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Digital Shop Talk Radio

Wednesdays @

1PM EST / 10AM PST

This is the Digital Shop Talk Radio, a new weekly podcast from AutoVitals that features users of The Digital Shop platform and discusses their success and challenges in their journey to becoming digital. 

Featured Episode

Episode 1:

Joe Sevart, Tyler Hubbard & Ron Haugen

Our first Digital Shop Talk Radio episode has I-70 Auto Service’s owners Joe Sevart & Tyler Hubbard join our co-hosts Tom Dorsey and Ron Haugen and talk about their transition from paper to digital and what their experiences were running a Digital Shop and how they overcame the challenges that they faced.

Season 1, Episode 1    |    30min

Transcript of Recording:

Tom Dorsey: 01:02

Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to the first edition of the Auto Vitals Digital Shop Talk Radio. I am co-host Tom Dorsey and I’d like to introduce my brave co-host with the most, Ron Haugen; will be joining me for the digital shop talk radio series as we continue. Today’s episode is the first episode, February 6 2019. And we are really honored to be able to introduce our first ever guests, Joe Sevart and Tyler Hubbard from I-70 Automotive. Say hi guys.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 01:43

How we doing… How we doing guys?

 

Tom Dorsey: 01:45

Fantastic!

 

Joe Sevart: 01:46

Good morning everybody.

 

Tom Dorsey: 01:48

And we’ve got quite the diverse demographic here, we’ve got… Ron is joining us from way deep down South in Mexico where he’s bragging that its 80 degrees and you could probably tell by his tan, for those of you that can see us. And Joe and Tyler are having a different experience, what’s it like in KC guys?

 

Tyler Hubbard: 02:10

KC, we got snow and ice and its cold here. So, we are very envious around right now.

 

Ron Haugen: 02:18

We have ice here too but it’s in our drinks.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 02:21

Exactly!

 

Tom Dorsey: 02:22

Margaritas…

 

Tyler Hubbard: 02:23

Exactly! We got the different kind of ice.

 

Tom Dorsey: 02:25

Yeah! We got blended or in rocks. Well, good. Thanks for joining us. And you know, we wanted to kick off our digital shop talk radio series with, you know, kind of a follow up on our digital shop conference and Joe and Tyler, you know, made it out and joined us in… for the digital shop conference. And just wanted to get kind of some takeaways, what did you guys think?

 

Tyler Hubbard: 02:53

I mean the shop conference for us, I mean, for me personally was a really good experience. I think it’s always awesome to be around other shop owners that are trying to be as progressive as you are, share ideas. The breakouts were phenomenal. I mean, you’re talking with people that are using auto vitals on a daily basis. So, it’s nice to have that interaction with somebody that’s actually using it. So, yeah! I came back with a lot of great ideas.

A lot of courage, I guess, is the other easiest way to say it, to make changes in my shop. I mean, we have been using auto vitals for quite a while now. But there are some things that I was kind of hesitant to get on board with, and then speaking people, to people out there, you know, I just… I got the courage to change and I did. And I came back and I talked with my other service advisor, Shane, we’ve made some changes and it’s been great for us. 

But, like I said, I mean it’s, it’s an awesome experience to be around other shop owners that are in the same situation as you, that are trying to be as progressive as you, try to break the norm and, you know, to be around them and pick their minds and pick their brains and see what they’re doing, what they’re doing differently, compare it to you, what you’re doing at your shop. It was a phenomenal experience for me, and I’m really glad we took the time to go out there. It was fantastic.

 

Tom Dorsey: 04:11

Yeah! Yeah! We’re glad you came too. And it sounds like it was pretty inspirational for you.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 04:15

Yeah! I mean, like I said, I mean it… For me, I think the biggest thing I made a change in, personally, businessly and businesswise, this year was… You know, things have been good for us but they can always get better. And it’s the kind of courage to make that change and break that mold of what you have been doing to get better and be more progressive than your shop and make things better.

It’s a… It’s hard sometimes, you get stuck in that rut and it’s like, well, things aren’t that bad. I mean, we’re doing all right but we can do better. And I think that’s… it was a hard cycle for me to break and take the courage to break. But, it’s been good for us; it’s been a really good experience for us.

 

Tom Dorsey: 04:58

Yeah! Because you know….

 

Ron Haugen: 04:58

Sometimes when thing are…

 

Tom Dorsey: 05:00

Go ahead Ron.

 

Ron Haugen: 05:01

Sometimes when things are going good and working well, it’s easy to get lost in the day to day operation. You know, I mean, you know, the numbers are looking good, everything’s going along fine, so you don’t really think about what can I improve? Or why should I change? because you kind of feel like you’re already there.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 05:19

Yeah! Yeah! I totally agree with that Ron. I mean, it’s… Like you said, I mean, it’s… You can get lost in the day to day because things are good, appointments are coming in, you’re making money. I mean, life’s good. And it’s very easy to get lost in that and to really take a step back and like I said, I mean, it’s, I’m… It took a lot of courage for me to make some changes that I made from it, I’m very happy I did. And, now I’m all in and working on different things at night time, trying to get them better and just trying to progress the business. So..,

 

Tom Dorsey: 05:54

Yeah! You know, because you guys were actually… I mean, you were kind of dabbling, yeah! I would say, right Joe? A little bit, right? You’ve been with us for quite some time and, you know, I think a lot of times what happens is, you know it’s, it… There’s a lot of process change and implementation that you need to go through, and you kind of get to a point where, hey! It’s kind of work in and, you know, it’s paying off.

And like Tyler said, you kind of get in a rut but when you come out and hear something like at the conference where guys actually make those changes and adopt those best practices then, and like you said, you know, you get a little bit of courage to go the extra mile and kind of take another bite out of the elephant. What Joe would you say was, have you noticed? I mean, the biggest takeaway from what Tyler’s been able to implement since you guys got back from the conference?

 

Joe Sevart: 06:40

Yeah! Tom. Well, what I’ve really like noticed is, I’m not involved in the day to day aspect of the inspection itself.

 

Tom Dorsey: 06:47

Sure.

 

Joe Sevart: 06:47

In auditing AROs and watching the numbers, I could tell you, we finished up 2018 with an average ARO of $512.32 which is a pretty good ARO, especially here in Kansas City where we got to do $12 vehicle inspections.

 

Tom Dorsey: 07:06

Wow!

 

Joe Sevart: 07:06

So that kind of brings that down. But what I can share with you, with what Tyler learned, what he’s implemented, and him and Shane are working on daily. So, we ended up January at $614.20; so a $102 up, and that’s right after the conference. And so far in February, we’re at $614.84. So, they have raised the ARO up a $100 and that’s for… That’s where the shop that’s been using this for, what? Four years now.

 

Tom Dorsey: 07:39

Right!

 

Joe Sevart: 07:39

Just by going to the conference and, you know, using the tools that, especially Laura King and yourself and the staff there, there’s a… given us and implementing it, it’s made a huge difference. The return on the investment of what it costs us to go out there, it’s been paid for pretty quick, you know. So, yeah! It’s very good process.

And, as I told Tyler when Nima called me and asked me about coming out, I said, you know Tyler by us going out there, you know, this is going to be the right thing to do for the company, it’s going to save you time, it’s going to help the customers, you know, and that’s… I think that’s what’s really happened, to help him, you know, not have to be on the phone as much as what it used to be.

 

Tom Dorsey: 08:34

Sounds like Ron needs to save you a spot next to him at the bar down there.

 

Joe Sevart: 08:39

That’s the plan. (08:44, Multiple Speakers Inaudible)

 

Tom Dorsey: 08:45

You’ll be down there soon.

 

Ron Haugen: 08:46

Yeah!

 

Joe Sevart: 08:46

Absolutely!

 

Tom Dorsey: 08:49

So that’s pretty incredible. I mean, you mentioned that you’re seeing a time savings. You know, and that’s… It’s funny because it’s almost antithetical to what a lot of people say, right? Is… And I’m just going to assume something Tyler, is that some of the best practices you took away from the conference where things like, you’re editing the pictures and kind of let the inspection do the work and watch the timer, and let the customer call you back. And a lot of people won’t, you know, with the pushback we get is, ah! It’s… My service advisor will never do it; it’s going to take… It’s more work. But somehow you did more work but it’s saving you more time, how does that work?

 

Tyler Hubbard: 09:26

Yeah! I mean, I think a drastically overlooked aspect of the automotive world is service advisor efficiency and the time we spend in the office.

 

Tom Dorsey: 09:36

Yes.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 09:36

So, for me to go through and edit the pictures and to lessen my time on the phone selling the job; it allows me to get more estimates done; it allows you to get more productivity out of your service advisors. Yes, it does take time to go through and edit the pictures but when you go through and edit the inspection properly… And I think the other thing too is really setting the expectations with the customer when you drop it off, when they drop it off that, hey! We’re going to get through our testing, we’re going to get through our inspection, we’re going to text this to you, I really need you to take the time to go through and look through it. That way you can familiarize with what we’re going to be talking about on the phone as far as the work that needs to be completed on your vehicle.

 And when customers do that and the inspections are edited right, and they’re done right by the technicians and we take the time to make sure that they’re a 100% when we send them out, really when I get people calling me back, my conversations on selling the job have gone from 20 minutes to two minutes. You know, it saves me a tremendous amount of time on the phone, which frees me up to keep the productivity in the shop going, and keeping the estimates going and keeping the repair orders going and keeping everything else that we need to do up front going.

So, yes it does take time but on the flip side, it’s a lot better time spent than being on the phone for 20 minutes where you’re handcuffed to that phone. I can be on my computer, I can be… I can… I know they say you can’t multitask but in some ways I do. But if you go through and edit them, like I said, the service advisor efficiency is going to go through the roof, which helps out with shop productivity in general.

 

Ron Haugen: 11:13

I think one of the things that, and Tyler mentioned which is key and it’s, you know, it’s something that we practiced. You know, when I had a shop we did digital inspections, is… In general with the digital inspections, the key is let the customer know that they’re going to get one. We early on would print off a copy of a digital inspection in color and laminated it and we had it at the front counter.

And so when the customer is dropping off the car, we would physically show them, hey! You know, we’re going to email or text you this once we’ve checked your car out, and have them expecting that because, you know, one thing to keep in mind with the DVIs, it’s not going anywhere and it’s not a fad. I mean, there’s a lot of options out there for them and, you know, every day of the week more and more shops are using these. And it’s going to become what customers expect.

Because maybe they lived in a different city and they moved to your city and that place had digital inspections. Now, all of a sudden they’re expecting you to have digital inspections. Dealerships all have their own digital inspection platform. I mean, it’s becoming the norm. And so to let that customer know when they drop the car off, hey! This is what you’re going to get from us and set that expectation.

And then like you said Tyler, I mean that’s a great thing. Don’t send them a digital inspection because the boss or the shop owner wants you to send it, put some time into it, make it a really nice digital inspection, edit the pictures and stuff and then when it arrives, I mean, basically you’re answering a few more questions they may or may not have and you’re waiting for the yes.

 

Tom Dorsey: 12:52

Then it’s just the closing questions. How long is it going to take? How much is it going to cost? When do I get my car back? Are you going to use formats? That’s great. And we got a… Yeah!  We got a… Actually we got a question from the audience and looking to… It’s a shop who’s coming on and is going to be brand new and he’s just looking for some tips and ideas on how to, you know, help them implement.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 13:19

I mean, for me the best way to implement the inspection is to, one; take, you know, we took our shop foreman, Michael Chilcott and went through and built the inspection, kind of the way he does it. And then you can kind of set some best practices off that, as far as the way you want the inspection done, the pictures you want done; you can set a picture policy at that point in time that, hey! We want pictures of ABC and D. 

And to me the picture policy is pretty simple. I mean, if you can prove it bad on the vehicle, 99% of the time you should be able to take a picture or a video of it and explain that to the customer. So, once you get that done, then as far upfront… As far as the service advisors, just like Ron said, I mean, take the time, edit the inspection, make it look professional, make it look presentable.

And, you know, after that it pretty much sells itself because when customers get it and it’s done that way and it’s done right, it’s… The inspection process sells itself. The work sells itself. It’s pretty clear cut after that point. It’s more of the internal process as far as getting it done right. Once you can get it done right, as far as getting it to the customer and selling, it’s… Like I said, it sells itself.

 

Tom Dorsey: 14:37

Ron, what would you say are like the top three do’s and don’ts that you learned when you were implementing?

 

Ron Haugen: 14:44

What I would do differently if I had to do over again?

 

Tom Dorsey: 14:47

Yeah, right?

 

Ron Haugen: 14:48

You know, the biggest thing you’re going to run into with this is, is its change; its change in how you’re doing business. And so you’ve got to get the buy-in from your employees and the people actually doing that. I mean, Tyler, you’ve pointed out a great point, you know, getting with your shop foreman or your lead technician, build the inspections the way they want to do them, the order that they do them.

Because, hopefully if you’re going to digital inspection, you’re transitioning from paper inspections, you’re already doing inspections. So, make it so it’s easy for them to do it, don’t just throw them a tablet and say, here you go, we want this to happen. And then also put benchmarks in. And that’s something I didn’t do early on. We did it later. And so you implement something, you bring something new and you assume it’s happening, and it may not be happening to the level that you want to, so by that, you know, the picture policy.

You know, we had a minimum number of pictures and we measured it, we posted it on the board, you know, each week; you know, per technician, you know, they have to have this many pictures per vehicle as their average. You might have a car that comes in, everything’s fine; people love to hear that, hey! Everything on my car is fine. Take pictures of the good stuff. These are some good new tires that you’ve got on your car, you know. Hey! Your transmission fluid looks to be in excellent conditions.

There’s no bad, give them some good but you want to have a picture policy. It all boils down to anything can be measured and most employees want to live up to your expectations but you’ve got to establish the expectation or the benchmark. The biggest one that I see and I run into at some of the shops that I coach and work with now that use digital inspections, is making sure that the advisor is actually sending them out. And that can be measured in a percentage. 

So, in our shop we had, the minimum goal was 93%; 93% of the vehicles that came in, we wanted a digital inspection sent out. And if you’ve got an advisor that’s sending out 62%, it’s time to sit down and ask why? Maybe they need some more training; maybe they don’t understand the importance of it; maybe they’re going to tell you, hey! It takes too much time to do this because they’re not seeing the time savings like Tyler explained on the back end.

So, you know, for me that was the big thing. We didn’t initially do that, probably for the first year. We didn’t, you know, have benchmarks and we didn’t measure what was going on. And once we got that in place, then the floodgates opened.

 

Tom Dorsey: 17:29

Yeah! Hey! Ron, and that question was from Minor Mobley and he also said, you know, great idea about laminating that customer copy and keeping it up at the front counter. He really appreciates that tip. And I’m going to go ahead and throw in a gratuitous plug for the business control panel, we’ll have to follow up with what Ron said is, setting those benchmarks has never been easier because Minor when you get started you’ll see that inside of your business control panel you’re able to set those goals and then really see the improvement through the behavior of the text.

And like the guys were saying that, the number of pictures they’re taking, the number of picture edit rate, the number of recommendations per inspection and really see how as you… as your staff starts to adopt those best practices and you start to move the needle, then you’re starting to see the needle move on your, you know, profit metrics and it’ll all come together for you. Joe, what would you say is some do’s and don’ts for Minor?

 

Joe Sevart: 18:29

Well, one of the things that I would highly recommend first is, create a policy and the procedures Tyler and Ron both said. You know, I mean, you want to have that system to where every time you bring in a new employee it’s the same. And so that’s why we… You know, we took Michael as a technician and made him, you know, asked him to get involved in it. So, he has ownership in it as Tyler said. And I think that gets them to buy-in.

And the other thing that I stressed with the staff big time was, you know, we’re doing this for the customer; we’re doing it for I-70 Auto Service to protect us. And Tyler’s had to use that before to remind people, hey! We presented this to you, you know. And so it can save you from someone saying, well, that scratch wasn’t there, that cracked windshield wasn’t there.

 

Tom Dorsey: 19:26

Yeah!

 

Joe Sevart: 19:26

And I’ve really emphasize that with the staff. The other thing that I would recommend too is, to utilize that dashboard. I know I did not utilize it enough and Laura would be on me about that, because you can watch tendencies in your technicians and your advisors in it. So, I would say definitely spend more time with that and get it down and then look at it weekly, would be a definite thing there. So that would the main thing, and just don’t go in as Ron said and just hand an iPad to the tech and say, “Get started doing these inspections”, you know.

You have to coach him; you have to give him that policies and procedures, the process to do it correctly. And then one of the things that I told Tyler and early on was, my promise to our technicians were everything that’s in the red will definitely be presented with a price to the customer. So that way, the advisor can’t pick and choose what’s going to be estimated. And I think that helps get the technician to buy into it because it does take some time.

But when you’re done with it and, you know, they look at the vehicle and they’re just putting the water pump in and its two and a half hours, and then Tyler sends it back to them and now its five hours with the maintenance and the other things too it, they’re going, wow! This is pretty good. So, yeah! Those are the main things that I would recommend to do.

 

Ron Haugen: 21:09

That’s a great point Joe, you know, and it’s been coined, you know, throughout different parts of our industry, they call it the 300% rule. And its, tell a 100% of the people, a 100% of what you find on their car, a 100% of the time. And I mean, when you when you think about it, I mean, that’s morally and ethically our responsibility is to let that person know, if we see deferred maintenance, maintenance to do, repairs, I mean, what we see on their car. I mean it’s implied unspokenly that we’re going to look the car over when it’s in anyway.

One other thing I want to toss in here Tom when you’re talking about, you know, basically do’s and don’ts, take a look at your company’s I.T infrastructure. You know this… They’ve got it down to where it doesn’t eat up a lot of stuff but, you know, the communication… I mean all this runs wirelessly through your internal infrastructure. And in the beginning we had some issues and upon looking into it, it was within our I.T infrastructure and I remember our I.T guy told me when we were sorting it all out, he goes I don’t understand you shop owners, you’ll drop $60/70,000 on a machine to make a car drive straight down the road and yet you don’t want to spend more than $5 on your I.T system.

He goes, (22:43) quality, wireless routers from BestBuy, you’ve got computers at daisy chained together, he goes (22:50) that thing works at all and he goes, now you need it to work professionally and it doesn’t. And we had him come in and he cleaned everything up and it was fine after that. But, you know, don’t blame the iPad, don’t blame… You know, whoever your digital inspection providers is, don’t blame their product if you’re trying to get it to survive off of, you know, two tin cans and a string.

 

Tom Dorsey: 23:15

Yeah! You have the tin foil on the rabbit ears.

 

Ron Haugen: 23:17

Right!  Right!

 

Tom Dorsey: 23:18

Now, that’s funny and I… You know I always say the same thing, you know, I’m like, hey! You don’t go down, you know, you’re not bringing… You’re not out there advertising for Mercedes Benz and Beamers to come into your shop that you go down to harbor freight to buy all your tools to work on them, you know.

 

Ron Haugen: 23:30

We don’t look at our I.T system as a tool and yet it’s the biggest and best tool that we provide our service advisors, that’s their tool; look up parts, the shop management system, the digital inspection, I mean, that’s a huge tool and yet, you know, we want to, you know, invest $13 and 80 cents in it.

 

Tom Dorsey: 23:54

Yeah, exactly! Yeah! Now, and it is. You know, and it’s harder to start transition but you’re right, the Wi-Fi, the internet, it is a tool to… It’s extremely valuable tool and you make it as bulletproof as possible, have a backup. You know, that’s another thing that I always recommend to people is don’t rely on your, you know, ISP provider or whatever it is, have a hotspot with you, you know, be able to hotspot and have a backup plan for when it goes down.

 

Ron Haugen: 24:20

Absolutely!

 

Tom Dorsey: 24:25

Good. So… Well, we’ve got about five minutes remaining and, you know, what I’d like to do is just spend some time. We’re talking about some of our upcoming travels in and travails across the country, we’re going to be out in Joe and Tyler’s neck of the woods here in March for vision. What’s the start date on Vision? What’s first day? February 28th, yeah! So, it’s fe… Yeah! It starts February this year. February 28 we’re going to be in Kansas City at the Vision show, you guys going to be out there, Joe and Tyler? We’re going to see you out there?

 

Tyler Hubbard: 25:01

Yeah! We’ll be there. Absolutely!

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:03

Right around the corners (25:05)

 

Joe Sevart: 25:06

Yeah! I’ll be right (25:07) one day with Ron.

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:10

Yes, is Ron coming up?

 

Ron Haugen: 25:12

You’ve got the two co-chairs of Vision on the show right now, Joe and I.

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:16

Yeah!

 

Ron Haugen: 25:17

Yeah! We’ll definitely be there. Absolutely! It’s… If you haven’t been there, I’m just going to throw an advertisement in for Vision.

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:24

Yeah! Man.

 

Ron Haugen: 25:24

If you haven’t been there, you need to go there.

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:26

Like, yeah!

 

Ron Haugen: 25:27

I mean we’re… You know, you can go to visionkc.com to get registered; we’re way ahead of registrations over the last year. We’ve got well over 400 1st time attendees and I’ll stop there because Tom’s smiling because I’m tying up his show with a…  

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:43

No. No. Not at all man, tear it up.

 

Ron Haugen: 25:45

I mean go……

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:46

Vision is one of the best shows in the industry. No doubt about it.

 

Ron Haugen: 25:48

Hands down! Hand down! And if you want some of the best….

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:50

From the training perspective…

 

Ron Haugen: 25:52

Yep. If you want some of the best training in the industry, we’ve got it.

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:57

Yeah!

 

Ron Haugen: 25:57

Absolutely!

 

Tom Dorsey: 25:58

That’s premium crop man. It’s the show that people try to copy.

 

Tom Dorsey: 26:02

Exactly!

 

Tom Dorsey: 26:04

(26:04) copy it (26:05) man, I ain’t going to lie. You know, that’s great. And we’re really excited to get out. And like we are saying earlier, we’re hoping that, you know, we get a good weather break out there because… But don’t let the cold scare you, they keep the heaters cranked up inside of that convention center. And so, yeah! And anybody who’s never been, get on a plane, come out, come meet us, there’s going to be a…

 

Ron Haugen: 26:25

Visionkc.com

 

Tom Dorsey: 26:27

Yeah!

 

Ron Haugen: 26:28

Yep!

 

Tom Dorsey: 26:28

Visionkc.com

 

Joe Sevart: 26:30

Hey! Tommy, one thing I wanted to add to that earlier that I failed to mention was, one of the other things that I noticed too coming back from your conference, in that four weeks since we’ve returned, nine Google reviews, and quite a few of them mentioned the process of the inspections.

 

Tom Dorsey: 26:51

Inspections, yeah!

 

Joe Sevart: 26:53

Yeah!

 

Tom Dorsey: 26:53

No, that’s great man. We love seeing those. When they come across, you don’t want to… And that’s just… You know what that is?  That is a shout out to Tyler and the work that they’re doing, setting expectations. Ron was talking about it earlier; it really is key. Minor and, you know, folks in the audience that are looking to go digital, it really starts with drop off and setting those expectations and tell the customer what to expect.

And you’d be surprised, you tell them, hey! You’re going to get this inspection, I need you to look at this, watch the video, text me back, whatever your preferred communication; we’re going to make these follow up recommendations for you, we’re going to send you a, you know, a request to give us some feedback and tell your friends. And they do it because they appreciate the transparency and the service and it’s really…

For me, you know when I experience… Because, you know, I’m going to give a shameless plug for JR. I use concourse motors and he’s an auto vitals customer. And I got to tell you it’s… I’m happy to give him a review. Not just because I work here but I know that they’re telling me everything I need and they’re taking care of me, and that’s really all I’m looking for when I do business with somebody. And I’m more than happy to give them some of that love online.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 28:08

Yeah! No, I agree with that. I mean, the transparency it creates with your customers is phenomenal. I mean, especially when you get somebody new walking in the door, the trust that you built immediately when you send them that inspection and you set those expectations and they see it and its like, wow! This is my car. This is what they’re seeing. This is what they’re doing. It’s immediate trust, you know, and it’s a hard thing to do. Because you get somebody dropping their car off that, you know, they’re trusting somebody new, typically it’s a pretty big investment as far as what needs to get done. So, it’s… The trust that’s built through that process is… You can’t do it any other way.

 

Tom Dorsey: 28:44

Yep! Yep! Exactly! Customers for life man, you just don’t…

 

Ron Haugen: 28:47

It used to be said in this industry that a new customer needed to come do business with you three times before you gain their trust as a regular customer. I think with using some kind of a digital vehicle inspection platform, you can probably cut that down to one or two.

 

Tom Dorsey: 29:04

Yep. If you do it right.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 29:05

 I agree.

 

Tom Dorsey: 29:06

I agree 100%.

 

Joe Sevart: 29:09

Hey! Tom, one of the other things that I really stressed to the staff here too is, I love the way that it has the picture setup of the advisor and technician. So, when we would have our meetings early on I would tell the technician, say, hey! When that customer leaves, they know what you look like, so if they walk out there and there’s a footprint, there’s a handprint; if the work didn’t get done correctly, when they… When and if they come back, they know who worked on their vehicle. So, I mean, we’ve got some big time accountability there just by visual.

 

Tom Dorsey: 29:48

Sure! You own it; your face is on it.

 

Ron Haugen: 29:52

And to toss one in there Joe, you know, as far as, you know, putting pictures of the advisor and the technician and stuff beyond the inspection, I think that’s a great idea; I’m a great proponent of that but spend 25 or 30 bucks and have them go to a photographer, have a photographer come in and take the pictures, you know, they can clean them up, they’ll look real nice, they’ll look professional. I mean, make it look like a business profile picture and be professional about it. Your professional rolling in with a digital vehicle inspection, you know, let’s not, you know, have a picture of somebody that was taken off a finger smudge lens on a cell phone.

 

Tom Dorsey: 30:30

Yeah! No, that’s a great tip. And I’ve seen some awesome ones. I’ve seen guys that go out and they build a border around the picture and throw in their culture and their branding into the picture. And like Ron said, I mean, it comes across as, you know, pretty… really impactful and professional. Is that a wrap? That’s our time gentlemen. I want to thank you guys very much for attending the first episode of the “Digital Shop Talk Radio”.

Thanks again to my co-host with the most down in Mexico, Ron Haugen. Really looking forward to seeing you guys man at the Vision Show and anybody else listening to this; get on a plane, come out to Kansas City and meet us, see us and learn, because Vision is going to be an experience unlike you have ever had if you’ve never been there. And let’s continue the conversation on our Facebook forum. You guys know how to find us and thanks again. Have a great day.

 

Ron Haugen: 31:29

Have a great day everybody.

 

Joe Sevart: 31:31

Thank you.

 

Tyler Hubbard: 31:32

Thank you. Have a good day.

END.

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