Batman Needs a Robin: Meet Your Shop’s New Sidekick Ninja App [THA 479]

0:00This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Hey everybody, Carm Capriato, Remarkable Results Radio. Good to have you here back at Vision 2026 here at the Overland Park Convention Center. And I know it doesn't matter what time it is, but I think in about a half hour the expo hall opens after the second day of training. We're always excited to be here. Tracy did a training class with Sarah and I did, uh, great that I facilitated the mastermind, CEO Mastermind today.

0:32And it was really, really good. Also, thank you so much to Napa Tracks for sponsoring us here. I talk too much about SMS systems and the total usage of them. And I gotta tell you, everybody that I spoke to says, yeah, yeah, we're probably a little shy of using all the great features that are in all the SMSs. The thing I love about Napa Tracks is They've got local people, daily training.

0:57There's nothing they won't do for any different position in your company to know and understand how to make their SMS, the NapaTrax SMS, a very powerful tool in your company. I got a very interesting episode on tap for you. You're gonna really like it, cuz we're gonna talk about some really neat new software that's coming out from one of the guys who's with And he's been on before.

1:21I'll tease you with his name, Jeremy Glasgow. We'll be right back. Hey, for over 30 years, Napa Trax has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry. We'll prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the business. Find Napa Trax on the web at napatrax.com. Hey, how well does your team know their stuff?

1:49Test their automotive skills with the Today's Class basic, advanced, or service advisor quizzes. It's a quick, effective way to spot gaps and grow stronger teams. Take the quizzes now at todaysclass.com/tcquiz. Shop owners, stop juggling multiple marketing tools. Kukui's integrated platform, they deliver 4 times better website conversions, automated follow-up, and real-time ROI tracking. Get industry-leading customer support with Kukui. That's K-U-K-U-I.com. You're probably tired of chasing new customers who never return.

2:26We understand. Pit Crew Loyalty ends the one-and-done cycle, turning first visits into lasting, reliable revenue. On the web at pitcrewloyalty.com. Jeremy, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you? Doing great, Carm. Jeremy Glasgow, founder of AppFuel, unlike any other CRM in the entire world. It's a bold claim, but we're making it. It is, yeah. And the founder of the original mobile app Ninja.

2:56Damn. We're going to talk a little bit about this Ninja app. Joe Schindler is with us, family legacy company from, what, 1972? 65. Even longer. Yep. I read that one, 1972, on your website. You better change it. Well, '72 is when we were in the— we're in the building we are now. Ah, '65 is the start date for my— they started it up, but they moved to this location.

3:20So we have been in one location since 1972. Okay, Joe. Floyd's Knobs. I'm sorry, that is just a funny sounding town name. And we get made fun of because of it and stuff, because it used to be Floyd Knobs without an S. Now they put two S's on it and everything. Floyd's Knobs. God, it's actually listed in some place, one of the dirtiest names, uh, towns and stuff.

3:49I mean, we're right down the road from French Lick, so Indiana has two odd ones. Oh my God. Okay, that's all in Indiana. Please be careful when you drive through Indiana, okay? Yeah. You don't want to get stuck in Floyd's Knobs or French Lick, you say? French Lick? Yes, just down the road. And they have a Motel 6, I'm sure. Now, Carm, since we're talking about towns, I live in a town that's going to be greatly confused with your sponsor.

4:17Shout out to your sponsor, Nampa, Idaho. Yeah. And everyone goes like, Nampa, Nampa, Nampa, N-A-M-P-A. But it's really close. It's right in there. It's right in there. I get it all the time. Okay, so I'm talking about this whole gap thing of, you know, the app gap that exists. Before we turn— if you were ever behind the scenes in any of my episodes, especially when we go live, we seem to start doing the episode.

4:41It says, okay, let's structure this. I've got some notes. Here's the— we want to make sure we give the listener. And then, but we're about 8 minutes in and we've already done the episode. Yeah, we couldn't contain ourselves. I just can't. It's great. So what is your opinion on what this app gap is all about? Okay, my opinion on an app gap, it's not there for any of us in the auto industry as consumers, right, Carm?

5:04So if any of us are rebuying right now, I would wager, I don't know, $5 that when you rebuy, probably you're on the third or fourth rebuy, you're using an app. Really? And that's as a consumer. So rebuy, I had one relationship, second, you say by the third I'm using an app? By the fourth visit, I'm going to wager that you're using an app.

5:24Wow. Southwest Airlines. Okay. Amazon. Okay. Costco. All right. Starbucks. Chick-fil-A. And we don't— or grocery store and/or Walmart. Is that what you're saying? The list goes on. So we don't have an app gap as consumers, but where we do have it is with us asking our consumers to get our app. And that gap just— it's why I don't sleep at night. I do not sleep at night.

5:52Because you're wondering how to pull them in? Well, as consumers, we all know apps work. We all use them. It makes doing business easier at that business, and that's why we download them. We don't download them because we think that the app does not build trust. The app is used when you trust someone. And so I've always misunderstood that, right? I mean, as an app builder, I'm really biased on this.

6:14I go, oh, we're going to build you an amazing app. You're going to look legit. You're going to be in the app stores. You're going to be an amazing brand. Your customers won't download it because you have an app. They'll download it because they trust you and coming back to your shop will be easier. You'll have some value in there, you'll have some conveniences.

6:33And that's why as consumers we use apps. So that app gap is how do we close it in our industry, Carm? And that's why I'm so thankful I'm on the show just to get the question out there. Like, I'm not claiming to have all the answers, but that is the question. Why do we have an app gap? I just love what you just said.

6:51It just really rocked my soul. They only put the app down because they trust you. Yeah, I've had it wrong. I think I've been telling the story since 2015. We used to be a different company. We've rebranded App-Fueled. And why did we do that? And my thought was, let's fuel the rebuy experience. You know, everyone talks about retention. You know, guys like Craig O'Neill, just brilliant mind to talk about retention and relationship.

7:14I'm just under the impression that it can't be left to only text, only email, only postcards, and only phone calls. I'm not against any of those things, but why not also an app? So that, that's— I kind of just wrestle with the question every day. Yeah, yeah. Why an app gap? Okay, my mind is reeling in a million places and I got to try to control it and bring it down.

7:35Joe will be with you in a minute. Joe's our guest here too, and I know Joe wants to say a ton of things. But coming from Floyd's Knobs, how much? Oh, sorry, Joe. I didn't know it was gonna be like this. I get picked on every place I go. I'm good. So here it is. It's the rebuy experience. Yeah. Yeah. So I come into your shop, Jeremy.

7:56I'm a brand new client and you just do great things for me. And I come the second time. Every CRM, all the software we have in the world can tell you this is my third, fourth, or fifth visit. It can. And if on the third visit, is that when I talk about my app with you? I mean, you could. I would say you're missing the boat.

8:17You could wait till the third visit. Oh, the reality is half of your customers you won't see for a third visit. So I wouldn't wait till the third visit. But you said that I'm not going to download it until the third visit. It's possible that that's true. We have evidence that you can move the needle. You can move people to download something for other reasons.

8:36Okay, so things like— I probably mentioned this on one of your shows before— I didn't trust Krispy Kreme, like, that they were going to be a nutritional donut, but they did offer me a free donut, and I downloaded their app to get that donut. Wasn't that I trusted Krispy Kreme and all things, or, you know, maybe they were going to help me with chocolate milk too.

8:55Like, I may not have known all the things Krispy Kreme was going to do, but at that moment, I wanted a free donut. And so we can do that in our shops too. We can get crafty, we can have swag, we can have something special that's going to happen today. We could have a spin the wheel contest. We could, I mean, restaurant people are great at this.

9:12You might get a free appetizer by downloading our app today at Applebee's. I didn't, you don't have to wait till the third time. Got it. But the probability is most people won't be using and engaging in your app until that second, third visit. Again, I say go for it now though. Why not ask? Jeremy? Yes. Krispy Kreme's. Okay, you like them? Well, I like free donuts.

9:37Oh, and so, but it's very difficult to go get free donuts, am I right? What do you have to do, be homeless, sit on the corner? What do you gotta do? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ways. Like, my— I teach a discipleship group of, uh, high school boys, and they get free donuts for me. So, you know, you could just show up to random— you know, you could have mentors that might bring you free donuts, but otherwise it's a challenge to go.

9:54Have you ever, have you ever taken a waffle iron Krispy Kreme in the middle of it. Oh, have it very nice and hot. Close the COVID and wait— how long, Trace? Just not even 10 seconds, I think. 10, maybe 15 seconds. Okay, lift the lid. Take a look at that Krispy Kreme that's got those square marks all over it. You cut it in half, put it in your mouth.

10:20You've never ever done a Krispy Kreme like that before, ever. And we actually did a show, an entire show on that at ASTA 3 years ago. Can we do round 2? I'm gonna— can I be invited? And Joe, Joe, we're coming back. Isaac Rodell. Yeah. ASTA. There he is. Every year. There he is. Every year. Sunday morning. Thank you, Joe. What is it?

10:41100, 200 donuts he brings in? Yeah. Yeah. And he does a little wall farm. Best thing you'll ever eat. And so, so here's the story. This was the coolest thing. Tracy says, we gotta do this. So he brings it into our studio. So we didn't have a lot of chaos going on. He brought a box, the waffle iron's on, and I said, "Trace, could you just go ahead and interview him?"

11:02She approaches it like she's a news person for the first time discovering this unbelievable treat, and she's starting to ask really tough questions of Isaac. And it is a hoot, 'cause you know we're playing it for fun. And it was so much fun. And then somebody left to go get chocolate chips or something like that. It was the funniest. So I don't mean to belabor our episode, episode about Krispy Kreme, but you brought it up.

11:27I do, and I'll keep bringing it up if you want. I love— yes, yes. You have this thing called the App Ninja, and I really want to jump inside that thing. You said, Carm, it's like if you have Batman, you have to have Robin. And Batman's everything that we have today, but you need to have this sidekick. You call it the sidekick ninja.

11:48And what it is about the Batman, like, that just occurred to me one night, like, most people Like if you're a client of AppFuels, your customers should not know who we are because we're building the app for you. It's your branded app. And so we, we are App Ninjas. We hang out in the shadows. We don't want your customer to know about us.

12:06This is to position your brand in the right way. So it just made sense to me when I was talking with Brandon Crochet. We're talking about service advisors have way too many tools, Jeremy, way too many tools. And I said, okay, so they've got like their hero. That's their hero is Batman. So pick your shop management system. No, NAMTRAX, TechMetric, Shopware. That's Batman.

12:26And we knew to be the App Ninja that's in our DNA, which is to come alongside your day without interrupting your day, not really asking you to use an extra tool, is just come alongside the advisor. And we thought Batman usually works alone at night, just how he is, but occasionally Robin shows up and that's, that's how we view our Sidekick Ninja.

12:45Okay. So when we come alongside their day, so Robin shows up on their screen. That's right. Yep. And it does what for them? Well, we— so the problem that, that we first wanted to tackle was what we assumed was a missed call scenario. And there's a lot of ways that can happen. And not just a missed call, a missed engagement. For example, if I was— let's just go along with the Krispy Kreme story for a moment.

13:10Okay. At the window or wherever, the, the person told me I had a free donut, right? I downloaded the app. And then I drove around to the window. If the person at the window couldn't within one second see that I was the customer expecting a free donut, all you've done with that reward or that membership opportunity or that loyalty is you've actually messed that person up because you might be about to write that ticket, close them out, and oh, wait a minute, this was an A customer who had our app downloaded with a $12 rebate and 14 stars, and they were actually a member.

13:45And so that was really the first problem we wanted to close is we discovered that advisors, because they didn't have time to go to that extra tool, didn't even know what the customer's profile was. So we thought, hey, you're in there looking at that ticket. You're about to write that up. Don't write this ticket up and forget their $13 rebate. That customer's going to call you out on it.

14:05Okay. All right. So it makes so much sense to me because Joe, jump in anytime. I keep thinking about the word sidekick. Listen, Tracy leads this network of ours. She does 90% of the heavy lifting to get us where we are, but she's my sidekick in many cases. Love it. Sidekick Tracy. To me, it is one of the most— I think every one of us in this world that are doing good things for people can't remember everything.

14:34It's like I'm so enamored about, okay, oh, tell me all about this client. The phone calls that have come in, the work we've done, the future commitments, the mileage, what, you know, tell me about their family, their occupation, tell me about their dreams. And all of that's in the CRM, but we have to stop and integrate it or open it. And it would be so cool that if, and I'm kind of joking about my watch and last time Jeremy was on, the last thing we talked about, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's my watch could be my sidekick, but you've decided to say, How can I give the kind of information that continues to

15:13build loyalty and trust? Because when I talk that language to the client, right, Joe, they're looking at me and says, damn, how do you know all that about me? How do you remember that stuff? It's the key to remember that stuff. It is the key because you've got so much going on. And pre-Psychic Ninja, customer comes in, you have to remember to switch over to the website, crap field.

15:35Look at the customer profile and put in. At the same time, your phone's ringing, customer's in front of you, and then the next thing you know, you get a phone call a day later, "Hey, you forgot to put my 5% rebate, my free oil change," whatever's on there because didn't have it right there. Now it stays on the screen. It's right there to see, and it's got a little spot that says, "Hey, you have a coupon available for this customer."

15:59You click on it, see what coupon they have. Oh, they've got a wiper set, wiper blades. Okay. So if the car's in for an oil change and basically the wipers were halfway, they weren't quite gone, but then, hey, bring it back in, put a set of wiper blades on. We're gonna go ahead and take care of this in advance to take care of the customer and say, hey, we applied this to you for your free wiper blades.

16:20Or the birthday, we give a birthday, uh, for your birthday. That's a great one for them. Hey, I want to wish you a happy birthday. You've got a $30 off coupon. It's right there. And that's what I've tried other CRMs, and you had to log in, log out of different things. And as an owner service advisor, since I do both roles, I've got 400 things going through my mind at all times, and I forget.

16:43And then I've had customers call, hey, I had this, and they're not upset. I had this. You just nailed the feeling that every person who's listening here who's never been treated to the deserving discount coupon, free something that you get. Oh, that's great. Well, the next time I get there, they didn't even remind me. They didn't offer it. They didn't know. I'm pissed.

17:10Yeah, I am pissed. And when you go to checkout, I can't remember where I was. Oh, I think I went to OfficeMax. I joined their program cuz we do all a lot of our printing there and stuff. And when I went there, the guy looked at me and he goes, Hey, you've got some points. Do you want me to take it off of your order?

17:26You had no clue. I didn't. I just signed up because they convinced me this was a good thing. You're going to get some future discounts. We won't bother you a lot. And I said, okay. I figured he's on an incentive. You know, I'm a businessman. I come here. And so that— wow. I see why I keep coming here. They care. Hey, let's face it.

17:47Your shop management system is the single most important tool in your shop Period. NapaTrax has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the industry's best, most comprehensive SMS. Now it all starts when a local representative meets with you to learn about your business and how you need to run it. After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice, and having local representation is a huge plus.

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20:04Get industry-leading customer support and book a demo with Kukui. That's K-U-K-U-I.com. You know, most shop owners feel trapped spending on ads while half their first-time customers never come back. It's frustrating. It's exhausting. And it's not your fault. The industry average is 54% one-and-dones. We understand how discouraging that can be. Well, Pit Crew Loyalty changes the story. Our clients cut that rate by up to 38%, raising lifetime value by more than 50%.

20:34Loyalty members visit nearly 3 times more often, creating predictable revenue without extra ad spend. Pit Crew Loyalty, where customers stay and shops thrive. On the web at pitcrewloyalty.com. I will protect the owner's money. Can I explain this for one second, Carm? Yeah. Some rebate, rebate programs— I'm not picking any in particular because we've all experienced this— you don't even know you have a rebate and you show up to a business.

21:02So as a consumer, we've all done this. You walk in there, you didn't even know you had one. You came back because you just came back. You walk up there and the person behind the counter does the great thing, the honorable thing, the trustworthy thing, and they give you the rebate you didn't know you had. That is great customer service. That's great trust, but it's also giving away money you didn't have to give away because you came back without knowing about that rebate.

21:30So Appfuel, we want to empower the owner to not give away their own money. Unless the consumer is the one that engaged with the program. Okay. So for example, someone goes to Joe's shop, they don't have a rebate, a balance that they didn't know about because they had an app and they unlocked it after the visit. That's how we want to use the owner's money is it's an investment in them engaging in your brand so that they saw it, they unlocked it, they swiped it, they looked at the ticket, they gave Joe a thumbs up, thumbs down on the visit.

22:03And now it's in your brain. We just won some philosophical time. We got 6 seconds out of your customer. Boom. Your brand's— so, and so we don't want that, that moment to happen that you just experienced. I don't want that to happen where an advisor is mentioning rebate dollars that you didn't know about as a consumer. All right. Well, because is that fair?

22:23Really? Well, I think I understand. I really understand protecting the money. I really get that. Yeah. I'm not arguing for not giving it away. The consumer's more informed because the app empowers, updates you and keeps you safe. Okay. I've gotta do my due diligence as the consumer to know this. Joe, you've got a really big ticket. The car needs a lot of work.

22:42And, and over on Sidekick, you're seeing that there's a rebate out there that the customer hasn't asked for. However that works, is it possible that that big ticket item could actually come in the house if you remind that customer about that? Oh, it most certainly can, Steph and everything. Because if, if we have rebate, they're like, oh, well I'll go ahead and do it because I understand what you're saying.

23:02They can choose to use it when they need it if the client doesn't ask. And if they— there's so much going on in our world to remember everything. Yeah, we've got loyalty cards for the grocery store. I mean, we're scanning it. Yeah, yeah. So, come on, let me restate what I was trying to say. What I'm not saying is that if the rebate is there, I think Joe should be quiet about it.

23:20I'm not saying that. Oh, what I'm saying is our app does not add the rebate dollars to their account. Unless the customer keeps the app on their phone, creates a profile, and then within 24 hours unlocks the dollars themselves. I see. If they don't do that, the rebate dollars actually expire and go away. Okay, they have to be engaged. They have to stay engaged to keep the app to have the rebate bounce.

23:45If they unsubscribe, it all goes away. Okay, so, so that's fair. No, I'm not asking— like, I hope I didn't say it that way. I'm not trying to get advisors, and I'm sorry I read it the wrong way, but I'm good at miscommunicating. So no, part of what my job is here is to— if I was unclear, my audience, maybe I think clear, and I want to drive down there.

24:04Yeah. And I think one of Jeremy's things that he's not mentioned is because he taught me about it, is gamification. Yeah. And basically that was a conversation we had, was basically he engages the client and gamifies it so that they get the adrenaline rush by unlocking stars, by adding vehicles. So one of the things I loved about it initially was Customer comes in, I've got their 2010 Chevrolet Silverado, I'm working on it.

24:27They download the app when they get home because he sends a text to them, hey, you're free of my app, because I actually charge for my app because they get some great benefits. I get like $300 worth of benefits for $59.99. First year's free. So they go home, they download it, and then they go in, oh, I get 20 stars for every vehicle I own and add.

24:47So now I have records. Hey, he is a BMW, he has an Audi, and he has a Corvette, and he's got all these cars he's put in his thing. So next time he comes in, hey, I know you bring your Chevrolet pickup truck here, but you've got these other vehicles. We do work on those, so we can work on those for you.

25:04It's just a reminder to basically reach out to customer, learn about him, and basically be able to say we can do that work. Information is power. Yes. Plain and simple. Yeah. And so if they're playing in the app, you gain the benefit of all of that information and you ask, why not? Yeah. I mean, I get their— we already got their name, their phone number, their address and everything.

25:28We might not collect the email of that day. To me, email has somewhat went away because you're getting bombarded, so they ignore that. But they give you your email because it earns them stars. So now I'll get their email. I get their birthday because they get an extra $10 off their next visit for giving me their birthday, which is a big thing because I get a report of birthdays.

25:47I'm like, hey, this person's birthday this week. And they get a notification. A hot Krispy Kreme on your birthday. If there was one around your shop, let's make it so. I'm all about co-partnering with people. So yes, I mean, you get so much information to dig in and like you said, Being able to collect all that information and tell your customer and say, oh, I just want to wish you a happy birthday today, when they get— they come in the week before or everything, and then you've got a rebate, like, I think 30 days is the expiration.

26:21Yeah, you can adjust it. Yep. But so this app combines phones, texts, and emails, and Sidekick Ninja is bringing that all up, integrating with the phone. Whose phone system do you integrate with? Well, this is where we're like, I think we're blowing people's minds. Thank you, Joe. This is where I have to get to say a thank you to Joe. It's Call Inbound.

26:42Joe is a call— great people, by the way. They're sponsor of our shows. Yeah, he has blown us away, like what is actually possible with a phone system. And so for Appfuel to be a CRM, I've wrestled with it, to be honest. Like, does a CRM have to become a phone system in today's world? And The answer I'm coming up with is no, because I know David over at Call Inbound.

27:04So Joe, like, reach out to Joe. He go, Joe, this is unreal. We think we can show all of your phone calls, every phone call your shop has. We can AI score it, transcribe, record it, and give it to you all wrapped up in a nice, let's call it gift wrap bow, right there next to the repair order. So if Joe's looking at a repair order today and he clicks on our little ninja, It opens up, he can see all of the texts, calls, whether it was from the shop management system or from Appfuel, the CRM, or from the phone system.

27:33Sees it all up to 2 days before the repair order was opened and up to 2 days after the repair order was closed. So rather than looking through a whole customer thread of calls and texts that might be unrelated, we just kind of wrap it up and say, here was your repair order. Now, why do we go back 2 days before and 2 days after?

27:50We're looking for that appointment reminder moment. Sometimes there's some texting going on in there that happens the day before. During the visit, there's a lot of calls and texts. As Joe knows, he's an advisor owner. You get that. There's a thousand things happening while the ticket's open. Then when the ticket posts, because you usually have things like rebates going out, you have things like a Google review prompt.

28:09You might have a call center task that's loaded up in your Ninja prompting you to make that next day satisfaction call. It's all visible right there with the repair order. So at any moment that Joe wants to, he could go back in time. Hey, I wanna like, maybe a customer calls back and he, he's wanting to rehash a visit from 2 months ago.

28:27He could click on that repair order, open the Ninja, and he'll see all of the communication with that visit in one click. It's scary smart right there. It's scary smart. The fact is that one thing he hit on right there was being able to have the reminder, hey, I need to do the 24-hour follow-up. And call my client and say, hey, did everything go okay?

28:48Or did there any issues? And I have a record of that because if I see, we'll go back, did I miss that? It's not on here. It's not my, because it's a little task. It's a little Taskmaster for you. To be able to tell a client the last time we talked, the last time we text, I'm telling you, that's scary. That's scary smart.

29:07I'm not saying it, the client would be scary. It's scary in a good way. That they look at you and say, wow, these people really care. They've got this detailed information about the safety and the reliability of my vehicle and value me as a client that they track all of this because they don't— stay on the center line. We know this stuff because we don't want you to go left or right.

29:31So when did this hit you that you had to do this? Well, I mean, this vision, it came in 2015, Carm. It was that the word back then, nobody really knew the word was omnichannel. Right, right. That word's been around for a decade now, maybe longer, but that's as far back as I can remember. And when I think of omnichannel, it's again back to— it's more of a question than it is that I have the answer.

29:53But if the statement is we want an omnichannel, how could we leave phones out and how can we leave apps out? I don't think you can. Right. And by experiencing what we're all experiencing as consumers today, a lot of businesses, the first channel they're actually to get rid of is phones. And I don't think our industry's up for that. I don't think we should.

30:13You deal with Amazon, you're not calling an Amazon rep on the phone right now. That's probably not happening. You're not going to talk to a human and get some help on an Amazon order. So our industry, we're not going to get rid of phones, which I think is great. Good. Let's keep it that way. But then in other industries, they might cut out email, but they're not cutting out email and not replacing with something.

30:33If they cut out email, it's because you became a direct channel You chose the channel they wanted, and I use Starbucks as the perfect example. I don't get Starbucks emails anymore, but it's not that Starbucks doesn't believe in email. They email people too, but they know they have me in the app. They're tracking my actions and I get app alerts. So, and that's the channel they want me in because I'm way more likely to click on a Starbucks app alert than I would be on a random email because I have 400 emails, but I only have a few businesses that I trust enough to allow an app alert channel to be reaching me?

31:09Again, I'm just kind of wrestling with those questions, Karmen, but it was in 2015. I just said a CRM should not exist in today, and that was back then. I still believe it today. Shouldn't exist unless it's considering the direct channel of app alerts, profile notifications. Phone. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Phones. We had phones about 4 years ago. Of course, there's a group that pushed us to go next level.

31:30Now, now when I say phones, we don't ship out phones. We're not a phone company, right? But we did allow our system to be click-to-call. So this Sidekick Ninja we're talking about here, Joe can click on a phone number inside a shop management system and it's dialing outbound. So we've minimized people having to pick up a phone and type in 10 numbers and it's still just making an outbound call from your phone system.

31:51So it rings the phone and then you pick it up? No, it doesn't even do that. You just have a headset on it. Oh, you're doing it with a headset. Okay. Basically I click the button and I use Apple, so I have my Apple iPod or earphone in. Yeah. Yeah. It basically will direct the phone call to my ear. What about cell?

32:07Like calling from a cell phone? They call you on a cell? They don't call you on a cell. It's, uh, it's just an inbound phone call. It's an inbound phone call. Yeah. And it comes right— I mean, it comes right to it. So it doesn't matter if the old landline things— it wouldn't matter how they dial. There's some instances on how, like, Joe might dial.

32:25He can dial from the AppFueled app if he wants to. So he can dial from a phone. He could be on the road making a call from his call inbound phone number from an app. From his phone. So it's all recorded, it's all pulled together. It's app information, it's repair order information, and it's the CRM. If we're intelligently pulling in the acronym of FORD— family, occupation, recreation, and dreams— yeah, there's so many great points.

32:55All of this came from John DiJulius years ago, is to— you've got to know this stuff about your client if you want to have a very powerful and trusted relationship. You need to know what's going on because being able to talk their language to them. And now you've got this side ninja with all this other stuff over here. It's like the doctors say, we have this medical chart thing and you can sign on and you can see all the blood work the last time you were in, any drugs that you've been given and taken, and your pharmacy.

33:22It's all there. Really kind of saying is, we got your ass covered, your vehicle covered. This is why you come here, because we're all-knowing and all-seeing. We're Oz. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's scary. This is the Oz side Tech Ninja. And the thing is, you hit on something right there, because I have that app for my doctors. I can see everything. And I had a client the other day that called me, hey, can you send me this, this, and this?

33:48I want to remember what I had. I lost my things. I said, you have my app, right? He said, yes. I said, well, I'll send them to you by text, but you can just go on your app. It's connected to you. You can pull your vehicle up and you can look at any service record in my system on your app. And he goes, I didn't know I could do that.

34:06And that has been my selling point for downloading the app. Basically clients come in and they basically will— actually I've had 4 or 5 in the last couple of weeks. They lose their basically paperwork and all of a sudden they need the paperwork for something, either selling the car, they got a warranty question. They didn't know it was available because they were an early client that I had that I did not push real heavy on the feature.

34:31Now they are, and they're like, oh, I can do that? Okay, great. And that is one of the big selling points of the app, because you have every service record I have in my system. So yeah, it's great. And Joe, like, we've got a couple— so, you know, AI is the buzz, right, guys? Who's not going to bring up AI on a show?

34:48I'll bring it up, but it'll be the fourth time today. Yeah, fourth time today. But I'm actually gonna go past the word of AI. Like, this is what we're doing. It's AI rocks. I'm putting it out here for the first time. AI Airox. First time you guys have heard it. It's trademarked. Airox. And it stands for Authentically Intelligent Repair Order Experience. So it's not AI like artificial intelligence.

35:12It's Authentically Intelligent Repair Order Experience. And what that is, is we are capturing, we're about to roll this out. So we had to get the phones in first. Thanks, Joe. It's a huge win because we got the phones in there. We've got the text in there. We've got the consumer engagement in there. We have the notes in there. We even now have all of the status updates from the SMS in there.

35:33So guess what we're doing, guys? We're putting that into a score, a repair order experience score. So we've always been able to score customers. We give them an A through F, but we thought, and everybody can score calls, you know, Rilla scores calls, Appfield scores calls. There are a lot of people that score calls, but what we're doing is we're taking the collective, that entire repair order experience, that whole journey, all of the message communication.

35:55Did they engage? Did they not? Did they become a member? Did they not? How'd the advisor do on the timing? Did we do what we said we were going to do? We're even finding trust breaches in there. So if the advisor says something like, this was supposed to happen at 3, and then there was a bad sentiment in a call, we're wrapping it all up and we're calling it the Authentically Intelligence Repair Order Experience Score, an IROX, so that you can look through your tickets for the day and you go, how did we do as a shop today?

36:22You're going to see your every repair order you have, not just every call you have scored, but the actual visit experience. I love it. And that I'm so excited to do, and we could not do it without Phonez. So thanks for David for helping us get this integration. We're about to get— go big time with it. But it's just, guys, if we can put this story together and help shop owners look at how we're doing, how is our team doing?

36:42Did the car get delivered well? Did the call after go well? And just kind of put it into an experience that we can look at and get better at shops. I don't know if we said it here today, but a word that just hit me upside the head was the word collective. And I also came up with another incentive for our peoples.

37:02It's an AI Rocks score. Didn't you say this is a score? Yeah, it's a score. It's a score, right? Score takes 12 ingredients. If we're measuring all of these individual and/or particular areas of do they have the app, are they engaged with it, what's our phone call records look like as it gets opportunity, digital vehicle inspections, delayed work. Yeah. All comes into the AI Rocks score somehow.

37:36It's either the company has it or the service advisor has it assigned to— I mean, this could go a lot of places. Yeah. And our thought was like, not to scare someone like Joe, we didn't want it to be like, hey advisors, you're being, you know, watched by the Justice League and we're coming down hard. Yeah. It's just, you could have live information.

37:53You make that next day satisfaction call to the customer. You're going to see all the sentiment of the calls yesterday. You're going to know how it went. So it's more of a self-improvement if we view it that way. Of course, everyone can use it the wrong way. I think these tools should be used as self-improvement. So advisors that like their job— Honestly, as the service advisor, I mean, I actually audit my calls all the time to see if I am not speaking correctly because I have been told multiple times I talk too fast on the phone.

38:22And I do, and I try to work on it. So knowing where I dropped the ball, yeah, in the customer experience, I can work on that and improve myself to do that. So it would be a coaching tool where you could say, hey, we need to work better on the communication while the vehicle's in, because that is where I dropped the ball, is basically keeping up to date the client so that I'm not getting a phone call, yeah, 3 hours after.

38:47Yeah. So I love this idea because it's going to blow making customers' experience better overall. At the mastermind this morning, we were talking about huddles and meetings, and they— some people would do it, they do an 8, I think a 10, a noon, and a 2. And at the 10 o'clock huddle, as they regroup, even if the car— it's a non-update update.

39:11That's what it is. Thank you, Trace. A non-update update. I like that. I'm going to call the client I have nothing to tell them, but I want them to hear from me. The part didn't arrive. It was on backorder. It was supposed to arrive this morning. It didn't. We're following through, but we want to let you know we haven't forgotten about you.

39:28I know how important the vehicle is to you, but we're still at a standstill on this. A non-update update. I'd almost say something Jeremy did whenever I started with him, the white glove approach. And basically you're handling them like they have just purchased a Rolls-Royce and everything's going to be touched, handled to you with white gloves on. Yeah. I love that. Approach to it as well.

39:49You know what worries the hell out of me? We've done some incredible episodes while we're here, and they're going to go out, people are going to listen to them, they're going to say, oh my God, those are some great ideas, and then do nothing, nothing about it. And that upsets me the most, Mr. and Mrs. Listener. Upsets me the most that we give so much positivity and information, but they— well, I said listen to learn one thing, and you got to implement something.

40:18That you learned. So a lot of things have come out of this episode, but at least step forward to do one thing. Jeremy, appfuel.com. Yeah, appfuel.com. And if they want to go right to me, it's /Jeremy. /Jeremy. Yeah, book a call. I love— I really just like to talk about vision. So I walked into KC Joe's last night, great barbecue place, and Brandon and I walk in.

40:41Brandon Crochet, I'm a business partner with him in another business. And if you guys need someone to kick a service advisor, by the way, just reach out to Brandon, former Marine. He'll get— he'll get it done. I know He's like that. He's a little scary. But so I walk in and go, Brandon, check it out. So this is my one action, Carm.

40:55If we want these guys to do any one thing, here would be my one thing. We walk into this restaurant and I don't think they did it on purpose. I'm just watching this because I love to see how consumers are directed almost like cattle. We walk in and there was a red, like a theater red rope line as we walked in and I go, Brandon, I've always wanted to try this in a shop.

41:14So this is a, to your listeners, Carm. Just an idea. I think it'd be fun to try it as an industry. Just split your counter in half, put a beautiful red rope, and then on one side, make it just look like a normal counter. And then on the other side, have a nice sign above VIP members on the left side of the rope.

41:32You would be so subtle, you wouldn't even have to say it. Customers walk up, they have to make a choice. And if they made the non-member choice, guys, I say I'd love to mess with psychology of people. Wouldn't that be cool for the— probably half of your customers, I don't know, Joe, you want to try this, but they would probably walk up on one side.

41:49Maybe let's say they picked the guest side, not the member side, but their first question would probably be, I didn't know if I should be walking over there or like, how could I walk over there? And so instead of you having to like be a salesman, as it were, you just create interest. And I think for customers to know there was a better way to do business here at the shop.

42:08And you could do it in subtle ways. That's just like a beautiful visual. I guess I would say that's my next step, Carm, is like, I think we can be member shops and we can do it in subtle ways. You're a VIP to me. Come on over here. Yeah. And you wouldn't even have to say it. It's just— and honestly, thinking about this, my first loyalty program was inspired because they put a casino near our home and Caesars Casino had Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond.

42:33Nice. Everybody wants to be Diamond. You don't want to spend the money to be Diamond, but they want to so they can go get the privilege of going to that one side. Yeah. And I mean, we all fly to these conferences and, you know, I'm a Delta Diamond member now and you get to go in a special lane. If you're in certain airports, you get to go through a special line through TSA without having PreCheck and everything.

42:54Everybody has that in their head. The level that you get when you see that red rope is what it is and stuff, everything. That's a really clever idea. The apps are the aftereffect of you thinking through your shop brand. How do you want to be? Do you want to be just a guest shop or do you want to have a member experience?

43:12And if you haven't thought through that, apps are really the after— that's the afterthought. But a velvet rope is almost a feel of belonging. Think about it, no matter what side you're on. Yeah, it worked for me at KC Joe's. I don't know what side I chose, it wasn't clear, but I still got great barbecue. But think about it. Just the subliminal messaging.

43:32You've got a counter with two service advisors, client advocates there, even if it's a CSR and the person sees the rope and they see a distinct left and right, but there's no sign that says VIP or nothing. It's just the messaging that I'm on the velvet rope. It's not like the TSA, you know, barriers. It's not this piece of seatbelt material. No.

43:58That separates the columns. It's a velvet rope. It's— and everybody knows what the velvet rope means because if you've ever seen a movie, yeah, it's a nightclub up at the bouncer, it's always got that nice sleek red velvet rope there. That means I'm special, I get to go there. If somebody who's listening tries the velvet rope thing, please try. Reach out, please.

44:18Appfuel.com/jeremy. And don't forget to carbon copy me because I also want to know. And if not, you got to call me and tell me. I will. This was fun, it was great. Thank you so much, Jeremy. Casco, founder of the original Mobile App Ninja and now Sidekick Ninja, the Chrome extension. Oof. And Appfield, of course, unlike any other CRM. And Joe Schindler from the greatest name of a little town in the world, Floyds Knobs, Indiana.

44:52God, I gotta say that 10 times fast later. 4.5-day business. You're open till noon on Thursday, huh? And I am on Friday, on Friday's half, and I am about 3 steps away from just saying we're gonna be closed Friday. Ah, okay. So that's why you're Diamond at Delta, because you have the whole weekend to travel, right? To be honest, I don't travel but inboard, but these are my vacations.

45:14How do you get Diamond? I don't understand. I'll tell my secret. Somebody help me. I got a Delta American Express card. I'm not Diamond. Well, you don't have a shop anymore. I put all my expenses on my shop, so that gets to me. All right. Oh my God. All right, that'll be another episode, Joe. How do we all begin to be diamond?

45:33Yeah, and plus I'm a big boy, so I do— I will pay for first class. Tracy did such a great job of putting you in the camera that nobody can see you're wearing a sling. Yes, I hurt my shoulder. He hurt his shoulder and he's wearing a sling. Your style's a little crimped, I'm sure, because you're pounding on the table. Anyone heard the rumble of drums in the background?

45:55It was but Jeremy and And Joe pounding on the table, trying to get— trying to get their points across. We're just really testing Tracy's editing. So this was a blast. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks, Carm. Thanks, Tracy. Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the premier automotive repair business podcast, Remarkable Results Radio. Get your episodic education on the ARPN listening app at AutomotiveRepairPodcastNetwork.com.

46:21Also enjoy the podcast on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel. Karm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry. Until next time.