meowpox

On 9/1/2018 at 5:15 AM, autoguy said:

@meowpox I checked out your website and it looks very clean. Your front page has no information about your business at all. Do you ever get customer asking what you do? Looks like you sell merchandise, do you fix cars also?

You can read about our shop in the About section hehe. Address and phone number is on the front page. I'm really big on design and branding, and just really hate the look of a busy front page and feel it is a little overwhelming. Majority of our customers are word of mouth so if they're at our website, they already know a little bit about who we are. But I do believe it has to do with customer base. We are not a general repair shop. Our customers love a clean beautiful shop, because they have really really nice expensive cars. So our website reflects that well. We get tons of compliments on it by our customers. 

On 9/1/2018 at 7:36 AM, xrac said:

I would add that while you have beautiful photographs I find the print too small and too light colored. This could make it hard to read for some people. There is no place on the opening page to click to find your services or to book an appointment. I think it is hard to get a customer beyond your front page and they need something fast and easy to move forward. If we take them to too many pages to do anything we will lose them. I think a customer should be able to book an appointment or call us from the front page. Just my two cents that is worth one cent. 

If you hover over About, theres a link called Services. Thats just one click. For appt, people click on Quote. I think this is good advice but also depends on your customer base. Again, we're not a general repair shop and we're in a very niche market so most people that need to contact us AND are actually in our target customer base will find it not a problem to click one extra link to contact us. 

45 minutes ago, gandgautorepair said:

If you're going to position yourself for the long term it would be hard to make the case that you can do it without online reputation and ranking. In that way, reviews are important. If you want to grow, reviews are important in attracting new customers. If you live in an area with a lot of traveling traffic, like we do, reviews are how people on a trip find a repair shop if they have a problem. We have found that most people search "auto repair reviews", not just auto repair near me. Like it or not, I think reviews are a reality and we need to exceed or at least keep pace with our competition.

We get most of our reviews through Mitchell CRM and SureCritic. Not the best, since it's not Facebook or Google, but when people search "reviews" then the SureCritic site with our reviews shows on Google. Also, the SureCritic is linked on our Facebook page and on our website, so it's visible to people who click on us through organic search or Adwords. We also get some crossover google reviews from it. We also get more Google reviews and Facebook reviews with our MyShopManager follow up. Overall we get quite a few reviews, and it's all automated.

Never said reviews aren't important. Just said we don't ask our customers to leave them. We have 5 stars on yelp, 79 reviews -- been open for 3 years. 5 stars, 39 reviews on fb. In this day in age, I feel if you give crazy amazing service, they'll genuinely want to leave a review. I'm just being honest in saying I hate when companies ask me to leave a review after having a pleasant experience with them and I think a lot of customers feel that way. Just something to note.

We dont ask customers to leave reviews. As a customer of other businesses, i hate being asked that. Makes me feel like the positive experience i had was not that genuine. Not sure if I'm just not having similar experiences as you all but is it not enough to just give outstanding customer service? But I guess it also depends on type of shop you have and if you're going for volume. 

On 7/23/2017 at 10:20 AM, xrac said:

Occasionally, I receive a Yelp request for a quote. I always respond to these although it is difficult since the customer rarely provides adequate information. I think only once did anyone come in the shop from these requests. Is this par for the course. Anyone refuse to respond or do it any differently. 

I contacted Yelp to have them take down the "Request a Quote" feature that magically showed up on our page without our permission. Took them weeks to take it down, they said I was the only business in Yelp history to request this and thus they had to have engineers do back end programming to take it down. If it bothers you enough, contact them and they will take it down.

$120 Bay Area, CA and considered to be on the lower end compared to similar nearby performance shops

5 hours ago, Bruno Tabbi said:

Meowpox, i agree with. if your contact info is not  immediately visible on your site you are frustrating people. A good amount of people visit a site just to get contact info. I think you are right when you say your customer base differs from most here. It looks like you are catering to a very high end clientele.  Much different than most of the other members I am guessing. The information I am reading is leading me to believe that we have been brainwashed to blindly focus on page views, clicks, likes and now everyone is neglecting generating calls. Check out this article; http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/rise-phone-leads-sylvan-picks-call-data/307943/ 

I would be interested to see what 50 web leads vs 50 unique phone calls would generate in sales.

 

 

Interesting article, thanks! Without actual numbers, my opinion is not much. Sounds like they are onto something

As a consumer, if I cannot find information I need or an email to contact, I won't even bother. Phone calls are such a waste of time, in my opinion, because it requires two people (caller and receiver) to be readily available at the same time. If its for something urgent or is just hard to convey in an email, then I'd call but that's rare. 

From the business side, we try to push everything to email. We have our appointment form on our website as well as our phone number... but we get majority of our quote requests from the appointment form. It could be because our customer base is not your average car customer. Although I do not have an official way of tracking, I believe our quote form requests are more likely to turn into sales than phone calls. Phone quotes seem to be more from people that price shop and just want a quick quote. People who take time to fill out the quote form usually know they already want to come to us. Plus, I like that the history of a quote conversation is recorded in email so that we can reference back to it if needed. 

A little late to the convo but we dont believe in "The customer is always right"---it simply is not always true.

We hold our customers on the same level as our employees. Both are vital to our success. If a customer is wrong, we'll let them know and if we have to, we stick up for our employee. If the employee is wrong, we make it right with the customer. 

We use Squarespace! Easy to manage, beautiful templates and easy to customize. I like to manage it myself because I have very particular taste, plus we have a very active blog. But that said, I probably am not using it to its potential in terms of SEO (still have to learn). We pay $26/mo for their basic commerce plan, which is $8 more than their basic business plan. We get tons of compliments.

I am a strong believer in building a strong brand, and that includes first and foremost an amazing logo and a beautiful website. People will follow you if everything you put out there just looks amazing.

Our Website

Yelp is great for consumers but terrible for business owners, at least for small businesses. We have a 5 star rating, and 73 reviews and we dont pay for any of Yelp's services. It does bring in business but what I hate is that it puts way too much control in the reviewers, which is unfair. One day, a button to "Request a Quote" appeared on our Yelp page (people started requesting quotes on yelp and the conversation would remain on yelp. even when we would say email us, the customer would get so comfortable and just use yelp). Didnt pay for this, never wanted it. I had to talk to Yelp several times and they said they have never once had a business ask to have it taken down. They had to get their engineers to do their thing to remove it from our page and that took weeks!! I was so annoyed because it is OUR business so we should be able to control how we are contacted. They eventually took it down. They should give us the option, not just impose it on us. 

Side tip: the reviews that get sorted to "unrecommended" are accounts who dont have friends or other reviews on Yelp. 

Why not just get an alarm?

I don't think dogs should be left at a workplace solely to guard it. You'd have to invest A LOT of time and training to have a dog be able to distinguish friend or enemy (if thats even possible without you being there). Also an intruder can easily harm your dog. 

I've tried indeed, monster, linkedin...none of these options provided us with great candidates.

I agree with Joe. It's all about networking. All of the applications we've received that were actually from worthy candidates were from (free) advertising that we were hiring on social media --FB and Instagram. But one thing to note is that we are extremely active on social media and in the local car community (go to /host a lot of events) so the applications were coming from people that knew about us already or knew someone who did.

2 hours ago, FNGJWS said:

Love your look, Meowpix.  Might want to look into having a glass shop round those corners off the table though. I can just see some little guy toddling up to it at face level and YIKES!  

You're right, we have people accidentally bump the corners with their thighs all the time. 

voted! I've never been a fan of the super literal logos (eg autoshop with wrench in logo). I think you already have "auto" in your name so having wrenches or gears in it is a little overdone. BUT that being said, they all are nice logos and color scheme. And since its for your general repair shop, it definitely does get the point across that it is one so that might be exactly what you're looking for. 

We still have majority IKEA furniture (Go here for some photos of our office). It's still holding up well so cant really help you with other furniture recommendations. I think the only thing I might change later is get a real reception counter just so it looks cleaner. If you're up for a fun project and have a blown engine laying around, they make interesting coffee tables! Just have to fabricate a base and paint it black

14 hours ago, Jay Huh said:

1. Sorry I actually don't use QB so I dont know but I see the button at the top so I know the have the integration

2. Their customer service is excellent. I had an emergency on a Sunday where site was not allowing me to look up tech hours. They fixed it within an hour. Contacted them multiple times through the years and they always answer back. I needed custom hours for appointments and they coded that too

3. Luckily I started with Shop Boss so I am not sure how you would get all your customer data- I know it worked the other way around. Mitchell was trying to get me to switch and they said they can import all data from Shopboss for $500 so it should be possible

Thanks for the info!

On 3/12/2017 at 1:05 PM, Jay Huh said:

Name a feature on Mitchell and RO Writer and I'll let you know if Shopboss has it or not. Here is what I do with Shopboss- I manage RO's from home, employees clock in and clock out, keep track of technician hours, VIN scan with iPad and uploads automatically, send email quotes, 5 day 60 day 90 day automatic followup email, keeps track of GP, cores, writer stats, etc, it sends text message to customers and they can approve work on their phone, integrated scheduler- my "schedule appointment" on my website is from shopboss and loads directly into shopboss, there is a chat feature where I can chat with any one of my 9 employees at 2 different locations, each employee has their own login, integrated parts ordering, QB integration. I mean it's just too much list out. Im not affiliated with them but I should be with all the referals I've given them lol

Yeah I've been really digging Shop Boss' demo and the 99/mo is affordable, given that it comes with all those features. We only have 4 techs and it seems like it would meet our shop's needs. Couple questions for you since you've used it for a couple years now:

1. What QB do you use with it? Is the QB integration pretty seamless? I currently use QB desktop version but want to switch to Online version. I'm guessing since Shop Boss is web-based, using the QB online should be pretty effortless, am I right? Does it sync automatically or do I have to do something to upload the data?
2. Have you had to use their customer service? How is it?
3. Did you switch from one program to Shop Boss? If so, what was it? We're currently using Winworks and I dont see anything about importing data? 

Thanks!

Business is booming and we need to become paperless, web-based, w/QB integration. Any ideas on programs? Would love any and all input!

• Omnique: I hear a lot of good things about it but looks like you need to pay for their most expensive package $400/mo to get QB integration. 
• Shop Boss: looks really affordable with the features that it comes with ($99/mo comes with QB int). This is my favorite one so far. Does anyone use this? 
• Any others?

Steve and _2080,

If you want to make a difference (seems like you do if you're going out of your way to post on this forum), try to get people to understand where you're coming from. You can start with the following:

• Do you run an automotive service shop (not just own but actually involved in day-to-day?)
• If so, how many technicians do you employ at your shop?
• What exactly is your pay structure?
• What city, state is your shop located in?

There definitely are things to be said and discussed about regarding the treatment, perception, and pay of mechanics in this industry. But the way you both have posted about it gives me the assumption that you don't run an autoshop that employs mechanics. If that is untrue, then please, let us know so we can have a discussion about it because this forum is about learning from each other. But if you're not interested in having a meaningful conversation, and just want to offend people by assuming we all own nice houses, we intend to screw over our mechanics, that we are "retards," that we are "greedy," that we "don't care".... then please GTFO.

Oh wow. Didn't expect to see those type of comments on this type of forum. Terrible attitude. I'm pretty sure if anyone here was just all about getting paid and trying to rip their employees off, they wouldn't be on a professional and informative forum like this. If you really wanted to make tons of money for yourself and not pay people what they deserve, we all know how to do that (which is entirely illegal) and it definitely doesnt involve spending time on a forum like this learning how to do things the right/legitimate way, and learning other business models, pay structures, etc from other professionals here.

Not all business owners intend to "screw" their workers, and not all techs are great techs. The issue with pay in this industry is way deeper than that, as already mentioned by others in this thread/forum. We're all here to learn and I doubt you have things 100% figured out if you think things are that "plain and simple" in running a business. Have some respect.

Those fees really add up. I do everything with Wells Fargo. They make a lot of money off of me.... but it's still cheaper than Square, Paypal etc. 2.75% is too high. Get people to use their debit cards- fees are REALLY CHEAP for debit. Avoid over the phone payment if possible.... huge fee for that

We started our shop with WF (and still have their machine due to contract) but they raise their fees every year. I also know some people who work in WF and said honestly, they are not good for small businesses. We switched to 360 payment solutions and fees on average are less than 2%...usually 1.5-1.9.

Welcome! Great information on this forum

Who else went to SEMA this year?! Last year we won some small tools from an OTC diagnostics competition and this year, we won a free Hunter SmartWeight Wheel Balancer (even though not the road force, its a huge upgrade for us). All you had to do is post a photo on Instagram and use their hashtag. I think they have this competition every year.

We used to pay per hour billed only, but found out that that plan is not legal in CA if we require them to do other things, like cleaning the shop.

Then we moved to base pay + bonus after certain amount of billed hours were met. Better, but a headache to keep track of.

Currently we pay hourly starting at $25+ for full-time. Our shop rate is $120/hr. But we run a little differently then some shops so this pay method works for us. Our techs clean, some of them write work orders and talk to customers. We are open on weekdays only (9am-6pm) and they get paid OT for anything over. It has been pretty smooth so far.

Every shop is different so you have to just find one that meets your shop's needs. Do you have techs that are just doing this to pay the bills? Do you have techs that are passionate and want a career out of this? For some people, hourly pay doesnt provide incentives to work their best. But have to also remember not everyone is motivated by money. You can pay someone well but if your shop is not a great environment to work in, that can also bring down performance. So there's a lot more to look at in terms of incentives and efficiency. Sorry if that doesnt help much!

Started using a whiteboard and its been awesome! As said in previous post, we still use Google calendar for all appts, and its shared with everyone. Google calendar is awesome for small shops, in my opinion. Decided to use a whiteboard to get an overall "glance" of everything.

It's pretty simple but the team seems to like it.

• Top red row are daily tasks. We look at the Google calendar and write in those appts on that row, each evening before.
• Everything else below are the big car projects they are working on. We thought about doing large square magnets so they can re-position them based on priority, but decided to just write numbers next to it. (Grace starts on Monday so she has not been assigned anything big just yet ) Priority is based on number of things like waiting on parts, how fast customer needs car back (is it daily driver or just an extra fun car), etc.