Time is money, and when you start analyzing how long each task of a simple workshop service takes, an eye-opening truth comes to light: we spend a lot of time on avoidable tasks.

The good news is that once you detect unproductivity, you can streamline processes and invest the recovered time in more profitable tasks.

Let’s do a quick calculation: three minutes on a phone call with a customer who wants to book an appointment, fifteen minutes on a vehicle check-in by a service advisor, and more minutes creating the repair order; a half-hour delay for parts that are out-of-stock, the time it takes to inform the customer that their vehicle is ready for pick-up… and we can continue to add more minutes spent on repetitive tasks that at the end of the day add up to hours.

Let’s see how to streamline processes and gain time in the workshop.

Let customers book service appointments online

Many companies already offer online appointments, but many still continue with traditional methods: phone calls, emails, or personal visits. Adding an online alternative may seem complicated but the immediate effects are worth the effort.

By letting customers make service appointments from their smartphone or on the dealership website, you’ll have:

• A quick method to book, reprogram, or cancel appointments without using the phone.
• Customers can choose the services they need and even get an estimate.
• The workshop manager can organize the work to be done and detect idle hours.
• Automated communications help reduce no-shows.

Autologica Solution: Appoint365 is an online scheduling tool that lets customers book service appointments on the dealership website, and allows dealers to monitor the workshop occupancy rate. With this tool, you can avoid appointment overlap and idle times as well as provide customers an easy channel to book service appointments and receive reminders.

Agile vehicle reception

A customer arrives with their vehicle and you have to perform the vehicle check-in checklist. Paper, pen, ask questions, take notes, inspect… and, after completing the form, you have to transfer that information to the repair order. What’s the problem here? You duplicate work; you have to transfer the same information that you wrote down on the checklist into the DMS. This a clear opportunity to save time.

You need to analyze the different ways to optimize this task:

• Implement technology that facilitates vehicle inspection and avoids duplicate work.
• Optimize the checklist to be as comprehensive as possible but without taking too much time. You don’t need a 50-question checklist.
• Streamline the repair order generation process.

Autologica Solution: DealerTablet is an application that offers a tablet-based checklist for vehicle reception. The service advisor can quickly mark the repairs to be performed, the condition of the vehicle, the fuel level, etc. If there’s something that needs to be repaired, the service advisor can offer the customer that additional service and generate an extra sale. After the inspection, DealerTablet sends a digital copy to the customer and opens the repair order in Autologica DMS.

Monitor delays

Depending on workshop capacity, the Service Manager may be able to keep track of each technician’s tasks. In a small workshop, they can directly check the vehicle status, but in a larger workshop, it’s impractical to go by each workplace asking for job progress.

You can optimize both technician and service manager times through a tool that lets you know in real-time:

• The time spent on each vehicle.
• The delays caused by a lack of parts, infrastructure, or training.
• The idle times caused by hours without work.

For example, if there are missing parts or delays when preparing parts for repairs, the service manager can instantly detect this and avoid more delays.

Autologica Solution: The Job Clock helps you measure 100% of the time consumed by technicians and obtain relevant information on workshop performance. 

Automated communications with customers

The final step in a service appointment (invoicing the repair order and vehicle pick-up) is also ripe for improvement. Some bottlenecks occur at the end of the process that can go unnoticed.

• The time you take to inform the customer that the vehicle is ready.
• The time the customer takes to pick up the vehicle.

These two processes should be agile; otherwise, they reduce workshop occupancy by having delayed vehicles. It’s important to consider these situations to detect if it’s a dealership problem (slow processes) or the customer (they have no rush in picking up their vehicle).

Autologica Solution: Appoint365 offers a feature to send customers an automated “vehicle-ready” alert. 

Every minute counts and, in an increasingly competitive industry time is one of the most important assets for any business. 

Request a demo of Autologica Sky DMS and our other web-based applications to save time in the workshop.