Automotive Repair News Today

Braxton Critcher [00:00:05]:
Braxton Critch here, back again with you. Excited to have you along because if you know me, I'm from outside the automotive repair industry. Been doing it for about four or five months, covering the news around the industry, hitting the hot topics, all that kind of stuff. And I've learned a lot about the industry, including today's video DVI digital vehicle inspections. Excited to talk about that because it's been around for a little while, but there's a lot of advancements, and I want to talk about the importance of it from the customer's perspective because I've been on both sides. I've been on the customer's perspective from a repair shop who did not use DVI, and then I've been on the perspective of one that did. So we'll talk about the comparisons to those shops, but with DVI, with your repair shop, if you're a technician or if you're somebody like me, that's a customer, I want to hear from you in the comments below. If you're watching on YouTube, watching on Spotify, or checking out this podcast on your favorite podcast platform, be sure to check us out on social media as well.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:07]:
Let us know, because these conversations are important as an industry, as we continue to grow, as we continue to improve things like DVI, input is needed from shops around the industry, from technicians and from people like me and maybe you, if you're a customer, a consumer, because, hey, what works, what didn't, what kind of confused you? What kind of things did you need to see more of to give you some more peace of mind about your vehicle? Because I don't know about you, but vehicles are kind of like a second home. I spent a lot of time in my car and so I want to make sure it's on the road and it's safe for me and my family. So welcome to the YouTube channel hit. Subscribe if you haven't yet. Appreciate you hanging out. Kevin Robinson's here as we're going to talk about this. So first, my perspective. Eight years ago or so, I went to a repair shop because I had, I think my axle snapped.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:06]:
My axle, my front axle snapped. Horrible. Had to have it towed to the repair shop and I dropped it off, of course, had no appointment that's going to recall or typically require a part to be ordered, all that kind of stuff. And so I understood that it was going to be a little bit of a waiting experience with my car to come back. But when it was repaired, two days, it sat in the lot for two days and I didn't know. Now, this is not always along with DVI, that was just poor communication. They could have called me. But DVI helps repair shops communication with customers because text messages, if you have pictures or you can share a link about a video, hey, here's the axle underneath your car.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:54]:
There's the picture of where it snapped. Here's what it looks like now. And it would have been a really simple text message to send. They didn't have that kind of technology. They had over the phone communication only. And so I was kind of left out of the loop. I called a few times and was like, hey, what's the update? Didn't really have good communication with a service advisor, all that kind of stuff. I've also experienced some repairs with repair shop that did use DVI and it was really, they called it a peace of mind evaluation.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:24]:
And I'm going to tell you, I had peace of mind because I knew step by step what was happening when they sent me a text message with not even pictures, sometimes just an update. Hey, we're at step two in our process. The technician now has your car in the bay and all of this stuff was included in their DVI. And I'm going to tell you, I really appreciated that kind of communication from the repair shop, that kind of thorough processes from the whole system. And I just as a customer, not even knowing what DVI was at the time, could tell the thought, the care and the concern from that repair shop so much more than the other one. And so if you're a customer and have had a similar experience, let me know in the comments below. Same for repair shops. If you're trying out new DVI, I want to hear, you know, what your recommendations are for some of the experiences that you've had and all that kind of stuff.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:24]:
So Kevin, I want to hear your thoughts as well on when you first heard a DVI. What were your like, comments, thoughts and what exactly do you feel DVI? What kind of role do you feel it has in automotive repair today?

Cavan Robinson [00:04:42]:
Yeah, thanks, Braxton. That was great setup. That was a great story too, by the way. I think that we've all experienced some of those pains of where's the communication? And by the way, even though DVI is a very specific term to independent auto repair, these types of things happen with other consumer services as well. That's why other project managers, and even on the franchise side of things, if you look at dealerships, that's why service lane type software products exist too. So it's this really interesting part of the market that while super popular and a lot of data behind it, still actually has a fair amount of, well I'll just say limited adoption. That's probably the best way to put it. I'll kind of share from very high level in terms of know, kind of what that means.

Braxton Critcher [00:05:36]:
It's probably one of those things where some shops feel like eh, do I have to? Or because they see it as an extra expense, maybe they don't want to go up to that, that kind of thing, you know, maybe.

Cavan Robinson [00:05:49]:
Yeah. And there's a, there's process adoption to it, right? I mean if you go into a lot of shops right now, they'll still have the paper tickets which in some cases are just part of the process. Right. They, you know, you do your red, yellow, green checks, you do whatever you need to do with those pieces of paper. You showed them to the customer or you don't. But in this case it's providing internally what the technician thinks is the right street to go down. But what you're talking about specifically is the customer and business transparency piece of things which ultimately equates to is that customer going to be returning? Are they going to come back to you when you're ahead, brakes need replacing or if you need major work maybe done to things like your transmission. So in a lot of cases that first exposure to it, you know, can really help the consumer.

Cavan Robinson [00:06:41]:
And just these are kind of ballpark stats that I'll mention. But you know, we do business with over 9000 independent auto repair centers in the US and Canada. We do a lot of market research and one of the things that we found is based on that number, still only about 25% of those shops actually have a locked in DVI process. So that's maybe not necessarily just access to the tool, right. So maybe they have a built in DVI or they use as a third party integrated DVI, whatever that scenario might be. But the actual adoption is still only a quarter of what it really should be or could be. And I think that that's the gap that we're trying to bridge, right, is how do we not only. I'll leave it on this note.

Cavan Robinson [00:07:27]:
At Shopware, specifically, when we came into the product development phase, especially when we were going through our updates to what we call DVX digital vehicle experience, we realized that you really have to think about your product as two end users. Typically, shop management systems especially are so very focused on how do we best create an experience for shop owners, service advisors, technicians. Got it. Check that box. But also we have to consider consumers because they're the ones in a lot of cases that are actually getting that digital vehicle inspection, whether it's that hosted link of the RO, if it's, to your point, Braxton videos, pictures, markups, and they're the ones that are ultimately approving work. So we have to think about that in both ways in terms of the two end users when we're developing the software. And that's one big thing that we put into our discovery process for how we build out our own digital vehicle inspection process. And then the coaching on top of that, obviously to make sure that it's adopted and a high success rate.

Braxton Critcher [00:08:24]:
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to tell you, if you're a repair shop owner, somebody who has some influence in decisions made at a repair shop from a consumer use DVI, I mean, everything is social media based nowadays. Videos and pictures are what everybody's accustomed to and getting used to. And I'm of the younger generation. And so if you're hoping to keep your shop going into the future with more younger generation drivers needing repairs for their cars, you're going to have to use some, some DVI to, hey, I'm the kind of person that knows by seeing or understands and learns by seeing something and just way better to someone who doesn't know about a cardinal then over the phone, hey, yeah, this is what's going on. No, if I can actually have someone send me a picture or a video of what's happening in my car, I feel better. And that's one thing about the automotive industry that is getting better but is constantly going to be a point of concern is building that trust, like you were saying, Kevin. And pictures and videos for most people help with that. They build some trust because of skepticism of, is that really what's happening to my car? If you can show somebody through a picture or a video, if you can't take them into the bay, but you can do that, then that goes a long way in building customer trust.

Braxton Critcher [00:09:52]:
Is that kind of what you're seeing too?

Cavan Robinson [00:09:54]:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, how can you provide that trust at the point of payment or the point of saying, yes, I will accept this estimate and, you know, work with you moving forward. And I'm just coming off of prep for a presentation I'm doing at an upcoming conference. And we found that. And I'll just give you a quick example here because this, I, you know, consider shopware part of the nerd herd here in terms of the amount of data and digging that we do because we really like our data people appreciate you.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:24]:
People appreciate you.

Cavan Robinson [00:10:26]:
Carolyn has set the tone in terms of folks getting into the analytical portion of things. But so we do business with a shop group that has over 150 locations. Right? And so there are no strangers to new software, to integrations. They have a large workforce. So, I mean, this is a pretty sophisticated operation. We found that without the use of DVI. So just the average ticket, right? The average Ro Aro, which I'm sure is a stat that gets discussed here a lot. Without a DVI being shared with the customer, their average repair order was dollar 312.

Cavan Robinson [00:11:05]:
If they added a digital vehicle inspection, their average repair order went up to dollar 633. So literally double what you would see with just some standard maintenance work. Even if you add. And one of the things that we had with a conversation with this customer is what if we even just add a courtesy check in there? It doesn't have to be this full 108 point DVI that we have to send to the customer and get their sign off on. It's just a courtesy 30 point or 50 point in that case. The upsell opportunity that you have not for services that are not needed, but transparency into what's actually going on with this vehicle. Want to create that trust and transparency. By doing that, you actually up the value of that customer and the value of the job.

Cavan Robinson [00:11:51]:
And that way you can justify paying your technicians more, you can justify recruiting more, you build more business, and then you get customer retention on top of that, too. So it definitely makes sense. And one of the things, just to end with it on this side of things, especially when we start talking about onboarding and the process management, I'm a part of a lot of peer to peer groups right now, whether it's Facebook based or we get together with some 20 groups every once in a while. And one of the big things floating around right now is this notion of the 300% rule internally. And I'm not sure there's a lot of listeners that have heard of this. And it's essentially 100% of vehicles inspected, 100% of those inspections estimated. So what's the cost of that? And then 100% of those estimates sent to customers. So 300% rule and seems simplistic.

Cavan Robinson [00:12:40]:
Seems minimalistic, but actually goes a very, very long way if you can just get that into the mindset of your employees. Like full transparency. We got to get every single car inspected, and every single one of these inspections needs to go to the customer. There's going to be an instant increase in what you see for your arro. Right. Right in the. In that line. Hmm.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:03]:
I mean, those numbers are pretty, uh, I mean, no, you can always skew numbers if you wanted to, to sort of fit your narrative, but those numbers, they're kind of hard to skew. I mean, those, those numbers don't lie right there. I mean, doubling, doubling, uh, things when you, when you use DVI at your repair stuff, that's pretty crazy. I didn't know that.

Cavan Robinson [00:13:27]:
Yep. So the biggest thing that folks can concentrate on is pure adoption, right? Like, how do we use this to best of our ability? And the interesting thing, especially about DVI, and this is where I've just kind of gone down, honestly, a bit of a rabbit hole in the last several months, is DVI started out even when I joined into some of the aftermarket side of things, largely, it was integrated providers, right? It was your auto vitals, it was your auto serve one, it was your Autoflow, formerly Autotextme. Right? And those providers are absolutely still around. But then in, call it 2020, 2021, really, things shifted because a lot of shop owners and operators were calling for software that was easier to use. Take out the friction for me, right. I want to stay in the same tab. I don't want to have to jump between products, etcetera. This is also when obviously cloud software became super popular and has been for quite a while.

Cavan Robinson [00:14:22]:
And all of a sudden, shop management systems, of which there's, by the way, 100 plus of them in the industry, started all doing their own built in dvis, because they basically said, well, if you can utilize and adopt this really light, create a DVI, but you don't have to do a bunch of pictures or videos or anything. You don't have to have two way integration. We just have to be able to send customers what it is. You've had this bridge between two mindsets, which was originally, well, just get the ro created and take payment. We want to get paid as fast as we can versus interacting with the customer and getting the engagement side of things. So now, in a market that used to be four to five, like sort of Premier DVI tools, you've grown to 2030, kind of depending on what shop management system that you're using. But the call still remains the same. It's how are you really getting the information to your consumer so that they feel like they can trust who they're doing business with at the shop?

Braxton Critcher [00:15:22]:
Well, tell me this. So some people listening, watching this video or podcast probably know, but I'm sure some don't. So you're the new GM at Shopware. Tell me, tell me about all that. I'm sure you're excited.

Cavan Robinson [00:15:40]:
Yeah. So, you know, really excited to be working with the Shopware team. I worked side by side with, with Carolyn, you know, when she was working through all her, you know, earthling auto and, you know, some of the new shop endeavors that she has, because Carolyn's a product person and always has been. And the amount of passion and blood, sweat, and tears as the founder and creator and builder, honestly, of shopware is extremely enviable. Yeah. So my job is really to come in and take that torch. Right? Take, take the baton. I guess we could say with the Olympics just finished up here.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:12]:
There you go.

Cavan Robinson [00:16:12]:
And really. Yeah. A little on the nose, baby. But how do we continue that, right. How do we continue to invest in the product? Because ultimately, shopware, although a very strong brand, really has been known for its product over the years. Right. And I think one piece that a lot of folks would be concerned with is how do you make sure that you keep the innovation going? How do you make sure that you're taking care of customers? Because, you know, there's one thing going from, you know, 300 to 500 customers, a whole new ballgame. When you get into 2000, 2000, 503,000 plus.

Cavan Robinson [00:16:44]:
Right. You're starting to build product not only for individual, single point shop users, but you're also starting to build for 150 plus rooftop, multi location customers. So it's really a balancing act of that. And if I had to kind of sum up what is the last two months and then what will, let's call it eight months, nine months into the future look like a lot of is just process around product development, right? How do we sort of meet in the middle with satisfying the needs of so many different types of shop categories that we work with. How do we understand what their specific needs are? And I think the biggest thing for us right now is just discovery. So many things have changed in the market. And what I love about this market, and by the way, I worked on the franchise side of things for a number of years, and change came fast there as well. But then ultimately, regulation kind of slowed things down, whether it was the OEM creating certification programs or I, you know, certain legal things going into effect that restricted the use.

Cavan Robinson [00:17:42]:
And not saying we don't have a lot of that over on aftermarket, but the change is becoming extremely sudden, especially over the last year or two. I mean, think about all the different providers that have come in the market. You think about the amount of private equity that's come into the market and not only invested in, but been acquiring software companies. And then also, and I just saw this in the auto care factbook, the amount of private equity coming into the market to actually start acquiring auto shops. Right. So growing them from, hey, you're at three locations right now. Tell you what, we'll buy these three locations, then we have plans to expand to ten locations by the end of the year. The amount of acquiring going on, based on our research that we get from our market partners, the main stat that I've been seeing is that about 40% of shop owners plan to retire in the next five years.

Cavan Robinson [00:18:34]:
That's a lot of change. That's a brand new wave, brand new generational wave coming into the market that's ready to utilize extremely efficient technology and integrations that maybe didn't even exist ten years ago. So we have to be really prescriptive on what we build and when we build it. And this is just, this is one of the best product and development teams I've ever worked with, um, in terms of their know how. And probably the most, um, the, the biggest thing with them is their discovery. Right. Not necessarily getting right into solution, solution, solution. Fix this, fix that.

Cavan Robinson [00:19:08]:
But what's the actual problem here? Like, if we're dealing with a multishop operator or enterprise location, what's actually creating the process issue internally that we can address with product and solution, as opposed to just getting into plugging the holes? And I think that that's one thing that I really congratulate them, is their ability to understand and go through that research and discovery process.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:30]:
Now, I had Carolyn on back when Shopware first sold to Velo, because there was a lot of concern from shopware customers of, okay, well, we don't like change, that kind of thing. And Carolyn basically came on and said, nothing's going to change. I mean, we have, we've sold to velo, but, you know, the, the vision still stays the same. The, the, everything that we offer with Shopware, that's staying the same. And so I'm sure some of the questions are coming back up, because one of the things she didn't say, whatever. I plan to leave or anything or sell or get out of this with Shopware. But, you know, she said, I am staying. So I still have a vision here.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:17]:
Well, now that you're the new GM, I'm sure some people probably still have the same question. Okay, Carolyn's out now. Velo is overseeing things, and now there's a new GM. What's next? What might change? What kind of things do you see coming up in the future and settle some emotions right now for some shop owners.

Cavan Robinson [00:20:39]:
Yeah. What's the master plan? Right. And how do we bring stability to a relatively chaotic start to the year? Right. So I first started talking to Carolyn and the Shopware side of things back in. Gosh, I think it was Q one. And then I think we did the announcement in March. So, I mean, that seems like a lifetime ago at this point. And although it was only a few months ago, there's a lot that's actually gone on and changed even since then.

Cavan Robinson [00:21:04]:
And full disclosure here. So general manager of Shopware on my side of things, I've actually been with Velo since 2020. So it's coming up on my fifth year anniversary there. And probably the biggest thing that's seen just how things have changed in the last four years. And then obviously leaning in on all things Shopware, probably the biggest thing for us is that we plan to make big investments there. So we know that it's a great product. We know that it's got even better people inside the organization. I've spent so much time with the customer success team, the onboarding team, the implementation team, the customer support team.

Cavan Robinson [00:21:40]:
These are all really good individuals that have actually been a part of the company for quite some time and not only know the customer base, but also know exactly what the, what the market thinks of Shopware. Right. So they're sensitive to it as well. Right. Not only calming the fears and the potential emotions of folks externally, but you could probably imagine what it looks like internally as well. Right. With the folks saying, well, okay, you know, our founder and leader is now going on to do her own thing. What's going to happen next? Right? Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:22:08]:
Yeah. I mean that rightfully so in some ways. Yeah, absolutely.

Cavan Robinson [00:22:12]:
And, you know, probably it's just change is inevitable, I think. You know, a number one, especially in SaaS, like in software, you know, you always have, whether it's building up to be sold or a cash infusion, you know, there's all sorts and the folks that listening here, you know, although it might be a bit more of a unforeseen situation where maybe it feels a little off. I think the thing to remember is that if there is a lot of investment going on in aftermarket, if the big players, the PE firms and the venture capitalists are putting a lot of money into aftermarket and auto repair, there's something here. It's when they start pulling back and saying, I don't think that this market or this industry is stable enough to invest in that things start to get a little bit more chaotic, I would say. One, the ability to say velo, in this case, the company that I work for and have worked for, saw shop, where is a great opportunity to not only continue investing in it from a product and go to market standpoint, but also put it together with our ecosystem of shop management products. So we have five other products, if you can believe it, shop management wise with Velo that play in different channels. And our biggest thing that we're working on right now is the ability to say, hey, this is the ideal customer profile for shopware. This is the ideal customer profile for another product over there.

Cavan Robinson [00:23:34]:
And make sure that we're not having overlap or cannibalism of whether it's lead acquisition or product development is another big one. We're in the process of building out these common API layers so that we don't have to make six integrations to one provider. We can make one and then go on from there. We're doing something a little bit different than what you see from other providers in the market. So far it's been very successful. We've seen a lot of our product development and customer success accelerate, actually through this, which has been great because we have a lot of great shared service and cross functional leaders. But we also got to put our money where our mouth is. We got to make sure that we're following through on the promises that we've set out there and make sure that we hit release dates, that we make sure that we still show up to conferences and events, because certainly from just a costing perspective, you could see a company coming in and saying, wait, there's something going on here, and start stripping away, especially that marketing cost.

Cavan Robinson [00:24:28]:
Usually the first thing to go in this case, I mean, literally, shopware is going to be at six events the rest of the year, which I think is just in line with what they were doing previously. So total ambition to keep shopware exactly where it is. And the biggest thing is just how do we cover all the thought leadership that Carolyn brought to the market, right. As a shop owner, she was so good at it. So we're going to do our best to try and cover that. We're going to learn from some of the things that she did previously as well, to see if there's different partnership or co branded marketing type opportunities. But ultimately, we're going to keep it about our people because they're probably the linchpin on which the success of the company is built on. And they've been so great through this.

Braxton Critcher [00:25:09]:
Entire process over or under. By the end of the year, you're going to want to call Carolyn ten times for ideas.

Cavan Robinson [00:25:20]:
You know what? So under. But you. Text message.

Braxton Critcher [00:25:25]:
Okay. Okay. Text. All right.

Cavan Robinson [00:25:28]:
As a true millennial, picking up the phone is one thing, but no. She and I have been texting back and forth. She got some great time off needed and recalibrate and everything. And she actually shared with me a couple of the presentations she's done recently. And we're putting together an ebook that she's had a little bit of a hand in reviewing as well. But largely, she's enjoying her kind of post shopware life and she's still talking to customers every once in a while. But it's mainly from a shop owner's perspective. And that's one of the things that I love about my relationship with Carolyn and what it's pivoted to now, which is more, hey, she uses our product, right? She's, she's, you know, whether it's luscious or earthling like, she uses, she is a shopware user.

Cavan Robinson [00:26:09]:
And you thought that, you know, maybe as the founder and CEO, she had opinions about the product. Now, as a full time shop owner, what happens. So I appreciate her for that. And I'm, I'm sure a lot of people here can commiserate that as they work in their products, they have specific feedback that they'd like to route. Now it's all about how do we recognize that and how do we work together on it. So she's been great.

Braxton Critcher [00:26:29]:
Yeah. Well, cool. Well, thanks for coming on, Kevin. I appreciate it. Looking forward to seeing what's next with you guys.

Cavan Robinson [00:26:36]:
Yeah, I appreciate it. If anybody has any questions on shopware, we're going to be at a lot of conferences at the end of the year. Braxton can share some of our updates upcoming here. We'll also be at, actually, the one I think Braxton's. Braxton is going to be at with ASta coming up here in September in North Carolina. So that'll be a big one. We'll have some familiar faces there as well. But yeah, just really excited to continue off the second half of the year and keep doing what we do with shopware, which is help you fix cars faster and get your money, get paid, keep your business going.

Braxton Critcher [00:27:10]:
Yeah, we want to hear from you. You know, Kevin wants to hear from you. We want to see you, of course, at these events coming up. But, yeah, I mentioned comments all the time. I love it when people comment on videos because you get to hear what's happening across the industry and get to hear what matters to you. And that's, that's what automotive repair news today is all about. It's kind of twofold, keeping you informed, that's obvious, but also helping the industry grow and continue forward. And all of this stuff goes together.

Braxton Critcher [00:27:38]:
So DVI, we talked about that today. I feel like that is a huge, it plays a huge role in helping the industry grow, helping the consumer trust break that wall. And that ultimately is really important news for you to know about are some of those numbers that Kevin shared of what DVI can really do for your business. So great stuff today and glad you checked us out on this episode of Automotive Repair news today. Subscribe Share like us on social media and we'll see you next time on automotive Repair news today. Hey, if you're still here, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Automotive Repair news today. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment like share subscribe to the podcast. It'll help us out a big deal and help grow the show.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:31]:
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