don’t work.
Bill Connor (00:50:16):
So one of the interesting things that we haven’t brought up is new shops that come on that not a transfer, basically they’re all going to start out in a guided mode until they get their inspection rate up and their rate and send rate and so on. So that’s going to be pretty much automatic just by using the tool. So that’s one thing and it’s really kind of interesting that the shops that we have that have started out from TBPX on day one, they’ve really adopted really fast because all the best practices are building the tool. They get it built into the muscle memory and then when they decide to go, what most shops do is go rogue and do their own anarchist thing and create their own inspection sheet. At least they know what good looks like and what the best practices are to embed in their own inspection sheet
Tom Dorsey (00:51:03):
And then they can always come back to the default if it gets too chaotic.
Neil Daly (00:51:11):
Yeah, it is a transition that you’ve got to be ready for. I can see once you’re set into your ways, it is almost like switching to a different company to do inspections so different and if you just roll it out into the shop and say deal with it, they’re going to get a lot of feedback from the technicians. But if you explain the value in it and show ’em how it works and you train on it and then you make it your own, it can work.
Bill Connor (00:51:40):
It’s really neat to see that new shops coming on board that have never seen the old platform, they don’t know about it, don’t know how it works or anything. It’s a really easy path for them to go ahead and adopt and move forward.
Tom Dorsey (00:51:55):
Yeah, it’s just all you old dogs that have to learn new tricks.
Neil Daly (00:51:58):
I did it. I came in, what the heck is this? You
Tom Dorsey (00:52:02):
Got ready
Neil Daly (00:52:02):
Carry Forward and you’re making me use this.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:07):
Hey Jason Sims is in the house too. Jason, what’s up buddy? Must
Neil Daly (00:52:10):
Know how to get turned on.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:12):
Yeah, he’s asking when and how does this get turned on. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Let’s talk about the demo shop. If we could Bill maybe give some folks information on how they can get in there and start pushing buttons if that’s allowed or at least get onto the list and what that process would look like for folks that are interested.
Bill Connor (00:52:34):
So really the path right now is pretty simple for those that are on a management system to support it, which you may talk about a little bit. We don’t have ’em all supported yet, would be to go to the app store to play store and download AutoVitals.x put their phone number in on one of their tablets and then a message is going to go to their trainer that basically is going to say that hey, the shop is interested. They’ll get an email that says, Hey, play through this video first it’s going to ask you for your email, your name and so on. And then at the end of it it’s going to go ahead and have a button you can press and go right to the demo shop, log in, make sure you use the guided training, go ahead and process the inspection that can be created for you, send it to yourself, see what it looks like. Basically you’re going to go through in that demo shop and actually go through and process the repair orders for you from start to finish. And that’s a really good way to go and get started down the path. It also is a great way to make sure that your equipment is supported and so on.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:53:37):
The demo shop is really the sandbox you can play in once you go live. We allow you to switch it on and off per service advisor and per tech or if you feel it should be as consistent as Neil said it should be. You go to the admin settings and say guided is enforced for everybody. So those two modes allow in the beginning everybody gets on it and then in case you find reasons not to use it, which I would love to know because we believe guided is
Tom Dorsey (00:54:24):
Tell ’em in Facebook, tell ’em in Facebook why.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:54:30):
But if there are reasons then you can for example switch it on for one tech who you just hired or even a service advisor. Yeah, it’s huge. So let me qualify. I think the guided for the technician is both training and consistency, whereas for the service advisor I can see how initially guided is really important for a new shop to learn how to use TVPX and then once the muscle memory is established, you can switch it up.
Bill Connor (00:55:09):
So if I had a shop or multiple shops, the technician’s tablet would stay in guided for the rest of their lives. The service writers would go ahead and stay in guided mode when they first come in on board or when they go ahead and start slacking on their job, I would switch it back and then when they get back on the program, I would switch it off. If I was a multi shop owner, I would run that same thing. My tablets would all be unguided, the service writers, I’d still file the same philosophy when I bring them in new or if their metrics start trending backwards based on data in the business control panel, not a feeling, then I would switch guided back on for that individual person.
Tom Dorsey (00:55:47):
Yes, that’s a fantastic point Bill is that’s really you marry that BCP, the business control panel into, that’s another tool to get that consistency back. If you see you’re trending down away from your goal or you’re starting to get some peaks and valleys and spikes up in there, just turn that consistency back on and just reinforce it, get it back to consistent. If you want to pull it off at some later time you can, but you’re back on track, right? You’re hitting your numbers real quick.
Bill Connor (00:56:17):
There is one thing I’d like to get a discussion on the Facebook forum about because I get this ass over and over and over again now that we’re transitioning to the digital world period, compensation plans for service advisors. There’s a lot of ’em based on sales and gross profit hour and so on. But I keep getting asked what type of metrics would we want to go ahead and actually base that compensation program also. So in order to get the bonus, do they have to have modus research time of a certain amount edit and so on? So that discussion would be a great one to put in a forum because I get asked almost every day. So it’d be a great way to go ahead and actually take it over there and get that conversation started.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:57:01):
Yeah, that’s a great idea.
Neil Daly (00:57:03):
Adam had a question in there too that I think we missed and what you’re talking about, Adam, it says if a customer comes back for work needed from a prior inspection, is it within our window where we don’t need to do a new inspection today? Will that clear out the prior inspection data if we don’t have them do another new inspection? And that’s something we were just talking about in the turbo group and I think right now is a little bit of an issue and the way that we got around it for now is instead of starting a new courtesy inspection, when that car comes back, we start, we call it a quick inspection. Yeah. If you start another courtesy and then don’t touch those topics, I think the information is gone. Is that right?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:57:53):
I’m still processing the question.
Neil Daly (00:57:55):
Sorry
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:57:59):
To
Neil Daly (00:57:59):
Answer his question though. We’re working on it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:58:03):
Okay, good. Thank you Neil. I hope I can confirm on it. We’re working on it.
Neil Daly (00:58:12):
Yeah, but it is something to be careful with if you’re using it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:58:19):
Adam said don’t blame the question Uwe. I know I don’t. I love questions. I’m just not as fast as Neil in processing it.
Bill Connor (00:58:32):
And he’ll normally follow up with his own question of why.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:58:40):
Cool. Would that help you? Questions Neil? I have a question. You mentioned it’s almost like introducing a new product for your text. Is there anything you can give us as advice how we can smooth that transition? If there’s anything, how can we help you making it more clear or more transparent or easier or whatever?
Neil Daly (00:59:15):
I mean for me it would probably help if I watched the training videos and then shared those with texts ahead of time. It really helps us because I’ll take it and go through it and find out some things that they’re not going to like and then try to get with you guys and change it or find out how we’re not doing it and then follow your suggestion. But it is kind of a shock to them if you just turn it on, like everything looks different and I’m used to being in control. It is taken away control from jumping around the inspection and it is training a completely different process. So yeah, probably not like we’ve done it where we’re like, hey guys, try out guided mode and then five minutes later, what the heck is this? I think just a lot of preparation and training in it is probably the way to roll that out.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:00:13):
Okay.
Tom Dorsey (01:00:14):
Yeah, definitely. And then that’s why ask Bill to kind of go through that process. So as you’re in the queue waiting, don’t just wait and get some stuff done and get in there and get the app downloaded. Start watching the videos, getting prepped for when you get the ability to get that installed so that you are not starting from scratch and you kind of know what to expect and it’s not going to be as disruptive in the shop as you’re implementing it and it takes off. I mean you saw how clean and really straightforward it is, so it’s nothing to be afraid of. You guys are going to pick it up just like that. And your benefits far outweigh waiting around and thinking about it.
Bill Connor (01:01:07):
The end game on this really, especially TVPX is what it looks like in the eyes of the customer. Not only on the first visit but on each subsequent visit thereafter. And that’s what we’re after is that consistency. You guys are the pacesetter in your industry for your area that you’re in and everybody else is going to follow behind you. Eventually they’ll be assimilated. It’s just a matter of when.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:34):
Yeah, that’s great.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:01:35):
Adam, I understood your question. Now I think, let me rephrase it. Can you skip an inspection and still use data from before that inspection? So the answer is no. You have to do an inspection every single time.
Tom Dorsey (01:02:00):
And there you haven’t. See, that’s why Uwe asked why and how will that benefit you? Because he’s still processing, right? He’s just delaying. It’s a delay tactic so that he can, but that’s what you want, right? Once he gets that fully processed, he drops the right answer. But no, Adam, awesome buddy, and we always appreciate your feedback and looking forward to you getting, oh, Adam says, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I’ve been wondering about that Carry Forward feature for a while and just don’t want our guys to lose the data. We have them always take a dash picture to document mileage, even if it’s a couple of days later, they come back for the follow-up work. So yeah, that’s a great point.
Neil Daly (01:02:41):
So in that case, you either need to decide whether you’re going to do another full inspection and save the time on it, but probably create a quick inspect and that’s super transparent to the customer. Like, Hey, since you were here just a couple days ago, we did a quick inspection for you that checks the tires and we check in the car again and it’s labeled differently. And that way the information stays on your courtesy check, but you still get to check what you need to without erasing your inspection.
Tom Dorsey (01:03:09):
Yeah, no, that’s a great point. That one, always stay because you’ll never have guided on that one. And if you have any questions about doing that, reach out to your advisor and they’ll help you out. Post it up on Facebook, folks will help you out so you can get that set up and it’s really simple for your technician to go through and change between that quick inspection and your courtesy right there on the tablet. So it’s just communication and setting those expectations. Lou Neil, thank you very much for coming on, buddy. It was great as always, I think give a lot of insight to folks that are waiting on this and thinking about it, what’s happening behind the scenes and how you guys battle this stuff out. We got to see a little bit of it on the show today, and it was the PC version because No, I’m just kidding.
(01:04:00):
But we can’t thank you enough, buddy for the work that you do and giving it to us, man, I got to tell you, given it to us so that we can grow and improve and develop something that it’s going to work for folks and they’re going to use it and it’s going to benefit people. So of course you too, Adam, man. Appreciate you always, John. Everybody else. Oh, by the way, Bill, Matt Mallick said hi. I guess he didn’t want to say hi to the rest of us. I see you. We love you still. Anyway, Matt, so hello right back at you and then tune in next Wednesday, same time, same place. 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. We’re going to be talking more digital shop best practices and helping you to be better operators. Bill Uwe. Thanks a lot, Dustin killed it. As always, if you didn’t get a chance to fill out those polls before we hit the dump button and give us that feedback, help us to make these shows better, give us ideas. We want you on the show. Give us some direction on what is going to benefit you from topic-wise, and we’ll get the guests on and we’ll put the shows together and deliver for you. Thanks a lot. Oh, last poll. Question from Adam, whose beard is longer? John Long or Neil? John Long. I got to go, John Long.
Neil Daly (01:05:18):
Yeah, I chopped it off when I did my first buzz cut when we went into the first round of Covid. Wish I would’ve. Yeah, it was getting hot. We’ll get there again.
Tom Dorsey (01:05:30):
I’m a hippie now. And now they just closed down the barber again. I never even been, so I’m doing it myself. Got a sharp butter knife and the branding iron out back there and I’m going to do my own hair. So thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you next Wednesday.