Get Team Commitment for Better Results
SmartFlow allows to track key performance indicators (KPI), which are hard to come by using the traditional paper way. For example the inspection rate and the number of recommended actions the technicians adds for each inspection are highly important. Are those KPIs graphed as trends over time, the shop owner, manager and the whole team have a clear picture of how the shop is improving and can document the measures needed for the team to take the shop to the next level.
Configure and Run the Graphical Trend Tool
First define the time period to track and the goals for your team on the inspection metrics report page, as shown below
- Define the time window (e.g., one month) you want to compare with 5 previous time periods of the same length (e.g., 6 months at one glance). The image shows that 30 days in June will be compared with the previous months in 2016. Make sure to select all inspections and exclude follow-up visits within 14 days of the previous one.
- Make also sure that your goals you have for your team are set accurately
- Run the Inspection Metrics Dashboard
Baseline Trends
Baseline trends describe the absolute basics of becoming successful in the Digital Shop. Goals not met means the shop has to do fundamental homework, the shop owner is not engaged, and the product is not used to advance the shop. Please see below one shop’s results. The trends are positive over the last 6 months and the staff has reached the goals. Awesome progress. Please note the comments at the bottom. they will be tracked and serve as accountability measure for the staff members, who get tasks assigned.
Effectiveness Trends
Once the basics are covered, lets check the techs’ and service advisors’ activities. Below is the same shop as before and I know you see what I see: despite doing an amazing job on taking pictures, they do NOT recommend enough actions. Thus the service advisor has to make them up on the estimate and doesn’t use the SmartFlow automated estimate generation feature and might waste time not available for educating the customer. And the service advisor is not doing a great job sending out inspection results to the customers (less than 50% email rate). How will the customer actually see all the wonderful pictures taken, if nothing is put in front of them in time? Please see the notes taken on the left, indicating the jobs for both the techs and service advisor. They include the quick win video with instructions for inspection results.
Performance Trends
Lets check the outcome of the measures taken. Below is the performance report for the same shop and the same time window. There is only good news. The Rolling Average RO shows the same major trend as the ARO, so we are sure we are not misinterpreting the ARO plot (sometimes, depending on the time period used, the actual ARO will indicate a seasonal or weekly peak caused by shop traffic in the week of the 4th of July or similar). The ARO increased over the last 6 months by more than 30%. The average billed hours per repair order increased as well, but have a lot of room to grow. Increasing the number of recommended actions, backing them up with the right pictures, and having the service advisor emailing them and educating online, will definitely get this shop to an even higher ARO and beyond 2 average billed hours per RO.
All you as an owner or manager need to do is leave your agreement with your staff in the comments field (red arrow) and check in the next huddle, whether the agreed upon tasks have been performed.
Update 09/04/2016:
It is now possible to find the comments as trace on the trend graphs. See image below and find the diamond shaped data point. HOvering over it will help you determine what action item you have agreed to.
Every submitted comment triggers an email to you and your AutoVitals product advisor.
The benefits are
- Better Tracking of action items with your staff
- Allow your AutoVitals product advisor to send yo action items and updates
Please check below trends from two different shops. Can you see what is going on?
- Release Notes V6.0.52 (TVP.X) and V5.0.58 (TVP Legacy) - October 23, 2020
- Release Notes V6.0.50 (TVP.X) and V5.0.57 (TVP Legacy) - October 11, 2020
- Release Notes V6.0.47 (TVP.X) and V5.0.56 (TVP Legacy) - September 26, 2020