From Data to Loyalty: How AI and Hospitality Are Redefining Shop Growth [THA 488]
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About this episode
Thanks to our Partners, NAPA TRACS, Today's Class, KUKUI, and Pit Crew Loyalty Watch Full Video Episode What happens when artificial intelligence meets world-class customer…
Key takeaways
- —AI can help shop owners understand customer behaviors and preferences, leading to more effective marketing strategies.
- —Embracing technology like AI can streamline operations and improve service delivery in automotive repair shops.
- —Creating a strong mission statement and core values is essential for guiding team decisions and enhancing customer experience.
- —Personalized customer interactions, such as remembering preferences, can significantly boost client loyalty.
- —The automotive industry must adapt to new technologies to remain competitive and meet evolving consumer expectations.
Frequently asked
- How can AI improve marketing for automotive repair shops?
- AI can analyze customer data to predict behaviors and preferences, allowing shops to tailor their marketing efforts more effectively.
- What role does customer experience play in retaining clients?
- A positive customer experience fosters loyalty, encouraging clients to return for future services and recommend the shop to others.
- Why is it important for shop owners to have a mission statement?
- A mission statement provides clarity and direction for the team, ensuring everyone is aligned with the shop's goals and values.
▸Full transcript
This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Hey everybody, Carm Capriato, Remarkable Results Radio, another Town Hall Academy. Hey, look, Carm's gonna do another episode on marketing and AI. Oh, we won't hang around. We won't listen. Ah, wrong. That would be a huge mistake because I do episodes, maybe the same kind of topics, but the themes and the people we have on, We've got Mike De La Cruz and Michelle Tansey here, so that's all the more reason to wait around.
Thank you so much to our great partners who've been with us for so long. Hey, let's face it, your shop management system is the most critical tool in your shop, and NapaTrax will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with on-site training, 6 days a week support, and local representation. Find Napa Tracks on the web at napatracks.com. Hey, how well does your team know their stuff?
Test 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 dot com.
You're probably tired of chasing new customers who never return. We understand. Pit Crew Loyalty ends the one-and-done cycle, turning first visits into lasting, reliable revenue. On the web at pitcrewloyalty.com. Hey, look, I want to tell everybody, please get our listening app. It is the coolest thing ever for your smartphone. Yeah, you can listen on Spotify and Apple. I get that. But this is a tool for you, for your smartphone, the ultimate professional automotive repair playlist.
Read the show notes, see links to our sponsors, and get all the shows in our network on one app, ARPn.app. Hey, welcome aboard to my friends, Mike De La Cruz and Michelle Tanzi. Mike and Michelle, glad to have you here. Michelle is co-founder of Euro Clinic in Santa Clara, California. How are things in the Euro world? It was a rough start, but I think that, I mean, I love the cars that we work on.
The whole business is based on that luxury Euro kind of world. And I'm in the center of Silicon Valley, so there is so much potential. That's pretty much a lot of what we see, especially in my area. It's a good area to be in the euro business. I am curious. I'm going to ask you a question. You don't have to answer it.
What's your labor rate? My base labor rate is $295. For exotics, it's $395. I want you to keep in mind, and for all the listeners, because, you know, when I'm in a room with shop owners and they hear what the labor rates are, I want you to know, like, so my shop is right in the middle of a U and I have 3 major dealership strips.
3 miles away from me, Porsche dealer's $450 an hour. Wow. Wow. Mercedes is $400, Audi's $385, and Volkswagen and BMW come at about like $350 to $365. But let me just guess that the average wage in Silicon Valley is $300,000. I'm just guessing. Yes. It's super interesting. Like, when I do all this research on, like, these households, this is the crazy part, and everybody always thinks it's super crazy.
A $150K household is considered low income in our area. Yeah. Yeah. That's my point. Yeah. Wow. So, like, my customer base is a lot of, like, professional females and a lot of tech. Like, those are our clients. So— When I say it's a good way for me to be a shop owner, innovation should always be my mindset, right? How can we innovate to cater to these consumers?
Because those are the drivers that drive the cars where I'm at. I love what I do. Like, I don't work on cars, but I love what I do, constantly working with, like, the whole team that we work with on how can we serve this consumer better due to what they do for a living, what they drive. A lot of them, like my clientele in my area, is time is money, right?
So taking in your car for service, it costs you more than them being where they need to be. Well, I think she's pretty much nicely set up, Mike, all the things that we want to talk about with marketing and AI. Mike De La Cruz is here, co-founder and CEO of overdrive marketing.com. And when you want to type that in, you have to spell O-V-E-R-D-R-Y-V-E overdrive.com.
And Mike, you've been in the industry for years. You've traveled the country for, with other companies. You are embedded and you are there. And was a few years ago you had this off the charts idea? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's, I mean, it was January 11th, 2023 where I launched OverDrive and here we are over 3 years later. And just a quick plug for Michelle.
She's actually my shop. I bring all my family's cars to her. She's like less than 10 minutes or so, right, Michelle? Like 8 minutes or something like that from my house. So I'm in Silicon Valley. I don't meet those. I'm at the minimum threshold, but thankfully my wife makes way more money than I do. So just for context, but yeah, best shop here in Silicon Valley for sure.
So very grateful to have Michelle, you know, service all my cars. That's just great, great news. Now, Michelle, I wanna start this entire episode about how AI and marketing, they integrate. We're hearing so much. Are shop owners, Michelle, just getting the wrong AI impression right now? I think so. And I think it's also like, it depends, right? Where demographics has a lot to do how you embrace technology.
We sit on all these different boards with all these shop owners or different places in the industry all over the United States. And I think a lot of them fear it. Some think it's BS. In my shop, we're trying to embrace it completely, like, in everything that we do from— we're looking for our vendors to start embracing it as well. We're looking for the best technology to get information the fastest.
I know Bernard is starting to implement it with the technicians, you know, using ChatGPT. The company has one. We taught it, we made it learn everything that we possibly can. And a lot of this, a lot of people start having negative comments on it. For me is you have to look how to embrace it, and you have to pick technology and then say, hmm, how can this improve us to be way better?
For example, B's using it with the technicians in a sense where if you tell it, I already did this, this, this, this, this is the issue I'm having, what am I not seeing? And it's like instant, right? Instead of calling tech line and waiting and It's how can we get information faster? And it's utilizing it to the ability to say, hey, how am I having tunnel vision?
What am I not seeing? But you have to train it. I always say you have to train this. This is not replacing humans. It's helping us think faster. It's— imagine like a machine that's helping you think faster, narrowing your thoughts. But you still have to tell it. It's not going to know, if I can explain it better. Mike, I know you wanna jump in and you should because you're smarter than I will ever be.
But that whole thing about being able to teach it, Mike, one of the key pieces that people are forgetting is that you could tell it what you want, how you want it, what tone you want, don't do this. And it remembers. Yeah. Well, think about this shift, right? If you go back 25 years or so when websites first came out, We were a little hesitant.
We had to learn this new WWW, right? Then social media came out. And I remember 15 years ago teaching classes on social media, and I used to have to convince shop owners to open up a Facebook page. It was just, you know, they were reluctant. Hey, my grandkids are on Facebook. It's not my thing. Those same people you talk to today, you can't even pry them off Facebook because they've embraced it, right?
So as we kind of entered this shift, and what's interesting is AI has been around for 50 years. Right? It started with McCarthy 50 years ago, but it only became mainstream in November 2022 when Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, when he started to talk about these behavioral things that you could actually— these learning behaviors that you could actually implement as small business owners, we sort of embraced it.
There's still a lot to learn from it because you think it became mainstream the end of 2022. We've seen some drawbacks, different things like that. So let me, let me add a little bit more context if it's okay. So OverDrive offices are Sunnyvale, California, and our offices, it's kind of this shared space with plug and play. There's over 200 startups within our building.
And every day for the past year, I would see, no exaggeration, robots delivering food to kiosks. I would see, there's a company called Shield that has literally, it's a demo in their booth where it's AI detected disease detection. In hospital rooms, right? So I'm thinking for the past year, I'm like, and what's cool is recently we've started to kind of embrace this stuff, but as an industry, we are highly underutilizing it.
Um, a year and a half ago, it was limited to pretty much scoring calls. You know, they would listen to calls and score calls to, you know, figure out missed opportunities, things like that, and then review responses. But now I'm starting to see more companies out there starting to add more features, including OverDrive. Lastly, Google had a big conference here in Silicon Valley last week.
Michelle, I don't know if you heard of it or, or went to it, but they talked about token usage. And the token usage from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, so just in a year's time frame, it shot up to 3.2 quadrillion. I didn't even know that was a real number. Token usage, right? And then back then, 6% of consumers surveyed said that they utilize some form of AI, only 6%.
That same period in Q1 of 2026, 46%. So even though technically, you know, Google still owns the market share in search, we very, very quickly embrace this stuff. So I would anticipate a very quick adoption in the next few months. From a shop owner standpoint, if I can add on to that, we started hearing a lot when you ask, or the front counter asks, how did you find us for new clients?
ChatGPT, ChatGPT. Then we said, okay, we got to train our ChatGPT. Those senses where you got to teach it. And, you know, BE was super reluctant on bringing it into operations, but a lot of it was— it's the thought that it's replacing humans, or you're hindering the ability for them to learn. I think my AI has made me smarter, faster than I could ever be.
When I think of AI and I think of us trying to mentally figure it out, I always go back to an early Star Trek episode. And I believe the character had this huge brain and didn't speak, and they could telepath their thoughts to the people in the room. And that's what I think when I think of AI, it's just big brain stuff.
So, you know, if you've ever wanted a really big brain, teach AI how to be your big brain. It's funny you use that analogy. Like, I look at it almost like, uh, you have an assistant, right? And you're going to spend time training them how to be the best assistant that you need for your needs as to why you brought them on board.
And that takes time and effort and SOPs and leadership and all this other stuff. Imagine having an assistant that you tell— like, when I got onto ChatGPT and we bought it for the company, I basically told it, this is our company, this is me, learn everything about it. This is my market, this is our clientele, this is what we do. So much that I'll tell you something funny.
I was typing an email and I drop it in there for tone because she already— I called her Pepper. We're big Iron Man fans because we're mechanics and stuff like that. So my AI, her name is Pepper, and I tell her, Pepper, can you check the tone on my email? I don't have her type my email for me. That's the misuse, Reg, with the new generation.
Don't do the email for me. I type in the email and I say, can you throw it in there for tone? She told me and checked me and said that I was being aggressive and that was not my normal tone on how I like to be perceived. This is how embedded I am with it, right, that she's telling me I think you should bring it down a notch because I know that you don't like to be perceived this way.
I told her everything I like, what I don't dislike, how I carry myself, everything possible. That it's almost like your assistant, right? She's checking you, like, check your tone. Okay, so the softer side of Michelle, I get that. Okay. When you heard that back, did you take exception to that? You know, at first I was like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, what?
But I'm big on curiosity. Like, it's funny. Like, to me, when I get feedback, even if it's from like Google machine or even like vendors, friends, family, I don't look at it as, hey, they're talking down to me. I look for it. I get curious. It's like I was curious as to— and I reread it, right? And I reread it. And then you realize, oh crap, yeah, this might be perceived as something aggressive.
I will challenge any consumer in any industry that you in, it is happening. It's already happened. It's been around. We have to embrace it. And I feel like as an industry, we're kind of a little bit behind. Yeah. Last week I taught a class in Northern Virginia on AI and marketing. And then 2 days later, I taught a class in Northern California in the Santa Rosa area for one of the associations out here.
And I always lead sort of I want to kind of get a temperature check of the room, right? So I ask with, you know, how many people use AI at least 5 days a week? Every day, right? So I kind of have these layered questions and then I ask like preferred platform and different things like that. What's interesting is everybody has different usages, right?
How they use it. Like Michelle mentioned the tone. I'm the same way. I want to check myself. I want to make sure my email doesn't come across as arrogant. It's professional, right? So I don't have AI write emails for me, I write the email, cut and paste it, and then post it into my preferred platform. That being said, my biggest takeaway out of both of those classes last week was that people are still skeptical.
Very, very skeptical. There's a lot that you can do with AI. You could have it write code. I mean, there's so many different things that you could do with it, but there's almost this defensive barrier of like, I'm not gonna cross this yet. Let's just kind of wait in the wings, which is highly respectable. Because again, it is new. We're still learning a lot about it.
Whatever we upload, whether it's images, whether it's webhooks, like whatever we're uploading into Claude or ChatGPT, it goes out there to the ecosystem. We don't want to share customer information and those types of things. So I don't do it to that extent. It's just more kind of self-improvement, self-awareness. But that's, that was my biggest takeaway, Carm, was that people are still, still hesitant, understandably.
I don't have a problem with being cautious, but I guess the message that the industry needs to hear and understand is you can't ignore it. You're gonna have to one day embrace it. Now it may be in a longer, you know, a longer curve to embrace it, but you cannot completely ignore it. And, and Mike, let's go back to all the, you know, when the SMSs came out and then DVIs and all this high-tech stuff that started to invade our business.
And some people look the other way. They're not around here anymore. And I do believe that we can't look at AI as a toy. It's a tool. And like every one of our tools, we have to learn how to use it. Yeah. Is it going to replace humans? Absolutely not. Like, that is number one, because humans, we have empathy. We're in rooms, we're high-fiving, right?
But if you think about, and I'll just use a broader context, any role in my world, it's marketing, right? If I take what a traditional marketing director does as a human, right, we're capable of a certain amount of performance, right? Maybe if you're David Goggins, you could extend beyond that. What does he say, 120% rule or something like that, right? Possible. But if you shifted at least 90 to 95% of what traditional marketing director does and then made it more predictable, meaning, okay, each individual customer in our world in auto aftermarket, Jane customer might come in, have one car come in once a year.
A Joe customer might have 3 cars and, you know, maybe Michelle sees them 5 times a year, right? Why should they have the same communication, right? What triggers Jane customer to respond? AI, if you embed that, incorporate that in the process, it's able to tell you that. And the win is, you know, if Michelle sends out a campaign, what's gonna maximize our performance of the campaign, get high open rates and high conversion rates?
That's the intelligence of AI. Mike is talking about stop, eliminate the hope that I think I'm doing things right and get AI, this erector set, if you will, to come in and do some of the lifting. You know, Mike, I think, is being humble right now. Like what OverDrive is building, I don't know if— can I touch on it? Sure, yeah. I mean, as a client, like what they're building is going to be a time saver.
I'm talking to shop owners right now, if you guys are in here. Time saver, shit that we don't like to do. Sorry, pardon my French, but like all the stuff we don't want to do. Just leave it out. Right? It's what is SEO, SEO, and margins on this? Can we track that? Like, it's basically, he's building this system where it can anticipate issues.
It can let us know, hey, you're on track. You're kind of not. This is what I think that you should do because of these type of clients, and this is your demographic, and this is what you do. So, imagine a software that customizes with data. It pulls data, and it's so smart that it can tell you, like he mentioned, hey, this 20A4 that's coming in with Jane Doe, and same car with John Doe, but they have different lifestyles, different usage for their vehicle.
This is how you should market to them. Like, that's gangster. I don't want to spend time making more Excel sheets and tracking all this other stuff. Like, it will be in a software to tell you, hey, this is what you're tracking from margins to KPIs. And think about it, not just for a shop owner perspective, but for your whole staff. And, you know, shop owners that are scared to share data and reporting with your staff, This is where you need to evolve.
Our mindset has to shift and we gotta think differently. Let's face it, your shop management system is the single most important tool in your shop, period. NapaTrax was built from the ground up to make your business more profitable and efficient. We provide an extensive set of tools to increase and track profitability in real time. NapaTrax offers the industry's best post-sale support hands down, and we train your people on-site.
Yep, on-site. And we offer remote refresher training 10 times a week, and customer support is open 6 days a week. Give us a call, visit the website, or join our Facebook community today to learn more. We'll prove to you that TRAX is the single best shop management system in the business. NapaTrax is always customized and tailored for you, whether you're a one-man shop or a large multi-bay or multi-location company.
After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Visit us on the web at NapaTracks— that's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C-S— .com. Transform your team with today's class, where automotive training is easy, quick, and fun. Just 5 minutes a day on our app can eliminate hours of looking up forgotten information later. It's perfect for technicians, advisors, and managers alike. Keep critical knowledge fresh and top of mind, ensuring your team operates at peak efficiency.
Today's Class is impactful, accessible from anywhere, and a bit of fun too. And we're not talking about after-hours pizza either. For training that gets results, turn to todaysclass.com. Shop owners, we know you are overwhelmed with a flood of missed calls, empty bays, and disconnected marketing tools. Kukui has spent over a decade building one integrated platform for auto repair shops. One login, One dashboard and mobile-first websites that convert 4 times industry average.
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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%. Loyalty 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. So much marketing, Mike, Michelle, that we've done in the past is what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we're paying attention to. It all comes in our gut, and then we make a decision with our marketing company. Should we yin or should we yang? And I think what I heard from Michelle is that some of that gut, some of that emotion that we bring in needs to be more analytical and show us what's going on.
And then maybe we apply a little emotion to the decision that we make, which way to go, but now we're more steeped in logic and objectivity. Is that right, Mike? Yeah. And predictable as well. I think that that's a key thing. And I'll give you an example. Let's say folks go to Google to find a repair shop, right? Which is kind of the common thing right now.
I go to Google, I type in Euro repair near me, right? Google pulls up obviously the sponsored ads, like the LSAs, the map pack. And then if a consumer's not satisfied with what they see there, all they have to do is click more options or more businesses, and it's going to collapse a lot of other shops. Now there's a journey in that customer cadence, right?
They find you online, they read a review, there's a call to action, they talk to an advisor, they come in. If you install APIs, for example, into Google Business Profile page— and I won't plug our platform, but it just generally speaking, like, is able to identify AI. Let's say AI is coming in, able to identify search trends on Google in your market.
And let's say I have a Porsche, but I don't need repair right now. AI is going to tag that and then be able to predict what you're potentially going to land in terms of, from a shop perspective, car count, ARO, and total sales. Because everything's dependent on search trends. If people aren't searching for that type of repair that Michelle's offering, it's redundant.
You could spend $1,000, $10,000 a month. If people are not searching for what her specialty is, what she's looking to target, you're dead in the water. Right? But we want to look at search trends. So when you combine the Google Business Profile page, as just as an example, and then combine that with what people are searching for, AI is able to predict, okay, well, based on search trends and all these other parameters, here's where you're going to end up.
You're going to be 22 leads down on your Google Business Profile page by the end. I mean, that's how intelligent AI is. And like, who doesn't want to embrace that? I don't want to switch this discussion down any other highway, but what just came through my mind, and maybe work with me for a couple of minutes on this, is auto repair shop near me.
Mike, you mentioned that. The immediate thing that I thought of is why, why do I need an auto repair shop near me? How come we as a professional industry haven't done enough to build the loyalty into people not having to search? Am I crazy or not? Not at all. Not at all. I preach this all day long, Karamet. Most of what we do happens at the counter.
In marketing, we have a 75-25 ratio. So for example, if I pull Michelle's data last month and if I saw 75% of total customers were— had been there at least one time before and 25% were brand new, I would be happy as a marketer, right? Would I be over the moon? Not particularly, but I would be happy. I'd be content. Okay, great.
Retention's doing its thing, the people at the counter, and then internet marketing is doing its thing. You know, I've been to over 2,000 shops around the country and in Canada. I have personally walked into over 2,000 shops. I'm an observer. I ask questions. I ask open-ended questions. I want to learn from shop owners, right? What's interesting, and I gave this analogy to you a couple of years ago, if you recall, the NASA shop.
With NASA, and I know you love this, with NASA, This is for the audience. NASA, there's no cutting corners. We just seen people go to the moon, right? Like a couple months ago. There is no cutting corners with NASA. Every step of their process is fluid and they're not just checking boxes. It's really, they've built a process where it's second nature. There is a handful of NASA shops that I've personally walked into.
And what's interesting at those is You know, in our industry, the biggest problem I see, we have a few concerns, right? But like inconsistency. One minute our bays are filled, the next minute they're slow. And then we do this knee-jerk sort of this panic marketing. It's like, okay, now I got to do all this, right? The NASA shops that I've personally walked into, to your point, Carm, are consistent with their process and their branding year-round.
They're a week, say 7 to 10 days out. Booked up with their appointments. And the vast majority of those customers that they're booked up with had been in there at least one time before. So instead of that 75/25 ratio, they're more of a 90/10. So eventually new customers to them are just icing on the cake. Ultimately you need them because people move away, they die, you know, things happen.
We need to constantly be looking for new. Mike, this whole build loyalty thing, I can't help but believe that all the tech that we have, CRMs and AIs and what you're doing at OverDrive, has got to help congeal it into a nice glowing ball. Am I right? You're right. And as a marketer, Carm, our primary responsibility is to drive quality leads to the shop, which are called MQLs, marketing qualified leads, that advisors are able to convert into visits, right?
And then secondly, behind that is add appointments, fill their appointments. So quality leads, fill their calendar up with appointments. That is primarily what we're doing. But we're not picking up the phone. So sales and marketing go hand in hand. Advisors are sales professionals, okay? Their responsibility is to identify a good opportunity, convert it into the lead, but their work's not done after that because they have to do everything.
I call it A to Z retention marketing. A to Z. They have to do everything to earn that long-term relationship. And we're not going to look at it like a $100 oil change. If you do all of these things right between A to Z, and earned that relationship, there's what's called LTV, lifetime value. It's tens of thousands of dollars in added revenue when you learn your customer.
Lastly, I mean, I could talk about this till midnight, but I'll spare the audience. But my Starbucks story that I share in some of my classes, it's a true story. 2007, I was going to open up a coffee shop. I was working for Washington Mutual. We got bought by Chase. I wasn't happy. I would sit at Starbucks and I'm like, man, I'm going to open up a coffee shop.
I would be very particular. I would count customers. I would look at average ticket prices. And during that time, Jim Donald was the CEO of Starbucks. He was responsible for growing this chain from 5,000 stores to 30,000 stores worldwide. And he did it in record time. And I wanted to know, Carm and Michelle, why would people wait in these massive lines at Starbucks to spend $3, $4, $5 on or more on a cup of coffee and there would be a gourmet coffee cart or a small business right across the street for $0.99, and nobody's in that line.
There's a lot of things that went into their process. Like, you walk into Starbucks, you know you're in a Starbucks. There's no sharp edges. Alanis Morissette in acoustic. It's very predictable. One of the things that resonated with me, and I encourage every shop to think about this, you were required to address people by first name. They actually had it in their employee handbook..
It's called forming a complete customer connection. So you walk into Starbucks. I'm Carm. I want the triple grande nonfat white mocha. 9 times out of 10, if you went to that same Starbucks the next day, they would not only remember your name, but your drink of choice. You were not known as, hey, number 27, your order's ready. You were known as Carm, the guy who drinks a triple grande nonfat white mocha.
And what happens immediately? We're drawn to that. We're connected because we feel part of something. All of our customers in the shop feel the same way when we learn customers. And sometimes I'll, in a very friendly, polite, delicate way, I'll challenge advisors because I observe and I see a customer going, hey, I found you guys on Google, it's my first time here.
They walk away and I'll ask the advisor, what were two things that you just learned about that brand new customer? And sometimes they'll say, oh, they're from here in Denver or whatever, right? But No, I mean, really, what do they do on the weekend? Do they own a business? Do they have a family? Do they go to church? What are their hobbies?
I wanna know outside of the box things because I'm trying to create the Starbucks process of it's predictably okay when people go there. I'm thinking of Euro Clinic, Michelle, as he's telling that story. And Mike, today in our meeting of 28 independent shop owners here in Buffalo, somebody walked in. With a cup of coffee with the Starbucks logo on it. That told me a whole hell of a lot about that person, period, right?
That's where the brand is, the image, the logo, the brand. And I can imagine, you know, with Euro Coffee Cups out there, even if it was quick to have a cup of coffee while someone's waiting, but they're out there and they take it with them and they go to their work. Oh, you go to Uro Clinic. Isn't that cool? Or can you tell me about them?
We have it. I spent a lot of money on this fancy espresso machine, and I'll tell you how we utilize it, right? Going to go get coffee is culture, part of society. Can I show him real quick? Yeah, there's for your audience. There's their latte right there. Oh my God, I love— oh my God, that is the coolest. And I have a great marketing team, you know, and I challenge every single shop owner to really learn their client base.
If there's something that I am super, super thankful for Overdrive and the whole team, because I've been with you guys like almost 2 years, kind of, and I did a complete like revamp of like how we do business. Who is my ideal client? And what are we really going to offer? Like, what I offer is I save you time and convenience. And I looked at my consumer, and I looked at my ideal client, and I said, coffee is part of culture.
Like, I had the fancy commercial Keurig that requires them to do something. That requires for them to walk over after they checked in, if they're in the waiting area, and make themselves a cup of coffee. I brought in my manager, and he's big on hospitality. And he said, "No, our sales team is going to be making these coffees as we have a conversation," right?
It's so embedded in our day-to-day operations that when we valet cars, because I offer a valet and pickup service to the local engineers, we're embedded with, like, our tech companies around here to make it easier for them to get service here, we already know what their favorite drink is. You know, we serve as a VP of litigation for Google. She's not too far away.
She drives a Land Rover and she loves cappuccinos, double shot cappuccino. It's in their profile. Ron already knows, and she doesn't even have to ask for it. If we're delivering her car in the morning, we're sending her a cappuccino. So she's getting her car and her cappuccino. Can I add to that real quick? So as I mentioned, Carm, I'm a client of EuroClinics, a proud client.
And NASA shops, they don't cut corners. Remember I said that? Ron, who's a general manager, I walk in and I know— I mean, we— they've been clients for almost 2 years, right? Like, I know them. For me, I'm super loose. I'm like, high five, hug, whatever. Ron treats me the same exact way he would treat a customer. When I walk in, he'll ask me, hey, can I make your latte?
Because I have a nonfat latte. He's like, can I make your nonfat latte? He knows what I drink, and he'll offer to make me my latte. They have this soundproof booth, which actually, to Michelle's point, being here in the thick of Silicon Valley, that is massive for waiters because it's tech. We're on the go. And if we need to do a Zoom call, they could literally do it in Michelle's lobby in a separate soundproof room.
That's a huge selling point. So NASA shops, they don't cut corners. And Michelle and B are, are definitely a NASA shop. And when you think about it though, like If your operations are not solid, no amount of marketing is going to fix that, you know? And that's conversations that I've had with Mike De La Cruz as, like, the founder of the company that does my marketing, my marketing director.
We, as shop owners, have to put our ego aside and understand that marketing is part of our ecosystem on, like, what we do to get new clients, retain them, and we have to listen. And Mike came to me a couple, like, months ago because I was like, hey, it's being the proactive stuff. Why are we being reactionary? What's happening. We were running low days here and there.
And as a shop owner, you have to listen because our marketing team is data-driven. We're emotionally driven, right? And we have to kind of like train ourselves out of it. There's always a 50-50% chance that the marketing company is giving me BS and like stuff is not working, or my systems are not tight like we think we are. So, it's a constant evolution of you making sure that the systems are tight., right?
Because I don't care if the phone only rings 5 times, that's 5 opportunities that day versus it ringing 30, that's still 30 opportunities. And we have to make sure— I don't know if you taught this, Mike came and spoke to my team for kickoff and it's like, you have a certain amount on the phone, like a certain amount of seconds to make an impression and basically brand yourselves that way.
So, for me, I kind of built the company After Conversations with a marketing company as I'm the avatar client. Right? What are the things that I like? Like, in my shop, we don't have too many waiters. A lot of the times when there is waiters, it's new clients because we want them to spend time. We bring them out to the shop, we introduce them.
I want them to know how transparent we are. My clientele, 60%, is female, you know? And a lot of the times, I don't care what brands you're putting in my car. Like, that's not how you earn my business. My business, a lot of mine, normal actual concerns are how long is this going to take and how much is this going to cost me and what's the— how is it going to inconvenience my life?
So, as a shop owner, I had to build systems and put people in places in those systems where though we're addressing those concerns, whether the client is telling us those are my concerns. It's like we almost anticipate those needs. I have a client that comes from me from Woodside. He passes, I want to say, hundreds of shawmz. He's about 25 miles away.
The only reason he comes in is because we allow Mayo to come. And Mayo is this beautiful, big, old poodle. And we have treats for their dogs. We bring out the bowl. We get him an Uber Pet if the shuttle's not available. His dog is welcome in our shuttle. But I want you to listen to it. In our culture here in Silicon Valley, Mayo has his own car.
This is the life we're living. Okay, this client has about €4,000, but Mayo's car is a Land Rover Discovery. It's his car. So my lounge is super luxury. Think of like Nordstrom's, you know, but the fact that Mayo's allowed in there, to him, it's like he comes to service his car because we found out that he loves his dog. And his dog is welcome to come whenever he wants.
When he doesn't come, we ask, "How come Mayo didn't come?" And he goes, "Well, Mayo's not allowed in the GT4 RS." Mike, I gotta tell you, there's some real powerful lessons in the last 5 minutes. I couldn't be happier. We have done episodes over these last 11 years where stories just like yours about the love of the relationship and the You probably even have wonderful smells inside of your weight room, right?
Oh yeah. We made our own scent. I want you to think like, okay, you walk into a Ritz-Carlton, they have their specific scent, right? You walk into Hotel W in New York, they have their specific scent. So, and this is stuff that people can do. It's like, you want to be remembered in marketing. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. You can do whatever you want, but people respond based on how you make them feel.
How did I feel in that moment when I was in there? And I'm not saying, Carm, that I am the best shop for every consumer out there that drives Euro. It's no, I am the right consumer for specific drivers that are looking for this. If you like, Mike's super busy, you know, he's bringing his car in, I think today, and we already offered, like, I know you're busy, bro.
Let us go pick it up. But sometimes, I mean, I think he wants to come in, he wants to get his latte. I was like, we'll bring you the latte. Like, that's not the problem, right? It's like, I'm busy, I can't get there, I need no work on my car, but I need a latte. Yeah, for us it's like this. I've done that sometimes, Karen, believe it or not.
I've got— I've hung out with him. How can we be of service? All right, I'm so impressed with where you've taken this, and I need to ask a really difficult question to the industry. Michelle's, Michelle's Euro, and that's how Euro people are. And my challenge to that attitude is I don't care if you're all models, if you're EV hybrid, I don't care.
What you've done is taken the client experience. Basically, you're the CXO, right? Client experience officer. You're the CXO. And I don't care what you work on. It could be at the highest level because The people that have Cadillacs and all those other high-end Lincoln Navigators and stuff, they want a high-end place to go, even if you're working on a Chevy in another bay.
So why is it this professional industry of ours that's constantly being challenged by the dealership network? Why haven't we kicked it up about 42 notches in terms of adding additional like services? No, not the services, but to do the things that, yeah, the experience. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. Sorry, I'm just— mindset that you can serve everything. I'm in a metropolitan area, there's shops all over me.
I get mailers that say we fix everything. Do you? Do you fix everything? Like the way we look at marketing conversations I have with my marketing director is even when we look at competitors around us, I'm not looking at what they're really good at, because they're really good at that. That's what they do. I'm looking at what they're not good at, and how can I be good at that?
Do you know what I mean? You have to shift your mindset. It's like Chick-fil-A. Popeyes has been around longer than Chick-fil-A. They both have great chicken. Chick-fil-A built their systems around hospitality. It is my pleasure to serve you. Have a blessed day. It's like I started telling my team a year ago, we're in the automotive repair industry. How come we don't tell our clients, Please drive safely.
Have a great weekend and drive safely. Like, it's just certain things that you can insert. But again, I do disagree, and I completely agree, and I'm glad that you brought up this topic. And I'm interested to hear what Mike thinks of this as like a marketing perspective. But for me, it's like, you can't service all, you cannot fix all, because different people are looking for different things.
And I have customers that found me with their Audi and later on moved on and now have like a Honda or have a Lexus and they still pay our rates. But they come because of how we make them feel and the trust and they know the value they're going to get. I mean, me servicing a Honda is really expensive. But then now we're talking, we're getting to value.
Now the conversation is moving into added value. Like, are you a price shopper? Are you looking for value? You go to Target, you know what type of experience you're gonna get. You're probably gonna have to bag things yourself. You go to Nordstrom's and they package it up really nice. They walk over the counter, they give you a beautiful bag. You know what to expect when you walk into something because now we're getting into value.
And then you log, come into the store and you let— well, you look at things that are important, right? Like Silicon Valley people, kids are expensive. Kids are really, really expensive. People sometimes get a dog first, you know, and it's their whole world. I'm a huge dog person. Now Mike knows that. And I love my dog. Like we have a Volkswagen T1 and that's for Kobe.
Everybody else, we drive sedans. But when we got the SUV for the dog, cause we wanted to bring him everywhere with us. Mike, I know you probably agree vehemently with Michelle and I kind of want to get back to the whole marketing piece here, but I'm loving this conversation because I think there's some great wisdom here. And you brought up the NASA shops, actually wrote a keynote and gave it in New York maybe a couple of years ago in trying to motivate people to look at what it took NASA to get where they are today.
And it was, it was, let's say this, 99.9% of everything done right and done at the highest possible level. And then when you mentioned Nordstrom, so next week to all of our great Topshop operators that are here that are looking for another new advantage, Sit down with your people and say, you know what, we're gonna become a Nordstrom shop. What's that, boss?
Maybe there's no Nordstrom in your town. Explain it. Yeah, it can't get any better. You can't have a better experience. You can't find better quality goods. You can't walk away and feel happy and proud. And are we doing enough of that? And so if we fail in any way, we could point to the person and say, Nordstrom, because we failed to live up to those expectations by just mentioning the word.
I mean, I know Ron uses the Ritz-Carlton experience. That's how he trains our whole staff, even from technicians. And again, I want to stress, it's a whole ecosystem. You can't just have a very badass, like, front of the house, and then the back of the house doesn't believe in that. It's having their buy-in too. You have to bring up team members. That have buy-in.
I'm gonna take it a step further because this is a really important topic to touch on. And this is mostly for the leadership in shops, whether you're owner or general manager. If you don't have a mission statement, create one. It starts there. The reason why it's so important is because as owners or leadership, we're faced with decisions all day long. But if your people don't understand your mission, what you're trying to accomplish, you're gonna get pushback all day long.
So create a mission, make sure it's well thought out, and make sure it goes with your fundamental principles internally and what you're trying to accomplish as a team. So once you start to implement tech stacks, once you start to implement the Nordstrom strategy, if your team is bought into the mission, you're not gonna get pushback because they have a common goal, right?
And then lastly to that is success is never gonna happen overnight.. You are not going to say, let's change it to this Nordstrom style. It's gonna happen overnight. We are creatures of habit. 60, 90, 120 days. You have to follow through. One of those actual foundational intro pieces I do in all my classes is you're gonna get a lot of nuggets out of this class, but the worst thing that you can do is not execute against it and not follow through.
Because what happens is it's a Saturday, I teach a really awesome class. You walk away with nuggets. What happens Monday? The phone rings, somebody calls you, and then you're pulled in all these different directions. Monday turns into Tuesday, Tuesday turns into next week, next week turns into Monday, and all of a sudden you fall into these old behaviors, right? Again, we don't want to create a process where we're checking boxes.
Create that mission, make sure the team has bought into the mission. And as you start to implement these new strategies internally, which are proven successful, right? I've been over 2,000 shops, I have seen this firsthand. You've got to execute, and it's got to be a marathon and not a sprint. Truly, truly, truly, it's something as simple as how we're picking up the phone.
It'll be awkward at first. Your advisor's gonna be like, well, I don't really want to say that, right? But think about it like this: when somebody calls your shop, they're calling because they have a problem, they don't know how to fix it, and they know it's gonna be really expensive. So immediately, once they call your shop, there's already a form of anxiety when they call you.
So a simple greeting— and I've listened to hundreds of phone calls in my life— a simple greeting of, 'It's a great day here at Joe's Garage. My name is Dan. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?' People on the other end don't expect that. They expect pushback, these defensive barriers. They do not expect that in our industry. But you could almost feel— and I listened to so many calls— you could feel tension being lifted off of their shoulder from that simple greeting.
It's so much more than that. I could probably talk till my face turns blue, but I'll spare your audience all the time here. And it's a lot of phone training with WordTrack. Like, there's certain stuff that are non-negotiable for us. We don't use the word "no worries." And even if we're using it because the client is apologizing and we want to say, "Hey, no worries, don't apologize," we don't because there is a freaking worry.
Like, there's a reason why they called. They're either worried that time, because it's regular maintenance, check engine lights, the coolant. So, we remove words from our terminology that are going to make them feel more comfort. Like, hey, regardless if you pick us, whatever, we're going to do the best that we can to help you. Like, we're here to help. Like, when we text clients, we always put, "If you have any questions, we're happy to help."
If there's a client that's asking too many questions and they keep apologizing, because it's human nature, right? They think they're being annoying because they're asking too many questions. We're like, we stop and we address that first. Hey, we're here to help. There's no amounts of questions that are like, this is our whole being. We exist because you have a problem, you know, so we're here to help.
So again, I think it reverts back to the staff. And if I could just touch on something that Mike said about mission statements and stuff like that, like, I have built all of our systems for every individual to be able to make an executive decision without a person of leadership based on our core values. Like, if they think of all the core values and what the company stands for in our standards, they should be able to make a decision without me, B, or their general manager, because we have embedded our core values in that.
For me, core values are not something that we just throw on the wall and in the break room and we all kind of just say, this is what we stand for. Core values is what we live and how we make decisions every day. In our daily operations. And if you're not doing that, first thing I think that shop owners should do if they're listening, if they can take anything away, is do your mission statement, do your core values, and they have to be embedded in the whole, like, way that you run from every single SOP.
That's something that I spend a lot of time, and like Mike said, it's not something that just happens overnight. You also have to find the right people that believe in the same things that you're doing, or it doesn't sound genuine. You gotta have that foundation, Michelle, and you are right. I'm gonna make that your summarized discussion point. We're here to talk about AI and marketing, and we went to a million different places.
Mike, help me come back to maybe the center of what we were talking about, and that the future of marketing with AI is probably gonna make us more proactive than reactive. Can you give us a summary comment on all that? Yeah, we talk heavy about retention, right? So I kind of touched on it earlier about learning each individual customer's driving habits, everybody, their frequency of visits, what triggers certain people to respond.
Maybe I'm somebody who gets my oil change at Valvoline, but then for the bigger stuff, I like to use an independent. Maybe I'm somebody that likes to use my oil change only with you, but the bigger stuff I like to do myself, right? So every customer has a different pattern and a different footprint. Utilizing AI and embedding it in your process with that, it's learning each individual customer's behaviors, their frequency of visits, what triggers them to respond, and makes it highly more effective.
In addition to that, from a shop owner's perspective, you could do, and I'll just high level here, you could do things like, you know, churn prediction. So incorporate AI in your process and say, by the end of the year, how many customers am I expected to lose? We talk about proactive and reactive. That term is gonna come around a lot throughout, has come around a lot, and it's gonna come around more proactive instead of reactive, right?
That's saying, hey, you're gonna lose 3% of your business by the end of the year. Or, you know, based on these goals that you put forth, you're gonna be 15 cars shy by the end of the month. Think about the value in that and not only presenting the problem, but solution-based AI marketing, meaning you're down 30 cars, here's what you've gotta do to bounce back.
And there's so much backend intelligence around it where you're located, seasonality, the type of customer you're looking to attract. This is how powerful AI is. And these are things that we need to adopt as an industry. It is not the future anymore. This is happening right now. Scary stuff, Mike. It really is that. I think it's scary stuff if you're not paying attention and you're sitting on the outside, says, wow, I don't have the car count or the ARO.
And now you pick up the phone being proactive with your marketing people and says, we probably have to make a slight adjustment or we need to, you know, do some CRMing on any declined work. Again, I think today's successful shop has 8 or 9 things on the spinning wheel of marketing or opportunity. And we have to, again, we just can't say, stop it.
Okay, let's do that. No, because let's do that is coming from, if I'm hearing you right, Mike, based on the fact that we've done the research and this is the area that we have to concentrate on. Correct. And I do wanna be clear. I mean, it, I mentioned it earlier, right? There is, you know, we are and we will always be fractional marketing, outsourced marketing, because there is such a massive need for this.
Because as great as AI is and as predictable as it is, it's going to certainly help shops. It's a tool, like you're utilizing a tool that's going to help you be more successful. There's a lot of shops that I talk to that are like, great and everything, and I understand the value of that. I just don't want to manage this stuff. I don't want to have to learn something new.
That's why our kind of traditional foundational piece of that fractional marketing agency and outsourced marketing, we're still going hot and heavy with that. But how can we incorporate for shops that maybe, you know, you hire a marketing director internal, it's like 6-figure salary or an agency, right? You're paying $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a month, or I'm sorry, a year, right? That's not a drop in the bucket for many shops.
But if you can shift 95% of that and willing to allow AI to walk you through successful campaigns, for 95% less cost for your marketing budget, the total addressable market for independent shops, it starts to expand because a shop may not have that budget to hire a marketing director. They may not have the budget to hire that outsourced marketing agency like OverDrive.
But then there's a lot of shops that say, you know what, I can do this. There's shops that don't. So we want to be able to create a process where we're creating solutions for all. 15 years in this industry, I owe this industry so much. And you know, Carmen, Michelle, I'm on boards, Educational Foundation, Yang Mentor. I do so many things because I feel a responsibility.
I feel that, you know, the up-and-comers that are wanting to learn about this industry— I'm not ready to go, so I'm not passing the baton. I just want to teach everybody that I've learned over 15 years the nuggets that I've been able to take away. That way we could build together. Competitors, doesn't matter. Look, there's so many people to serve here. Let's be nice.
Let's play in the sandbox nicely. Let's help the industry grow, not just say we're gonna do it. Let's prove it through action. So again, I know it's super long-winded, but very, very proud of what we've been able to accomplish. And the work's not done. We have a lot more to do. Good for you, Mike. A great summary and, and a very passionate statement.
Thank you so much. Uh, again, what people hear from me every time I do an episode is I'm so engaged in the dialogue and my mind doesn't stop. It goes, I'm a 7/24er, okay, on that. Notepad on the bed stand, okay, it's there. And what I was inspired by your final comments, Mike, if you're finding out that you're talking to yourself, talk to your AI buddy.
You're a friend, right, Michelle? Yes. It'll keep you in check. If you're talking to yourself, where am I going? What am I doing? No, there's a tool out there that I think can help maybe ground you. Yeah, we gotta name the tool though. You gotta name them. Yeah, you gotta name her or him, her or him, whoever. Mine's a her, Bee's a he.
But my wife has Claudia for Claude and then Charlie for ChatGPT. Yeah, chat, I love it. All right, well, Mike De La Cruz, co-founder and CEO of OverDrive— spell that, D-R-Y-V-E, overdrivemarketing.com— and Michelle Tanzi from Euro Clinic in Santa Clara in Silicon Valley there. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. Thank you both so much for coming on. Thank you, Carmen. Appreciate the opportunity, Carmen. Thank you everybody for listening.
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. Also enjoy the podcast on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel. Carm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry. Until next time.
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Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS Watch Full Video Episode What happens when a customer needs a $2,000 repair but doesn’t have the cash available today? That moment can determine whether the vehicle gets repaired, the customer delays a critical service, or they take their business somewhere else. For automotive shops, offering flexible payment options can be more than a convenience. It can be a powerful tool for helping customers say yes to the work their vehicles need. Kwane Stokes, Assistant Vice President and Relationship Manager in the automotive division at Synchrony, explains how the program can help shops remove financial barriers, increase repair opportunities, and create another reason for customers to return. Kwane also addresses why many shops still aren't offering financing and how the biggest obstacle may simply be the assumptions advisors make about a customer's ability or willingness to pay. What You'll Learn Why financing should be presented as a payment option, not something an advisor decides a customer needs.How the program's average first and repeat purchase amounts demonstrate the potential impact on average repair order (ARO).Why assuming a customer can't qualify for credit can cause shops to lose needed repair work.How monthly promotional offers can give shops another reason to communicate with their customers.How advisor incentives and simple training can encourage more consistent presentation of financing.What the upcoming "waterfall" financing model could mean for customers who aren't approved through the primary credit program. The biggest opportunity may not be finding more customers. It may be giving the customers already sitting at your counter more ways to say yes. The key is removing the assumption that you know what a customer can or cannot afford. Present the options, explain them clearly, and let the customer decide what works for their financial situation. For a shop, financing isn't simply about collecting payment. It's another tool for helping customers get the repairs they need while protecting the relationship and keeping the work in your shop. Kwane Stokes, AVP, Relationship Manager, Auto Network, Synchrony Learn more about the benefits of being part of the NAPA family by visiting https://www.napaonline.com/en/auto-care NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with on-site training and six days a week of support: http://napatracs.com/ Connect with the Podcast: Download Our Mobile App:https://automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com/app/Website:https://remarkableresults.biz/YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/carmcapriottoFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/RemarkableResultsRadioPodcast/LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmcapriotto/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/remarkableresultsradiopodcast/Join Our Virtual Toastmasters Club:https://remarkableresults.biz/toastmastersJoin Our Private Facebook Community:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1734687266778976Join our Insider List:https://remarkableresults.biz/insiderBooks Page:https://remarkableresults.biz/booksOur Classroom Page:https://remarkableresults.biz/classroomEpisode Collections:https://remarkableresults.biz/collectionsBuy Me a Coffee:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/carm The Automotive Repair Podcast Network: https://automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com/ Remarkable Results Radio Podcastwith Carm Capriotto:https://remarkableresults.biz/Automotive Field TheorywithMatt Fanslow:https://mattfanslow.captivate.fm/Business by the NumberswithHunt Demarest: https://huntdemarest.captivate.fm/The Auto Repair Marketing Podcastwith Brian and Kim Walker: https://autorepairmarketing.captivate.fm/The Weekly Blitzwith Chris Cotton: https://chriscotton.captivate.fm/Speak Up! Effective Communicationwith Craig O'Neill: https://craigoneill.captivate.fm
Daily Habits That Build a Stronger Auto Repair Shop Culture [THA 501]
Thanks to our Partners: NAPA TRACS, Today's Class, KUKUI, and Pit Crew Loyalty Watch Full Video Episode *]:pointer-events-auto scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" data-turn-id="request-WEB:8e59eec7-a235-4fa3-a072-956fea3fe478-7" data-testid="conversation-turn-4" data-scroll-anchor="false" data-turn="assistant"> *]:pointer-events-auto scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" data-turn-id="request-WEB:49a777bf-d263-4496-bf0b-2eb3a46ac96a-11" data-testid="conversation-turn-24" data-scroll-anchor="false" data-turn="assistant"> What does a strong shop culture look like when you’re the people living it every day? Bree Wismer, Service Advisor and Frontline Culture Leader, and Trevor Hinds, Operations Manager and Dispatcher at Empower Automotive in Traverse City, Michigan, take us inside the daily habits and communication practices that keep their team aligned, productive, and focused on the customer. Rather than approaching culture from the owner's perspective, Bri and Trevor share what happens on the front lines. They explain how Empower Automotive breaks down the traditional divide between the front counter and the bays, keeps everyone on the "same bus," and creates a workplace where every person understands their role, respects the team around them, and contributes to the same goal. What You'll Learn Why the front counter and specialists must operate as one team.How daily huddles and short training sessions keep the team aligned.Why the 1:00 PM check-in can prevent late-day customer surprises.Why a "no-update" update can be one of the most valuable customer communications.How to respond when customers arrive with AI-generated or parts-store diagnoses.How respect, communication, and accountability create confident professionalism. Building a world-class shop culture doesn’t require a massive budget or a complicated organizational overhaul. By committing to these small, consistent actions, you can transform your shop from a high-stress environment into a thriving, unified business that both your team and your customers enjoy. Bree Wismer, Service Advisor, Frontline Culture Leader, Empower Automotive, Traverse City, MI Trevor Hinds, Operations Manager, Dispatcher, Workflow and Culture, Empower Automotive, Traverse City, MI NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with onsite training, six days a week of support, and local representation. http://napatracs.com/ Optimize training with Today's Class: In just 5 minutes daily, boost knowledge retention and improve team performance. https://www.todaysclass.com/ Stop juggling multiple marketing tools. KUKUI’s integrated platform delivers 4x better website conversions, automated follow-up, and real-time ROI tracking. https://www.kukui.com/ You’re probably tired of chasing new customers who never return. Pit Crew Loyalty ends the one-and-done cycle, turning first visits into lasting, reliable revenue at https://www.pitcrewloyalty.com/ Connect with the Podcast: Download and Listen on Our Mobile App: https://automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com/app/Visit the Website:https://remarkableresults.biz/Subscribe on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/carmcapriottoFollow on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/RemarkableResultsRadioPodcast/Follow on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmcapriotto/Follow on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/remarkableresultsradiopodcast/Join Our Virtual Toastmasters Club:https://remarkableresults.biz/toastmastersJoin Our Private Facebook Community:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1734687266778976Join our Insider List:https://remarkableresults.biz/insiderAll books mentioned on our podcasts:https://remarkableresults.biz/booksOur Classroom page for personal or team learning:https://remarkableresults.biz/classroomBuy Me a Coffee:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/carmSpecial episode collections:https://remarkableresults.biz/collections The Automotive Repair Podcast Network: https://automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com/ Remarkable Results Radio Podcastwith Carm Capriotto:https://remarkableresults.biz/Automotive Field Theorywith Matt Fanslow https://mattfanslow.captivate.fm/Business by the Numberswith CPA Hunt Demarest: https://huntdemarest.captivate.fm/The Auto Repair Marketing Podcastwith Brian and Kim Walker:<a...
Rapid-Fire Automotive News: AI, EVs, Autonomous Vehicles, and the $19B Trade School Boom [RR 1107]
Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS Watch Full Video Episode How quickly is the automotive repair industry changing, and are you ready for what's next? Tom Ham, shop owner and founder of the Automotive Management Network, joins Carm Capriotto for a fast-paced conversation covering 12 major trends shaping the future of auto repair. From autonomous vehicles and solid-state batteries to the changing value of trade careers, AI, government regulation, 3D printing, and vehicle reliability, Tom and Carm explore the technologies and economic shifts shop owners need to understand. What You'll Learn How autonomous vehicles could reshape vehicle safety and the repair industry.What advances in solid-state batteries could mean for EVs and vehicle range.Why trade careers are gaining momentum as technology changes traditional employment.How the technician shortage is creating new opportunities for shops to develop talent.How government regulation and emissions enforcement could affect vehicle owners and repair shops.What current vehicle reliability trends reveal about today's automotive brands.How 3D printing could help shops solve parts availability challenges.Why AI is becoming a powerful tool for reducing friction and improving efficiency.Why shop owners need to stay curious and adapt as automotive technology continues to accelerate. The automotive repair industry is changing faster than ever. The shops that thrive will be the ones willing to understand emerging technology, embrace new tools, develop their people, and continually rethink how they operate. The future isn't coming someday. It's already showing up in the service bay. Tom Ham, Automotive Management Network. Tom’s previous episodes HERE. Learn more about the benefits of being part of the NAPA family by visiting https://www.napaonline.com/en/auto-care NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with on-site training and six days a week of support: http://napatracs.com/ Connect with the Podcast: Download Our Mobile App:https://automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com/app/Website:https://remarkableresults.biz/YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/carmcapriottoFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/RemarkableResultsRadioPodcast/LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmcapriotto/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/remarkableresultsradiopodcast/Join Our Virtual Toastmasters Club:https://remarkableresults.biz/toastmastersJoin Our Private Facebook Community:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1734687266778976Join our Insider List:https://remarkableresults.biz/insiderBooks Page:https://remarkableresults.biz/booksOur Classroom Page:https://remarkableresults.biz/classroomEpisode Collections:https://remarkableresults.biz/collectionsBuy Me a Coffee:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/carm The Automotive Repair Podcast Network: https://automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com/ Remarkable Results Radio Podcastwith Carm Capriotto:https://remarkableresults.biz/Automotive Field TheorywithMatt Fanslow:https://mattfanslow.captivate.fm/Business by the NumberswithHunt Demarest: https://huntdemarest.captivate.fm/The Auto Repair Marketing Podcastwith Brian and Kim Walker: https://autorepairmarketing.captivate.fm/The Weekly Blitzwith Chris Cotton: https://chriscotton.captivate.fm/Speak Up! Effective Communicationwith Craig O'Neill: https://craigoneill.captivate.fm
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Shop Owners: Maybe YOU'RE the Problem | Tristin Sweeney - 38
Running a shop is hard enough—you don't need your software making it harder. 😂 If you're ready for more clarity, better organization, and a smoother experience for both your team and your customers, check out Tekmetric HEREConsistency is key - heard that! But, consistency is HARD. That's why I gave up on trying and let the experts handle it. Detect Auto. Let them clean up your estimating process and raise your ARO - like they did for me! CLICK HERE TO BOOK A DEMOAt 29 years old, Tristin Sweeney is running an auto repair shop, building automotive technology, and questioning some of the industry's favorite excuses. In this episode, Tonnika Haynes talks with Tristin about his unconventional path from the startup world into automotive, acquiring Honest Automotive, building Shift, and why owning a shop became the ultimate testing ground for solving real industry problems. But things get spicy when they tackle the supposed technician shortage, outdated hiring practices, shop owners blaming younger generations, and why good employees may be leaving shops that refuse to change. They also dig into AI, technician training, communication, leadership, burnout, and why new technology should solve problems instead of creating more work. If you're a shop owner who keeps saying, “Nobody wants to work anymore,” this conversation might make you look in the mirror.Timestamps:00:00 Why automotive has become unattractive to work in00:23 Downshift intro00:42 Meet Tristin Sweeney: 29, busy, and obsessed with automotive01:23 Audi, Volkswagens, and where the car obsession started03:15 Can you be a great service advisor without knowing cars?04:40 There are more automotive careers than turning wrenches06:26 From tech startups to the automotive industry07:17 Getting laid off, joining ShopGenie, and finding his industry09:17 Running TWO automotive businesses at 2910:11 How Tristin bought Honest Automotive after finding it on Facebook14:01 Has shop ownership given him gray hair yet?14:32 Building a shop around passion and customer experience16:21 Honest Automotive is also Tristin’s “laboratory”16:48 How Shift Automotive was born18:19 Building software from the problems that drive shop owners crazy19:10 Technology problem or people problem?20:17 How does someone working 60–70 hours a week avoid burnout?22:55 Success isn’t worth burning yourself out by 3023:19 Tonnika gets VERY personal about Tristin having kids 😂25:32 Why Tristin is committed to automotive for the long haul28:53 Shift grows to more than 150 shops30:02 Why simply SHOWING UP can change your career31:21 The “Gen Z stare” and learning how to communicate33:34 Get in rooms where you’re uncomfortable37:04 What will automotive look like 10 years from now?41:11 Shop owners who ignore AI WILL get left behind42:43 How should shops prepare technicians for new technology?43:27 Does every tech need to understand the newest cars right now?45:48 Why the next generation matters more than ever47:58 What does a technician actually need to “look like”?48:48 Is the technician shortage actually a hiring problem?49:48 How many great technicians are shops overlooking?50:48 “I hire people. I don’t hire jobs.”52:00 Why automotive can be an unattractive place to work54:18 Great shops generally aren’t struggling to find applicants54:51 The talent is out there—and some of them want to leave their current shop55:55 If recruiters can steal your technicians, that’s a YOU problem56:04 Most shop problems start with the owner57:30 Accepting criticism from your employees—even your own son58:03 Old-school leadership vs. the way Tonnika leads today59:33 The macaroni-and-cheese recipe for evolving a family business1:01:47 Is treating every employee differently “coddling”?1:03:50 Why one universal pay plan doesn’t work for everyone1:04:39 Flexible schedules, flat rate, salary, and what actually motivates people1:07:08 Shop owners who refuse to compromise may lose great technicians1:07:56 Bad bosses create the next generation of bad bosses1:08:21 Why leadership and communication have to be learned1:13:00 Stop micromanaging every detail of your shop1:14:22 “Granddad did it that way” isn’t a good enough reason anymore1:15:28 The Carfax data debate gets spicy 😂1:16:24 What Carfax actually gets from your shop1:17:47 Tonnika’s grandfather discovers OnStar and thinks “they’re coming for him”1:19:03 Technology fear usually comes from misunderstanding1:19:45 Tristin’s legacy: Leave automotive better than he found it1:20:00 Where to find Honest Automotive and Shift Automotive1:21:22 Closing, AI hot takes, and what’s next
216 - Coach the Call: Using AI Insights to Develop Stronger Service Advisors
216 - Coach the Call: Using AI Insights to Develop Stronger Service Advisors August 26th, 2026 - 00:54:51 Show Summary: Strong phone skills can turn more incoming calls into appointments while building trust from the first interaction. Consistent call reviews give service advisors a clear path to improve without making coaching feel like punishment. AI call analysis reduces the time required to find useful coaching opportunities and helps owners identify patterns across their team. Positive reinforcement also matters because great calls give advisors examples they can repeat. Simple habits like smiling asking for the appointment and using the customer’s name can dramatically improve the experience. Better phone performance ultimately supports stronger customer relationships higher appointment conversion and long term shop growth. Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development Guest(s): David Boyd, Founder & CEO of Callinbound Tonnika Haynes, Owner of Browns Automotive, Downshift with Tonnika Haynes Show Highlights: [00:04:00] – Listening to real calls reveals missed opportunities that owners rarely see. [00:10:00] – AI identifies coachable calls without hours of manual review. [00:14:00] – Consistent coaching creates awareness before advisors answer each call. [00:17:00] – Replace a hard no with a plan focused on customer needs. [00:24:00] – Help advisors self coach instead of simply pointing out mistakes. [00:28:00] – Every missed appointment can represent significant lost customer value. [00:34:00] – Asking for the customer’s name immediately creates a stronger connection. [00:39:00] – Scheduled call reviews make coaching normal instead of threatening. [00:43:00] – Asking for appointments helped turn successful marketing into a fuller calendar. [00:49:00] – Call tracking connects marketing performance with actual appointment conversion. In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry? Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode. 👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fv9ewVBoSks Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this! Links & Resources: Want to learn more? Click Here Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here See The Institute's events list: Click Here Want access to our online classes? Click Here ________________________________________ Episode Transcript Disclaimer This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com. Episode Transcript: Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night. Thank you for joining. So excited for us to have this conversation today with some really good friends. Everyone, this is to be an interactive webinar. So you're sitting there, you've got questions, you've got concerns, type them into the chat. We wanna be able to ask those questions of our panel today as we are talking about a very interesting topic. And with us today, first, is our good friend, Mr. David Boyd of Inbound Communication. David, how the heck are you, brother? David Boyes: I'm great. I, I, uh, I fully intended to have my jacket on, Jimmy. Jimmy Lea: Man. David Boyes: So excited to be here. We Jimmy Lea: coordinated on this and everything. David Boyes: I know. I, uh- Next time ... I, I was, I was lucky as, as busy as we've been at Call Inbound to, uh, uh, get up and, and organize and dress today. So I really, uh, it's always great to see you and of course, um, uh, we got to visit a little bit out at, uh, Worldpac STX and, uh, man, I tell you what, your wardrobe is always top notch. Jimmy Lea: Hey, thank you. Thank you. We're glad you are dressed today, just don't stand up. Thank you very much. David Boyes: Great. Jimmy Lea: And joining for us in our conversation today, David, is Tanika, Tanika Hayes with, uh, Haynes with Browns Automotive. Tanika, how the heck are you, sister? Tonnika Haynes: I'm doing good, guys. What's going on? Jimmy Lea: Staying alive. Good to see you. Great to see you. Also at STX, what did you think of the, the conference there with Worldpac? Tonnika Haynes: It, it was really, really good. I was not prepared for the size of it. There was a lot of people. People were peopling. So, um, once I got adjusted to all of the crowds and everything, I enjoyed it. I hadn't sat in a class in a really long time, like at an expo. Ooh. I'm usually just walking around and being nosy, but I picked up some good nuggets, so it was great. Jimmy Lea: Beautiful. That's awesome. Well, if, if the STX was a large conference to you, I would suggest that you really prepare yourself months in advance if ever you come out to SEMA and Apex in Las Vegas. Tonnika Haynes: I will be there this year. Oh, good. I keep hear- hearing that, so I don't know what meds I need to be on to take, To take it all in. But Jimmy Lea: we'll- You- Tonnika Haynes: I'm excited about it ... Jimmy Lea: we, we will talk about that because there is more than you can see within a week, and you really only have three days at Apex, four days at SEMA. You want to map out where you're gonna go, who you're gonna talk to, who you're gonna see- And for you, Taneka, schedule some time to sit down and chill Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. I'm gonna have to definitely do that. You're talking about, um, scheduling times. I'm gonna schedule time to go sit in the corner and recoup. Uh-huh. So where's Taneka? She's in the corner. Jimmy Lea: Yep, and, and I- It's David Boyes: scheduled time ... Jimmy Lea: I, I'm gonna work with you on that because I know the corners, I know the places where you can go and, and find some solitude. Tonnika Haynes: All right. Jimmy Lea: I am. Well, our conversation today is in preparation for making your shop better David, I'm gonna kick it over to you, brother. Let's start this conversation with Taneka. David Boyes: Yeah. Let's, uh, let- let's kinda move into this. You know, we're, uh, talking about communication, and there are so many facets that impact the customer experience. I think that it's important to know that, you know, there are tools and there are, uh, from an owner or, and manager's perspective and from a service provider's perspective, there are ways that we rally around making communication better. Um, you know, one of the things that is common at all shops is, uh, the customer phone call. Tonnika Haynes: Oh, yeah. David Boyes: So you winced a little bit. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Uh, how many times do we, you know, talk about our phone skills, uh, getting better on the phone, understanding the customer, understanding their needs, addressing their needs? And there's so much, you know, revolves around, uh, the phone calls and, and the way that our advisors and our front office team handles these. Maybe you have a CSR, maybe you have, you know, a service manager. Um, but people are, are answering calls all day long, and this becomes important that we understand who's answering the phone- Mm-hmm ... how they're communicating, what, what's the message that's being shared. Every time that phone rings, uh, that, you know, we like to say that's money calling. So Taneka, let me just ask you, you know, what, what are some of the challenges that you see or the, uh, the successes that you have with your team when it comes to managing and, and, uh, getting better on our phones? Tonnika Haynes: I wanna start by saying, um, I think I listened to my first phone call at my meeting with Jen- Jennifer, with the Institute. I'm currently coaching with the Institute, and that is life-changing- Yeah ... to listen to your team answer the phone. So if anybody's out there and they have not done that, they have not listened in on a phone call, figure out a way to do it. I don't know if it's gonna be a little paper cup and a string, but figure out how to do it. Um, and then I, listening to my own phone calls, and I- I'm the boss, right? I still cringe. And so you never know what's missing from those phone calls, what, what, what is standing out. You know, my team, we would not even ask for the appointment. Like, "Would you like to bring this in today?" You know- Oh ... you ask all the questions, they go through the scripts, but then we found that they were not saying, "Hey, would you like to get that done? Would you like to bring that in today or tomorrow? What works for you?" They were leaving it all to the client to say- Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm ... " Tonnika Haynes: What's next? What's next?" Hmm. So they were answering the phone, and they were s- being very polite, but they were not closing. They didn't have a lot of words with closing. And so with inbound, I've been able to coach- You know, when you listen to yourself and you're like, "Ooh, ooh." And you can say, "Do you see what you did there?" Or even, 'cause you know, the team can listen to their own phone calls. "Oh, I see what I did there. I see where I dropped the ball." So that was, opened up a whole bunch of eyeballs around here. Well- It's like, "Oh, it's Monday, it's time to listen to phone calls." Like, "Ah." But you just increasingly get better over time. Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true. And, and the ability, Taneka, the ability to have calls from today- Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm ... Jimmy Lea: or from yesterday or, or even the day before. Uh, there was a time a decade ago when we would have to listen, as coaches, we would listen to calls. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. We're trying to find a coaching call, a call that is coachable, and this might be a call from two weeks ago, three weeks ago. Mm. The advisors are going, "Dude, oh man, that's forever ago. No, man, I, I don't do that anymore. I'm not like that." But David, I, I think you kind of solved a bit of that problem with your phone services. David Boyes: Yeah, thanks. It, you know, it's, it's important to, to recognize. I think every owner I've ever talked with has a similar issue. It's... And a lot of it rev- revolves around time, right? Are, are we aware of what's actually happening- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... David Boyes: on the front line? Mm-hmm. And, uh, some of it is, uh, I wanna keep this a little bit at arm's length because I, I can tell you as an owner, I will have an emotional response when I listen to that phone call. And Taniki, you brought up a great point. For owners and managers here that are on the phone, please listen to your own calls. Yeah. Do it at least one time. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Well, twice. Have to Tonnika Haynes: bite the bullet. Just do it. David Boyes: Yeah. Just do it. And, Tonnika Haynes: and, and be ready. Just like- ... just like, "Oh, that is me." Yeah, that is you. David Boyes: Do it- Yeah do it twice because the first time that you listen to a call, uh, it's gonna just be weird, right? So listening to myself on recordings is always weird, but there's this heavy lift of time, right? Am, am I aware of what's actually happening on the front line, and how are we interacting with customers? And then do I have, do I have a mechanism to understand what's my expectation? As an owner, um, you know, it, it's important to establish that expectation. Maybe you're working with a call coach, maybe you've been in trainings yourself. It's, it's ideal to have a method by which you're going to measure your call handlers. And, um, you know, we wanna be professional. We want to build confidence and, and build rapport with these customers. It doesn't have to be fast, but typically- Mm-hmm ... you know, an incoming call from a customer is likely an appointment setting call or a status call. We're gonna set that status call, uh, bucket aside for a second 'cause we wanna be in front of, uh, status calls instead of having customers call us. But if you're listening to these and you have that rhythm around it, uh, we understand how these small habits can build on one another. Am I, am I smiling when I answer the phone? There's something physically that hap- When I, when I physically smile, there's something that is noticeable in the way that I'm communicating. And, uh, am I, am I clear? So what are the expectations? You know, uh, if you watch your advisors, I have, uh, my little cordless handset here. If they tuck their phone in like this, and, and you know, they're, they're trying to multitask Listen to those calls because likely it's very, very difficult to hear on the other side of this. So listening to calls, uh, helps us understand how, you know, how we conduct ourselves, how we conduct business, how am I representing the business that I, you know, that I'm working at as a professional. But also, what is the customer hearing and what is the customer's experience? So, um, these are, uh, important points, and it starts by listening. Jimmy, you brought up a, um, an important aspect here. Historically, we would listen to call after call after call after call to try to find something I can use to coach. So Taneka, you might do this. You've got a call recording system. It doesn't do much but just record those calls, and now I have to go through this, this process to identify a coachable opportunity. And this is now I think where we can move effectively into technology, right? We all hear so much about AI today, and what's really nice about, uh, having, you know, a, a phone system that records is now you have an asset, and you can use that asset to do something more with it. And we can use AI to help that heavy lift of time and, you know, take 90% of the time requirement off. So instead of having to spend 30 minutes, I might have to spend two or three minutes to take that call, sit down with my service advisor, go through this, and have a meaningful, constructive conversation about the things that work well. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I, I love, David, that your software makes it so easy to find these coachable calls so much faster. A- and Taneka, that's just gotta be a lifesaver for you as well, coaching your service advisors. Tonnika Haynes: It is. I remember, um, speaking with a friend, fellow shop owner, and he's like, "I need you to set aside a time." And so what I did is on my calendar, on Wednesday, that's the day that I sit down and we go over phone calls. And so, you know, you got the dashboard, and that dashboard will say, "This is a coachable call. This is a coachable call." And it is a habit for me as the owner/manager, um, to make sure that I'm staying on top of it all the time because we'll slip into old habits, right? So me listening to the calls and bringing the service advisor or, um, or bring Jay in and say, "Hey, let's listen to this. Let's see how we can get better." You know, you continuously improve on it, and you don't slide back into old habits. Because I'm not on the phone as much anymore. If I have to answer the phone, I know personally, and everything's at stake for me, I slide back into old habits. So we all are capable of it, and so having that dashboard in front of us and said, "Hey, this is a call you need to look at," the service advisor or the person answering the phone does not feel like they're being picked on, but they're being improved upon. So, "Look, I'm just lifting you up. This is what we can do. Do you see how we can make this better?" And it's a we, it's a us, it's coachable, it's there, it's real, and, um, I really enjoy th- that part of the dashboard. Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. How often, Taneka, do you send, "This is a really good call"? This is a really good call. I Tonnika Haynes: like a really good call How often do you send that to the team? You know what? Yeah. I probably should do that more. But when I see a good call, I, I, I like to share it. And when I get a good review, like I l- literally just got a good review based off of a bad situation that we were able to turn around with proper communication, and the customer l- literally said, he's like, "The communication... The problem was still there," he said, "but the way they handled it and the communication was key." So he was not satisfied when he left, but the way that we dealt with it afterwards, and that recording of how we guided him through the process, and how we, you know, we apologized, we came up with a plan, apologized again, and kept it moving, and that was a great coachable call. It's like, this is how you handle a bad situation. Look how we won here. So yeah, those are just as important as the, as the losses, as the bad calls. "Hey, this is a good call. G- this is a good call." That balance is super important. Yeah, it balances it. Yeah. And then, you know, it's like, okay, I did that right. Even when that client is a client that does not belong to you, and you can hear them tell the customer, it's like, "Hey, you know what? Appreciate your call, but this isn't the place for you." And that's not the word for word, but, "Hey, you handled that good. Thank you for saving us from a nightmare." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Amen. Share it with your team. So you gotta share the wins and the, the misses. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And, and, uh, for a lot of people, I think they struggle in the creative. So if they can hear it, that it's already been done, they can duplicate. Sure. They can mimic. They can do the same thing over and over and over again. So the more we send these beautiful calls, "Oh my gosh, you guys did so well on this phone call. I, I love this part, this part, and this part," they're able to duplicate that, and they'll do it over and over and over again. And then, then you're- The mistakes that are being made become much less because you're showing, you're, uh, mirroring to them these are the really good calls that we wanna hear. Tonnika Haynes: And, and sharing that when you're going over a call, you got the good call here, we can work on this call, but this is another good call. You know, we talk about giving that sandwich. Yeah. And so that's another opportunity you can give that good sandwich. So when it's time to come in on Wednesdays and listen to your phone calls, you're like, "Ooh, I know I got one coming and I think I know which one it is." And then you're like, "Yeah, but you got this one too, so you won here, and, uh, we missed on this one, but next time it's not happening." Right? Right. So it's, you know, it's all in coaching. Jimmy Lea: Oh, David Boyes: it's so true. You just said something that's super important, and, uh, ooh, I think I know which one this is. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Um, there, there's a lot to unpack there. I, I, I love the, the good with the bad. We'll talk about that more too, but, um, creating the awareness. So consistency wins, and, um, I'll say it again, be consistent with the process because consistency wins. And when you have that rhythm where it's familiar and it's expected, we're gonna sit down and we're gonna listen to calls, we're gonna go through this, identify the opportunities, um, it's not good and bad calls, it's, you know, it, it, uh, we call them top calls or champion calls and coachable calls. So a coachable call isn't inherently bad. Maybe we even got an appointment. Tonnika Haynes: Mm. David Boyes: Right? But there's, there's opportunities. So, uh, when we have that rhythm and it's expected, what's really important about what you just said is the awareness. So when I go to pick up that phone, is this the call that Tanika's gonna be talking with me about tomorrow or, you know, Wednesday, whatever our rhythm is? It, it will begin to create that moment of pause that as an a- an advisor when I'm picking up that phone, I can take that breath. Yeah. I can, I can, uh, let that, uh, you know, that technician that just blew me up Tonnika Haynes: Let 'em David Boyes: go. I can let that slide off. I can shake that off. Yeah. And I can focus for a moment to make sure that that customer knows right at this moment they are absolutely the most important person to me right now. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: So that's an important message to convey over the phone, our, uh, the, you know, the way that we speak, the words that we use, my en- excitement and enthusiasm about being on that call all comes through. So as we get through this rhythm and we develop the consistency and it becomes normal, now I've got that awareness on my team that, hey, this next call I'm taking, I'm gonna have the moment of pause to focus because this might be the next one that, that we're reviewing. I want this to be a positive call that, that Tanika's coming to me and saying, "You did really well on this one. Let's continue to develop this," and, you know, replicate the things that are working well. Instead of, "Hey, there's some opportunity here. You know, you didn't ask for the appointment. You were, you know, pricing over the phone. You said 'no'." No comes out in a lot of ways, doesn't it, Tanika? Where- Tonnika Haynes: Oh, yeah ... we, David Boyes: we might be telling somebody, uh, "You know, I'm really busy right", or, or, or "W- we, we're really busy right now, I can't get you in until Friday." Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: That's, that's, we might as well just say, "No, I can't help you." Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. You, that's, that's all they heard was the no. Um, even if you give... And, uh, everybody knows that I'm, I'm big on nos. Like, I can give you a no where there's some healthy nos, but then there's some nos and you have the customer saying, "Hey, um, m- my brakes are making the noise and it just started." And he's like, "Oh, no, I can't see you till Friday." He's like, "Yeah, but I'm gonna die before Friday. I wanna see somebody now." Um, so you don't, you have to learn how to coach them and say, "Yes, so bring that in. Let's take a look at what you've got, and then we'll come up with a plan." You didn't promise that it was gonna be today or tomorrow, but you said, "Bring it in. I'm worried about your safety. Let's see what you've got." Yeah. "Let's see if you should really be concerned about that check engine light. It might be a EVAP code." They don't know that, "But go ahead and bring them in." So and then you, like you said, the cadence in it. This, I'm not gonna make you any promises over the phone, and I would literally say that. "Hey, I don't wanna disappoint you by making a promise that I can't keep. So don't- Yeah ... don't make me, don't put me in that hole. But I need you to go ahead and bring that in to me as soon as you can. Um, and let's scan it. Let's see what you've got, and let's see if you should really be worried, if you can make that trip or we need to bring you in right away. We will help you come up with a plan." So just that solid no. "No, I'll see you Friday." Jimmy Lea: He, " Tonnika Haynes: Meh. No you won't." Yeah. Like, so that's support. That's Jimmy Lea: my- David Boyes: It, it becomes very collaborative in what you just said. Hey, let, let's make this about you, let's make this about your safety and your confidence to drive that vehicle. Maybe you gotta get across town and your commute is 30 minutes. Let's make sure that your vehicle is safe, and then once you're here and we make sure you're safe, let's talk about, uh, when we're gonna have that on the schedule. We'll get that vehicle in Tonnika Haynes: and prepared. Yeah. What are the next steps? Yeah. So let's go ahead and get- let's get your nerves calm- Mm-hmm ... and then let's come up with the next step. Let's come up with a plan. Us, us, us, we, we, we. So Jimmy Lea: yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. And, uh, you talk about s- building a solid foundation for this, the solid foundation for their skills so that the, the ongoing training you're doing really builds on that foundation. Uh, we've got a three-day service advisor with the institute. We're gonna give a shout-out to the institute here right now. So everybody grab out your smartphones, scan the QR code if your service advisor needs a solid foundation. Thank you, David. If you need a solid foundation- Registered now ... and you need to start with... Yeah, get registered. I know you've been to a couple of these, David, 'cause- I have you've talked about all the skills here just really, really well. If your service advisor needs that and you need to go from zero to hero very quickly, this is an intensive that you wanna send your service advisor to, and it will be at headquarters in Ogden, Utah. Fly right into Salt Lake, and, uh, and we got you set up there in Ogden. So, yes, David Boyes: scan that. It's a beautiful drive up from the airport. This class is, uh, it, it, it will help establish the, the fundamentals to build on. Yeah. So you come here, it's, you know, it's boot camp, right? We're, we're going to make sure that we're establishing the expectation and give you something to build on as the owner. Send your service advisors in here. Uh, they'll get those fundamentals, and then you'll have, you know, these, these mechanisms, uh, to improve them over time. I promise you it'll be a, a real game changer for your frontline. Tonnika Haynes: Well, you know what? Beautiful. I wanna piggyback on that. Um, and I wasn't coached to saying this. If they've already been, send them again. Jimmy Lea: There you go. Mm. Tonnika Haynes: Send them again, because here's the thing that I know, and I'm just gonna make it simple. I want you to think about your favorite movie. Like when, when I was in the 20s, for me it was Friday, the movie Friday. And then we watched that movie every Friday after work with the crew that I worked with, and it was just the most ignorant movie and the best movie for my generation. Each time I watched that movie, I would see a different thing. So I want you to think about your favorite movie and, or v- your favorite comedy. Each time you'd watch it, you would pick up something else. So it was like, "Oh, I didn't see that that last time." So even when it comes to training, "Hey, I did this three-day class and I did it a year ago. I grew." Jimmy Lea: Do it again. Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Do it again. Do it again. You, you're never too mu- uh, there's never too much coaching. So just do it again and you'll see it from a different angle. I just wanted to say that. Yeah, 'cause, um, there's been some classes that I, I take, and not just this one, but other classes, like, let me take that class again. Yeah. And you're like, "Aha. I didn't remember that from last time." Yeah. I didn't implement that from last time, 'cause we, you guys tell us, and coaches will tell you, "Just go and implement one thing. One thing." I mean, watch those changes, and then the next time you take the class, let's do one more thing, maybe two, and get, get a little bit better. Right. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So speaking of training, ASTA, A-S-T-A, is coming up here real soon, Taneka. Real Tonnika Haynes: soon. We're less than 30 Jimmy Lea: days out. Let's give them a shout-out. Tonnika Haynes: Shout out to ASTA. Those are the people, not the people that made me, but it's my just one, my just one thing that I took away from there each time has helped build me to where I am. And I am, I cannot say I would not be where I was without them. But I would not be where I was, where I am without them. From those, those people that I met, the village that I met, meeting you, meeting my first coach, just meeting my, my industry brothers and sisters that I can call on at any time when I'm about to flip out, or when I have a win. 'Cause you know as owners and when, when you're a little higher, you can't share your wins with everybody without some jealousy. True. Yeah. So when you have a win and you have that community to call on. Mm-hmm. So yeah, ASTA is the place to be, September 24th to 26th, right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. So I hope somebody shows up. And, uh, I wanna meet some... Well, I know Jim. I'll be there. Jimmy will be there. You will not miss him. David Boyes: He'll have the jacket. Tonnika Haynes: He will have plenty of jackets on. It is a fun atmosphere, lots of community, lots of learning and growing. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna have a jacket war, so anybody who wants to play. David, you're bringing your jacket, so David Boyes: who wore Jimmy Lea: it best? Yes. Yeah. David Boyes: Yeah. I, I wanted to make sure that we were gonna f- uh, be able to carve out some time to do the who wore it best. Tonnika Haynes: Oh, David Boyes: always. I think, so B- Benji will be involved. Brett will probably be involved, right? Mm-hmm. And, uh, you, you two- Mike Allen ... Mike, okay, Mike, yep. Tonnika Haynes: I, I, I feel like we should have a girls version of this, 'cause you know, if the women got involved- Jimmy Lea: We always lose Tonnika Haynes: I mean, we would just throw you guys under the bus. Jimmy Lea: It's true. We tried that, Tanika, and you swept it. Yeah. You swept it. There, there was no- Tonnika Haynes: I don't wanna do that to you guys ... competing with Jimmy Lea: Tanika. Tonnika Haynes: I don't wanna do... Yeah, I don't wanna do that to you, so we'll, we'll figure it out. Maybe I'll make a f- couple phone calls and text messages and see what's up. David Boyes: Yeah. Speaking of phone calls. Speaking of phone calls. Tonnika Haynes: Throw that back in. David Boyes: I have a question for you. Yeah. Yeah. That's, hey, I couldn't have asked for a better softball there, but that's great. Um- ... thinking, thinking about the coaching process, you know, I, I, I had mentioned before it can seem a little uncomfortable, even as an owner. You know, listen to two calls, because that first one, you're gonna be so- Mm-hmm ... consumed by how weird I sound on the phone, right? So, but when you, when you started this with your team, what, how was it received? What were some of the, the challenges, uh, do, you know, h- what feedback did you get about listening to calls and going through the analysis? Tonnika Haynes: So I wanna say that when I first did it in, in coaching, so in a group setting, and you're listening to your team, so they call in, they have to do a call and they'll record a call. And so it's like, "Oh, well this time she did this, and this is the excuse." You wanna come up with excuses. You wanna defend- Right yourself. I wanna defend my shop. And so that service advisor's gonna wanna defend him or herself. Like, "Oh, well, you know, that customer and this was that." I was like, "No." So you get past that, and it's like, okay, like I said, you give the sandwich. Okay, so this is a great call. You tell me what you could have done, could have done better in this call. Right. 'Cause I don't wanna be in... 'Cause if you go into attack mode and say, "Oh, you should do this better, and you didn't follow the script, and you, you, you, you, you," you're gonna get somebody that's gonna put up a guard and be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I did my best." So I'll say, "I know you did your best on this, this one call, and you did a great job on this call. What happened, brother?" Balls in your court. Tell me how you can improve on this. Mm. What do you need from me to help you improve here? Was there a distraction? What was, what was the problem? So I kinda feel like I can teach them to self-coach. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Tonnika Haynes: I'm, I'ma give you a whole toolbox. You've got this toolbox. You know what a good call to- sounds like. Like, you also have a mirror. There's a mirror right there. Look at yourself. You've got reminders. I've got sticky note reminders on each, each person saying, "Don't forget to ask for the sale." What happened? "Oh, man, I was distracted, I sh- I should've..." Yep, you should've put the mouse down. You should've put the mouse down. So usually people will first get defensive, same. Mm-hmm. Um, then the defense mechanism starts to come down. Say, "All right, okay, so how do we fix this so next time I cannot find a bad phone call?" Jimmy Lea: Bingo. David Boyes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: I love it. It, yeah. I love that you have a mirror there and you have sticky notes there helping as well, Taneka. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That's, that's so good. ' Tonnika Haynes: Cause we forget. And- And it's okay- Oh, we do ... 'cause we get busy. But the Jimmy Lea: more Tonnika Haynes: we work on it- And I, Jimmy Lea: I, you... I'm certain that you guys have heard this before, that a fake smile is better than a real frown. Tonnika Haynes: Yes. David Boyes: Yep. Tonnika Haynes: Yes. And I'm really good at that. And so I've learned that because I've been doing it a very long time, so people know that I can really make you... I could, like, really fuss you out, and I would sound so sweet 'cause I'm smiling at you the whole time. "Well, you know what, Jamie? I think that was the stupidest thing you've ever said." Jimmy Lea: And if you do it with a smile, you can Tonnika Haynes: get away with it. And you're doing it with a smile and, and when you're shaking your head. So that smile makes a difference. And when I'm- It does ... picking up the phone out of an emergency, if they are busy up front and I'll see that phone ringing, and I pick it up and I'm not ready personally, I'm not ready to answer that phone, and it's a client that knows me, and I'm not smiling, I will get a, "Hey, Taneka, what's wrong?" You Jimmy Lea: okay? 'Cause Tonnika Haynes: they, "You okay?" And I'll say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I was distracted." 'Cause that's usually what happens, you're distracted, or that service, that, um, technician just rubbed you the wrong way or something's happened at home. So but once you put that smile on- You just fake it till you make it. And now you, I usually don't like to say that, but sometimes you do have to fake it till you make it. Like, yeah, absolutely. And use those words of, those positive words. Absolutely. Let's look into that for you. Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Sure. I love it. Love it. We talk about the phone call and how much it's worth. Uh, Bimmer PhD Motorsports is saying, "Can we dig into that a little bit?" How much does it cost to get that phone to ring? How much does it cost to acquire a new customer? You talk about the mindset and you talk about the service advisor- Mm-hmm ... and the smile that's needed to be there, fake or real. How much is that phone call worth, Tanika? Have you analyzed any of that in your shop? Tonnika Haynes: So that was actually a, um, something we did in the 20 group with my coach Jen. We went through that and we calculated how much it costs to sh- get that phone to ring. And I really wish I was prepared and I had that number for you. But once you realize that number, share it with your team. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: And then, uh, the institute probably has, um, a blueprint on how to figure that out. So you're looking at how much your website is, your Go- Google ads, any form of marketing that you have out there, down to the phone bill. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: How much does it cost to make that phone ring? And once you see it as the owner, you're gonna be like, "Whoa." And you share that with the team. Like, every time that phone rings, it costs me this. And then also think about your ARO. Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm. Bingo. Tonnika Haynes: And every time- Yep, yep ... we do not get a y- yes, and we don't get that client through the door, we lost $850. Potential $850, potential $1,100. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Tonnika Haynes: So once we start thinking about, you know, everything, everything's not about money. It is That Jimmy Lea: we keep score. Tonnika Haynes: It is how we keep score. Yeah. Like, you know, we, we talk about we've got the metrics on the dashboard. Numbers don't lie. People do. Your emotions will. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: It costs me $75 every time that phone rings. Mm-hmm. And when you ring it, and when you land that deal, that's a potential 850, or whatever your ARO is, or whatever- Yeah ... that's what it is. And that's, and how long does it take to get that one client to get through the door? Yeah. And also think about how long you can hold onto them as a client. How many years Jimmy Lea: are you gonna- Tonnika Haynes: What's the lifetime value of the client? What's the lifetime of that client? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: So that smile when you answer the phone, yeah, that's worth a lot of money. Jimmy Lea: Tens of thousands of dollars. Tonnika Haynes: Tens of thousands. So go ahead and put your Vaseline on your teeth- Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm ... Tonnika Haynes: and, and start a- smiling. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That's an old theater trick. Yes. Are you a, are you a musical theater person? Tonnika Haynes: No, but I just know about- Where are you pulling that from? ... Vaseline on your teeth and, 'cause you get tired of smiling. You, you know, at the conference, you have this whole muscle thing. You're like... Jimmy Lea: Uh, yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Keep s- keep, just keep smiling, smiling, smiling. Jimmy Lea: That's right, David Boyes: Dorothy. Those are important numbers, uh, to know how much does it cost to get that phone to ring. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: Uh, in some cases it can be, uh, you know, several hundred dollars depending on really all of those factors around generating those phone calls, and then what that ties into when the phone does ring, um, and we don't ask for the appointment. Has that $850 or $1,100 just walked over to my competitor across town? Yeah. But it also sets the stage when we're talking about coaching and development to bring it back to what's in it for me. As a service advisor, you know, most high performing shops are incentivizing their advisors on these, you know, these GP numbers and, you know, there might be other metrics on Google reviews, maybe have spiffs for these different things. It all requires us to generate the appointments and get those vehicles in so that we can have an inspection and we can, you know, generate the, the estimate and ultimately have a sale, and then make this an amazing experience for the customer so they're gonna come back next time. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: Uh, at the very front end of the phone call, you know, it, it takes X number of dollars to make the phone ring. When that phone rings, the customer, if they're a first time caller- Uh, they're likely y- we as, as a business are likely setting the stage within that first 15 to 20 seconds for the length of our relationship. So based on those initial interactions, we're going to begin setting the stage of how well this customer visit is going to go, uh, how much that we're developing trust with this customer. Do they trust me as an advisor? Do they trust this business, that we're experts and we're gonna help them, and we're gonna do so in a, in a fair and meaningful way? And then also, uh, we're going to set that basis for a repeat customer. Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: So that, that's where we get into the, the longevity of our relationship. Interestingly enough, so much of this happens at the very first moments of that very first phone call. And when we acknowledge that as a service advisor, I'm like, "Oh, that does tie back to the paycheck I get." As a business owner, "Wow, that ties back into the stickiness of my customers." I love, you know, repeat customers. I love repeat business. So we wanna drive these skills up front. Uh, Taneka, you talked about, you know, sitting down and going through, um, some of these calls and the, the service advisor reaction. Have you really developed and, you know, share your expectations on how you'd like the, the phone answered? I'm not asking about a script. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: But like that flow, right? We don't wanna create robots. Right. What have you done at, when you, you know, train and develop your team on here's what I would like to hear from you? Tonnika Haynes: So I haven't honed that in 100%, but I, I do know that we wanna thank them for calling. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Tonnika Haynes: We wanna know how did you find out about us? Great. Is this your first time calling? How'd you hear about us? So, so we can track that, right? Yeah. Was it a repeat? Was it a neighbor? Was it a Google? How did you... Was it a postcard? How did you hear about me? Um, what can I help you with, and how soon can I get to it? Can you bring that in today or tomorrow? And, um, and smile. So I have these little things that I want them to say that's on the side- Yeah ... of their computer, and I don't want you to sit there and read and just say, "Oh, well, yes, sir, how can I help you today?" I want it to flow naturally because that's who we are as a shop. We- we're not a scripted shop. We're, we're a bunch of goofy people, actually. People. We just happen to fix cars. Um, and that's who we are. Yeah. And I want that to come through. I want you to be friendly. I want you to re- when they come in with the cat or the dog or whatever, please not a cat, but the dog. I want you to put in the notes, this is, this is that customer's name and this is what their dog's name. If they refer to their, their car, "My car's name is Pearline." If you called my car by his name, I'm not taking it nowhere else So I want you to build that relationship. And so I don't have a script and I don't have a formula yet, and maybe I should work on that. And, um, we do have like a SOP. Yeah. Probably should do a better job at that. But then what you just said made me raise my eyebrow, like, I should do better with that. But we do have some things that I'm, that are non-negotiables. David Boyes: You've got your flow there, which is great. Mm-hmm. And I think you're, you're doing better in that than, than- Yeah ... uh, some owners that, that we talk with. I encourage, I encourage everybody to have a flow, right? Yeah. We, we wanna kind of go through the conversation. I'll tell you the number one, um, deficit that I hear within the first probably 10 seconds of a phone call is asking for the customer name, right? So- Right ... "Thank you for calling ABC Automotive. How may I help you? Um, yeah, I can help you with that. My name's David. What's your name?" Jimmy Lea: Mm. David Boyes: It's so simple. Yeah. And, uh, I listen to call after call after call. I mean, these, they, they pop out because of our AI call analysis, but where we go through this whole process and we've had a 90-second call or a two-minute-long phone call, and at no point ask the customer name. Tonnika Haynes: Right. And then you assume that the name on a caller ID is their name. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Right. Tonnika Haynes: That, that's a problem, too. I know that we were doing... I was doing it as well. Yeah. I would do it as well. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: But, um, and, and with that, I had a little challenge saying, "Hey, I want to see you guys' name on the, the review." Yeah. And it really bothers me when a client calls to check on their car, and I have to, have to answer the phone, "Hey, who was your service advisor?" "Uh, I don't know." What? David Boyes: Mm. Tonnika Haynes: They need to know your name. David Boyes: Mm. Tonnika Haynes: So I had to make sure that everybody had their own business cards when the car was dropped off. "Hey, my name is Stuart. This is who you should call to check on your car. Everybody here can help you, but I'm the main person." So I think a lot of people just don't do that, and say, "Hey, well, my name's Tanika. Who am I speaking with?" Great. "Have you been here with us before?" David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Tonnika Haynes: You know, if it doesn't pop up on the caller ID, "Have you been here with us before?" Yeah. But the caller ID pop up, that's a game changer. Am I skipping ahead? Should we not go that far yet? David Boyes: No, you're fine. Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Thank you, David. Yeah, just be ready. Yeah, be ready when, when David Voigts calls Brown's Automotive, and you call and say, "Brown's Automotive. This is Tanika. Hey, David, how can I help you today?" What is that? What are you doing? You knew I was calling. You know, like- Yeah ... yeah, caller ID exists. People forget about that. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: But- They do. They do. But it, it's just extra special. Yeah. And that's what the caller ID... I know one thing I do when the customer's walking in, and if I know I have a blue Toyota Coro- Corolla coming in at 9:00. "Who is this coming in?" Yeah. "Hey, Mrs. Such-and-such. Good morning. Oh, hey." Instead of saying, "Can I help you?" Yes, you can help me. That's why I walked through the door. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. " Tonnika Haynes: Hey, M- hey, Mary David Boyes: Jane." Or, "Hang on a second. I'll be with you in a second." Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. No. David Boyes: Don't do that. Tonnika Haynes: Don't do that. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: So, um, there's a lot to be said about customer service, and there's a lot to be said about s- calling people by their name. Jimmy Lea: Amen. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: It creates familiarity. Yes. And, uh, when, when we have familiarity, we have a relationship. Mm-hmm. It's in- it's potentially implied. But people love to do business with, with the, the folks that they have a relationship with. Mm-hmm. And they're inclined... You know, this is the fun thing about consumer behavior and human behavior, is when I have a great experience, I wanna rally my friends around that too. I want to include them in the joy that I get to experience when I come see Tanika and her team. Yeah. So I'm gonna- I, I'm gonna be much more likely to tell folks about it. If I have a meh- Meh ... average experience, it's probably not gonna come up in conversation. I'm not gonna stick my neck out there. But, um, how do we do that? Well, we address people by their name. We know when they're calling, right? I might even be pulling that up in my shop management system or my CRM. Just the s- the second the phone rings, it's gonna pop and present that information. "Yeah, I saw you were in three, three months ago, and we had looked at, you know, X, Y, Z on your vehicle. Should we add, add some additional time to take care of that this time?" Right? It, we have an awareness. They have confidence in us. We know them as a person. We know their vehicles. And now we're, we're joining together with our customers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, at, at a common goal, right? And it comes back to their safety. Well, Tonnika Haynes: so what'll happen is you'll get a client, and, um... Sorry about the background noise. That's all right. You'll get a client, and they're not thinking about their car. They, they, they've grown to love you. They've grown to know you. They know you by your name. And then you made the recommendations last time. They trust you enough that they are just gonna be like, "Okay, whatever. I'll talk to you about it next time. Tanika's gonna remember that for me." Say, "Hey, Miss Mary Jane, you remember we talked about..." "I don't remember we talking about." "Well, here's a copy. I'm gonna send that over to you. We're gonna look at it, these things again." Yeah. It's just like having a whole system, and then you become that person. It's like I don't have to remember what my car needs 'cause Tanika and her team have the history, and they know me by my name. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Tonnika Haynes: Right. And they're gonna take care of me. David Boyes: The paradigm shift there is I, you know, as a service advisor, I'm the expert. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: As the service manager, I'm the expert, right? You've come to me because of our and my expertise, and I'm sharing the belief that you wanna be safe and you wanna care for your vehicle. So allow me to make these recommendations. Allow me to, to keep that, those notes about our previous interactions so that when we meet to, when we meet again, we can make sure that w- you know, we're, we're not starting from zero- Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm David Boyes: that we already have this information available, and we're going to improve that experience. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Um, on the, on the call coaching side of it, um, you know, I, I think at some level you've kinda normalized it in your shop, and I'd love to learn more about how, you know, how did you do that? It's, it's not typical, I would say, that people are just, like, rallying around, "Let's listen to calls," right? 'Cause part of it is, you know, the exposure or this kind of fear of judgment. But once you normalize that and make it consistent, um, I'd love to know how you've done that and, and keep the, uh, the Big Brother mentality out the door. Tonnika Haynes: Well, I don't, well, we've got cameras, and we've got these things recording the calls. And, and first of all, these calls are not being recorded to get you. These calls are recor- Yeah ... recorded to cover your butts from that crazy person that swear they didn't say it. Mm-hmm. These calls are recorded to make you better. Um, I remember Chad say, "Hey, just put it on the calendar. Just put it on the calendar." It's like ha- having that one-on-one for the first time. Nobody knows what to say or to do. I'm not trying to attack you. I'm just trying to make you better. So let's just... I listened to my call. Be vulnerable. Me. Hey, Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... Tonnika Haynes: you don't wanna listen to your call. I didn't wanna listen to my own call. But let's, let's do this. It's just on the calendar. And like I said, the defense will just break down a little bit at a time, and I found that with my one-on-ones again. Like, we do a first Monday one-on-one. If I was late or if I skipped the one-on-one, they're like, "Well, why did, I didn't get my one-on-one. Am I in trouble?" They look forward to it. Everybody wants positive reinforcement. Amen. So if you keep it positive, and then some- like, "Hey, I looked at 10 of your calls, and out of the 10, only 3 of them were coachable." Or, "Hey, you remember when we started out, how you would have, like, a 11 bad calls out of 20? Dude, you only got two this time." So make sure we measure it, okay? Schedule it, measure it, keep it going. Know you're uncomfortable, they're uncomfortable, and just say- I don't wanna do this. Nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to lift that... Well, a lot of people don't wanna lift the heaviest weight for the muscle gain. Mm-hmm. It's gonna be painful, but it's gonna get easier. It's gonna be easier for me and you as the coach and the coachee, or is it a coachee? Whatever. So, I mean, it, it's... I don't know if there's an easy way to put it, but I just know that you just keep doing it, you be consistent, and you let them know if you're uncomfortable. Like I hear shop owners say, "How do you start this one-on-one stuff? How do you start this coaching stuff?" You just start it. And you're just like, "Ooh, hey, I don't know what I'm doing either. Let's do this together." Yeah. "Let's, let's get better together." Like, I'm listening to my calls too. We're all getting better together. So I would just say start it, put it on a schedule, make it, make it pop up, show up. Yeah. Wednesday, coaching calls. Jimmy, one of the- Schedule it. It's ready to go. David Boyes: Yeah. That, that's perfect. I, I, I love the perspective too. And Jimmy, one of the, you know, the things that I share with owners consistently is be consistent. Mm-hmm. So I think the, the technology drives that, right? We're delivering an email with, you know, here, here's a, a top call, here's a coachable call. Here's some additional information. So delivering that is important, and the technology really helps us drive that consistency in this case. So, um, when that, that email comes out, here's a call example, you don't have to do anything with that today, or you can. If you don't, there's another one tomorrow, right? Mm-hmm. And we wanna create that normalcy. And th- this is the part that drives change, is one, you know, we're, we're making this normal. Yep. And Tanika, you were just talking about that, right? We're gonna put this on the calendar. People begin to expect it, right? It becomes normal for them, and that's a super important milestone in the coaching, training, and development process, is that sense of normalcy in the shop. And then, um, u- understanding the expectations and, you know, where do we have the opportunities. Um, Tanika, you know, one, one thought that comes to mind here is, you know, you'd mentioned at the beginning, like ask for the appointment. As you began doing this, you know, what, what did you begin to understand and, and see happening across, you know, the phone calls and across your organization? What patterns began to emerge? And really, what's that aha moment you had where you're like, "This is bringing value to me while I'm bringing value to my team"? Tonnika Haynes: Ooh, that's a good question. So when we start asking for the appointment, you know what? The calendar filled up. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. So the marketing was working. And, um, but the big aha moment... Ooh, that's a good question, Dave. You got me on that one. Should have text me that before you asked me that one. I'd been ready. David Boyes: My Tonnika Haynes: apologies. Phone with you. Aha moments with phone calls. I don't know. I, I really, I can't answer that one for you, but what I do wanna say before I forget the chance, don't get the chance to say it, when they're sitting beside each other up front and they're lis- 'cause they're, everybody can hear everybody's phone calls. Mm-hmm. I can hear them say, "That was a good one. What was that one about?" Or like Stuart would tell Hailey, he's like, "She's, she's had a lot of good phone calls here lately. I can hear the change in the way she's handling the phone calls." So again, um, may have got a little bit off subject, but them helping each other and encouraging each other. Maybe they can only hear one end of the phone call, but there's some key words like, "Oh, you killed that one." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. " Tonnika Haynes: You killed that one." Or making that sale on the phone call. Yeah. "I heard how you delivered that BVI. I heard that delivery. You gave them the good sandwich," and they said yes. Like this morning, she was like, "She said yes to everything." It's like, "God, it's working." Imagine that. Love it. Imagine doing a training, following the instructions, and it actually working. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Gotta David Boyes: love that. It really is the aha moment too, right? Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: You're, you're going through, you're driving consistency. You have, you know, some form of flow and expectations, and you're learning from one another. I love the fact that- Mm-hmm ... they're listening at least to one side of each other's conversations- Right ... in real time. Tonnika Haynes: I David Boyes: think I'm lucky Tonnika Haynes: with that- And then getting to populate from that ... with my team. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: I think I'm lucky with my, 'cause they're, they're not in competition, and, um, it's like how do you keep them... I don't know. God blessed me with that, but I'm just lucky that way. But encouraging each other- So. Jimmy Lea: It's good. That's good, Tanika. You, you've set up a solid culture there, solid people. They've got great results. You're listening to the phone calls. Consistency, like David's talking about. You know, um, hearing one side of the conversation helps a little bit, but if you, if you, as an owner, if you're only listening to half the conversation and you are not booked up three, four, five, six, seven, eight days in advance, chances are you're missing the other half of the conversation, and you need to listen to it. So you do need a device, a program, a, a hardware. You need a, a phone system that allows you to listen to all sides- Mm-hmm ... of the conversation. You've g- just gotta be able to do that. You gotta be able to do that. Now I'm gonna give another shout-out here as we work in our marketing. So a lot of times I hear shops talking about their marketing. "Well, my marketing's not working. I'm not... It's not working. It's not working." A lot of times it comes back to the phone call. Mm-hmm. How well is the phone call being handled or treated from an advisor? But speaking to the marketing part, we've got a shout-out here for the institute is holding a marketing intensive this October 26, 27, 28. Tanika, I just got off the phone with Brett Faidley. He is signed up. He is coming out for Mars Conference, so if you wanna get signed up as well, sister, we'd love to have you out here. Tonnika Haynes: I gotta get a real flashy jacket for that one. Jimmy Lea: Uh-huh. Tonnika Haynes: Pull out my Jimmy Lea: rhinestones. Right behind that Mars Conference. So if you got your smartphone there in front of you, grab out your smartphone, turn on your camera. There's the QR code right there. Oh, man. Flash the QR code and get registered. The, the, uh, the Mars Conference is going to be awesome. It is a conference where when you are done with the workshops, it's a three-day conference. When you're done with that three-day conference, you have 2027 mapped out, ready to go, and you know what you're gonna be doing month to month throughout that whole next year. It's super awesome. I, I love the Mars Conference. David Boyes: I do too. So Jimmy Lea: come- David Boyes: I was at the last one. Excited to be there. I'm, let me just say I was there as a participant at the last Mars Conference. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: And, uh, one, getting to, you know, to interact with so many, uh, friends across the industry was great, but also, uh, you know, I, I, I don't own a shop. I own a, uh, communication business. I took so much away from that that I immediately applied. I can speak from my own experience. Uh, and I know, uh, you know, many of the participants there that took those components right back to their shop and made immediate changes. So it is, uh, it's not just a, um, it's not just a workshop where you're gonna come away with a flashy workbook and put that in a dusty cabinet somewhere and never do anything with it. I promise you, you attend the Mars Conference, and, uh, you will come away energized and ready to make a real difference in your shop Jimmy Lea: Yep, for sure. For sure. Tonnika Haynes: All right. Like I s- I'm never gonna be at work if I keep coming, following you around, Jimmy. David Boyes: Just imagine your wardrobe, though. Tonnika Haynes: Oh, I know. It'd be so good. Jimmy Lea: It'd be so good. Tonnika Haynes: But no, we'll see. I, I'm thinking about that. I thought about what we talked about the other day, but we're not gonna get off subject 'cause I do that a lot. David Boyes: It can happen. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. David, what else? What else can we talk about with phones, phone systems, programs? Um, can we track our marketing using your phone system? David Boyes: Yeah. Uh, just on that very note, you know, the, uh, uh, we'll talk about this a little bit this year at Mars as well, but, you know, market tracking is important, right? We, we spend a lot of money, and understanding the performance, uh, is important. So with our phone system, you know, we can provide, uh, market tracking numbers if you have different campaigns, mailers, text messaging, website, uh, related, uh, leads that you're generating. Um, we can certainly provide unique numbers. The customer experience is the same, and the, um, you know, the shop experience is the same, except you have all of this additional data about, you know, how many calls were generated. So that's important to know, and, uh, it's also important to, uh, use that as a, you know, a good baseline of information about your capacity to manage phone calls in your shop. So when we look at some of the, uh, the other performance metrics, how long does it take us to answer the phone? Are we answering the phone, right? Jimmy Lea: Mm. David Boyes: In order to ask somebody for the appointment, we have to first answer the phone. Uh, and if you're spending this money on marketing campaigns, there are a variety of reasons, and I'll just tell you one example that I hear often from owners is, you know, they put out a marketing number and they, you know, advisors, uh, might believe that it's, you know, it's generating bad leads, something like that, so they won't answer that phone. Um, but we wanna, we wanna understand, uh, the behavior of what's going on. Is it something that we can control? Um, are, are we effective in the marketing campaign? What information do I have around that? And then additionally, uh, running that into the call analysis, uh, so that we understand are we, are we converting these, right? If we're generating the leads, are we actually generating appointments? And then, uh, from that point, if you know you have the appointment, you can measure your performance, uh, go forward. So there's a lot of data that we can capture, um, other than just sending in all of these phone calls to the main number. Jimmy Lea: I love it. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love the, the phone is such a powerful tool. I love when we can multitask that tool and do multiple things with the, the same tool. Very cool. Very cool. But i- if there a- any questions, comments, concerns from our audience, we would love for you to type those in. If there's questions for David or questions for Tamika, go ahead and type those into the comments section. While they're doing that, I will say if you are trying to keep up with me, good luck. But you can find it on our website. The website page is, uh, wearetheinstitute.com/events. That's all of the events that are coming up here in the very near future where you will see the institute participating and locking arms with the industry to help elevate the industry. Our motto, our mantra is, better business, better life, better industry. We're gonna lock arms with you as a shop owner so that you have a better business. The net result of you having a better business is that you have a better life. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. Jimmy Lea: And not just you have a better life, your advisors have a better life, your technicians have a better life. Your, uh, your partners have a better life. Your spouse Your advisors' significant others, their spouses, uh, their, their technicians and their spouses, the, and their children. Everyone elevates, everyone breathes better, everyone sees a bluer sky and greener grass when we have a better business, a better life, and our commitment is that we will help this become a better industry. Looks like there's a couple of comments that did come through. Oh, no, that's Raleigh posting out the webpage for the events. Yeah. Uh, super awesome. Super awesome. Uh, last final thoughts, final ideas. David, we'll start with you. Tanika, then to you. Yeah. That we can help this industry grow. David Boyes: Tanika, thank you for joining today and, and sharing your experience. It's super valuable for, for me as a provider to our industry that, uh, we understand how we're driving impact. So thank you again for that. Thank you for your trust and support. For the, uh, the audience, uh, Call Inbound is our company, callinbound.com. Uh, we provide communication services, uh, call tracking information, uh, advisor call handling performance metrics, and AI call analysis. But above all, we're part of the industry, right? So, uh, I got my start with, uh, with the institute in a 20 group. Got, you know, very ingrained in the industry, uh, while I was building my company. And, um, you know, I'm proud to say that I'm part of the, uh, not just the automotive aftermarket, but the, the service repair industry. Thank you, Tonnika Haynes: gentlemen. I wanna make, make sure you know that I appreciate your company. Um, I don't know how many employees you have, but it seems like they're all just sitting in the same room waiting to help. I can send an email and I get a response so quickly, and it's always been consistent great service, so I do appreciate that. And, uh, anybody that's on the fence, whether you, you know, I'm like, "I don't wanna listen to phone calls, that's just another thing for me to need to..." Do it. Listen to the phone calls. Start with yourself. Start with yourself as the owner. I always say start, start with yourself. I always assume that I'm the problem, then I can work from there. Listen to your phone calls, and if you think you're good and then you listen to them, you realize how bad you are, think about how bad your team is if you're not coaching them. So get them in coaching call services or what- whatever. Listen to the phone calls. Get everything in order. And not only will you make better sales and better connections, more appointments, but I really truly believe that it could save you a lot of heartache. Yeah, they record bad calls, too. Bad calls from the other end that you're, you know, that you need, I hate to say for court, but anything. It's like, "Hey, sir, we've got that call recorded and that didn't go quite the way you're saying it's gonna go." So that's another part to it that could, that could be very important in your shop. We call that David Boyes: the replay booth. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. David Boyes: We'll take that to the replay booth. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: It, it, it's an important to CYA. Exactly. You gotta cover your own behind. Tonnika Haynes: There's a great... That's a great tool for that. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. Yep, for sure. Well, with that, thank you very much. David, thank you for being here. Taneka, thank you very much for being here. Tonnika Haynes: Any Jimmy Lea: time. Look forward to seeing both of you very soon at our next conference, and to give you a big hug and say hello. Uh, bring your best jackets, David. Say Tonnika Haynes: less. Gotcha. Say less. Back in the David Boyes: studio. Jimmy Lea: Yes, yes. Very much looking forward to working with all of you in the very near future. And for everyone that is listening, thank you so much for joining us today as we talk about building a better business, a better life, and a better industry. My name is Jimmie Lee. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, and we're here to lock arms with you and make a difference. Click on it. Come find us. We're here to help. How can we help you? Let's make a difference. Talk to you soon.
Ep 173: How to Upskill Leadership Skills in the AI Era with Jacki Lutz
Why Young Technicians Keep Failing | Riley Spence - Ep 36
Consistency is key - heard that! But, consistency is HARD. That's why I gave up on trying and let the experts handle it. Detect Auto. Let them clean up your estimating process and raise your ARO - like they did for me! CLICK HERE TO BOOK A DEMOAnybody can run a shop. Building one that lasts? That's a whole different story. If you're ready to build smarter systems and a better experience for your team and customers, check out Tekmetric HERE00:00 Meet Riley Spence and the dangers of reading internet comments03:12 Starting in the automotive industry at 14 years old04:54 Learning from mistakes, trouble, and a different career path06:06 Moving from turning wrenches into service and parts management07:36 Being promoted without training, procedures, or support08:21 Are service advisors really doing the easier job?09:52 How technician roles differ between dealerships, independents, and fleets12:31 Front and back must work together—not against each other14:35 Ego, arguments, and the shop cultures nobody wants17:23 Why Riley loves his current shop and the people around him18:34 Not every mentor is right for every apprentice19:02 Riley admits how ego hurt him as a young technician20:11 What Tonnika tells young employees who ask for help but won’t listen22:20 Making mistakes, slowing down, and learning without giving up24:20 What happens when a technician oversells their abilities25:51 Tonnika’s “green banana” scale for inexperienced technicians26:54 Do experienced technicians actually want to teach the next generation?28:30 The most important lesson for apprentices: shut up and listen30:00 Could an experienced technician learn from a 20-year-old apprentice?33:00 How younger employees can make an entire shop better35:18 Accountability, respect, and preparing young people for the workforce37:42 Mental health is real—but it cannot erase accountability41:04 Work-life balance and creating a safe place for technicians to talk44:10 Riley shares a costly mistake involving a car with no brake pedal47:52 The high-school dropout who became a talented technician50:35 Finding potential in unexpected employees51:24 How shops can make automotive careers more attractive53:01 Tool allowances and helping young technicians build a toolbox54:45 Why shops need to invest in training55:20 Technicians don’t have to wait for their employer to educate them58:40 Don’t let a bad shop stop your career growth01:03:00 Why support at home matters in a demanding automotive career01:05:11 Parenting your own children is not “babysitting”01:07:33 From “Brown’s daughter” to “Tonnika’s dad”01:08:09 Making a difference in employees’ lives01:10:36 What legacy really means inside and outside the shop01:12:52 Why shop owners need honest feedback from their employees01:21:11 Jordan’s roadside repair and a helpful stranger01:22:11 Banana pudding, Southern culture, and automotive friendships01:23:47 The automotive leaders Riley admires01:26:32 Why conversations and community are changing the industry01:27:00 Why Tonnika finally started a podcast01:27:29 Showing young people that automotive can be a great career01:29:24 Riley’s responsibility to the next generation01:29:42 Dirty hands, clean money