How a digitized inspection process can save dealerships at multiple customer touchpoints
Cars are mechanical machines full of many moving parts and many different materials. Simply put they break down. It could be a brand new car that’s a week old, or a 30-year-old clunker still grinding away at the pavement. Both cars are going to break at some point.
Our team has been in the auto industry for a long, long time and what we have noticed is that a lot of service departments are very reactive. What we mean by this is when a customer takes their vehicles in for service, they focus solely on the problem the customer described. They work fast, resolve the issue then clean their hands and be done with the vehicle.
Unfortunately, this leaves the dealership with lost revenue. On average about $500 worth of service rolls right out the service bay with each customer visit. If someone at the dealership isn’t taking the time to properly look at and evaluate each car that rolls in, that leads to lost revenue, pure and simple. It’s also not doing a service for the customer by helping them understand what may go wrong next, or what part is about to go. Not only that but the dealership is missing out on crucial loss prevention strategies.
Loss Prevention
During your initial interview with the customer you may fail to identify where damage is already on the customer car. Say they have $3000 rims and a large chunk is missing, you wouldn’t have the proof to defend yourself if the customer claims the dealership caused the damage.
With AutoServe1 you’re able to have a proper meet and greet with your customer. You can introduce yourself in the drive-through/interview process with a tablet and show them right away that you’re all about transparency and trust.
This way you can do a simple, initial walk around with the customer and your iPad/tablet. You can identify all the visible problems with clear photos and videos of any work needed. More importantly, you can do this as an initial inspection before your team even touches the vehicle. This can save dealerships potentially thousands a year in loss prevention.
You may think this could take a lot of time and add another “unnecessary” step to your inspection process. We hear this time and time again from dealerships but now you have a tablet-based process for techs to use on all cars coming to your fixed ops.
Process
Sure it may seem daunting at first but digital inspections are a process that actually improves shop communication and efficiency. Workflow1 allows your service team to have an at-a-glance progress report of the auto repair process. Service advisors are actually able to simply update the status of a vehicle with a click of a mouse as it moves through the repair process.
Not only is it easy to update a vehicle’s status, but you’re able to send out notifications to your team when work is approved by a customer or when parts are ready to go. This keeps everyone in the shop on the same page. No more wondering what’s happening or if work will ever get approved. Everyone is able to get notified by text when an update occurs.
When it comes to actually conduct your auto inspection, Builder1 allows your shop to have customized inspections for all your niche services. This simple process can actually help technicians work faster and more efficiently. Builder1 allows the shop to have complete control over how inspections are displayed and can match how technicians work.
A big reasons Builder1’s custom inspections work for dealers is because many dealers need completely different inspection process for in-house inspections than for service inspections.
Discovery
Guaranteed with essentially every vehicle that comes in for basic things like oil changes and tire rotations will need additional work to maintain its “health”.Like we mention vehicles are made of many moving parts and pieces that simply don’t last (well maybe if we’re talking about a 1999 Toyota Corolla!).
With each and every vehicle if you implement inspection processes you will be able to discover additional work that the car needs. Many of our customers add 15 point, 60 point, even 150 point inspections to each of their services for this exact reason. The beautiful part is thanks to digital inspections, you’re able to take photos and videos of problem areas. This way the customer can see and understand with their own two eyes what’s wrong with their car.
How does it all work? Our DriveThru check-in process helps dealers from customer drop off to sending the report for approval in 5 easy steps.
DriveThru check-in process with Autoserve1
1) This feature allows Service Advisors the ability to scan the vehicle’s barcode and find any pending appointment.
2)They can then open a new inspection and using photos and videos to document the exterior and interior of the vehicle.
3)Inspections are automatically updated within AutoServe1 after the creation of the RO from your DMS.
4)They then proceed with the current workflow of inspecting the vehicle with AutoServe1’s DVI by the techs in your shop.
5)Allowing a report to be sent to your customer’s smartphone with picture/video as proof of the needed repairs.
This process is so powerful, and so popular with customers that shops all over North America are seeing drastic sales booms by implementing the technology. Seeing really IS believing, especially in the automotive industry. So much so that when we conducted a case study, service centers that used digital inspections saw their average repair orders increase by 25%!
(Check out the case study by clicking here)
Approval
The old way of doing things was to conduct your inspection by hand, (with often sloppy handwriting). When you’re inspection was done you would have to phone the customer, and more often than not you’re getting the dreaded voicemail…
By the time the customer gets back to you during the busy work week its already 5 pm and the service department is closed or almost closed. This makes the customer vehicle sit on your lot for an extra day, taking up a spot for potential other customers. With digital inspections, service advisors are able to send the full, completed inspections right to the customers’ smartphones. No more waiting all day for them to get back to you.
Even if they’re in a busy meeting, or can’t talk because they’re somewhere loud, they can now easily view and communicate back to the dealership to approve work through our two-way-texting feature. Customers can approve work with the tap of a button on their screen. They’re able to see what the tech see’s when they did the inspection. In other words, they can see what’s wrong with their own two eyes instead of taking a shop’s word for it.
Digital inspections allow dealerships to include photos and video right in the inspection report. When people understand what’s wrong with their cars, and the photo/video evidence backs up your recommendations people simply come to trust your advice more often.
This new inspection method really allows you to become the shop known as the most trusting and the most honest as you’re really able to make it clear to customers with clear photos and videos explaining repair recommendations.
Jimbo’s tire shop down the street simply won’t be able to say the same thing with those sloppy handwritten reports that everybody refuses to believe.
Conclusion
In today’s day and age trust and tech are key to maintaining a trusting relationship with customers in the auto industry.
This technology leads to dealerships getting more work approved and more service jobs complete. Techs are no longer having to wait around for approval and everyone in your shop is on the same page, with a clear, effective process.