Automotive Repair News Today

Braxton Critcher [00:00:05]:
So I want to tell you a story. So I am pretty good with technology, but only the things that I'm used to, like computers and phones. But when it comes to cars and anything electrical, not it, especially electrical, I don't deal with that. My great grandfather was electrician, and so anytime we had electric questions at home, we'd always call him or my grandfather because he was pretty good at it too. And so that's the thing for me, if I have like even light switch or changing a bulb, I can handle okay. But other than that I, that's, that's, that's my extent of electrical things. And so my wife and I live in a condo and on our deck at Christmas time every year we'd always put garland Christmas lights and then you plug them in. There's one outdoor outlet, unplug it every day.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:05]:
Well, we helped my in laws decorate for Christmas this year and they put up lights outside their house and they were like, let's try and use a timer. And I said, oh well, that sounds great. My grandparents use one of those. I'm sure it's easy. And in my mind I always thought timers. And this is true. I found that there's lots of different kinds of timers. But I always thought in my mind that every Christmas light timer you had to be at the outlet with the Christmas lights, plug them in and set the timer for a six hour period.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:42]:
And then it would know every day after 24 hours to turn back on. Right. So I go to Lowe's and I find their aisle of timers, lots of them, and it hit me. Wait a minute, I don't have to buy a timer, that I'd have to be physically sitting there at 5:30 when the dust goes and I have to plug it in at that very moment that I want to happen every day. No, you can just find a timer and tell it what time you want to come on. This is 2024 here. And so I got some of those and man, they're nice. I can see why people use these timers.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:21]:
It's great. It's life changing. But that kind of shows you the extent of my knowledge of technical things, which is why I'm in the podcast world and not in the fixing cars industry. You wouldn't want me fixing your car.

Krista Erickson [00:02:34]:
But anyway, I think I had a similar thing with the timer and I couldn't figure it out, so. So you're not alone.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:41]:
Oh, good, good. Now I know. Now I know. Uwe wouldn't be the same. He'd probably Just be like, come on, guys. Your children.

Uwe Kleinschmidt [00:02:47]:
I just buy the. I just buy the Christmas lights where the timers are built and fixed six hours during the day, and then I plug it in once.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:57]:
Yeah. Well, I'm glad you figured that out. It took me 28 years.

Uwe [00:03:03]:
But, you know, let me also tell you a story. Right. So I was at bosch in the 90s. In the 90s were the era when all the carmakers across the world transitioned from mechanically controlled cars with no computer in the car.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:24]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:03:25]:
To computerize everything. Right. And I helped. Building a tool we ended up selling to every carmaker and their suppliers in the world. And, man, the transitions they had to go through and deal with software in the mechanical world. Unbelievable.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:48]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:03:49]:
The hesitance by the engineers who now had to either get fired or learn something new. Unbelievable.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:58]:
And, yeah.

Uwe [00:04:00]:
I mean, it was fun. We did a lot of great stuff, and now you just take it for granted.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:08]:
And it seems like that's still happening today, though.

Uwe [00:04:12]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:13]:
Especially dragging their feet.

Uwe [00:04:16]:
Yeah. In the aftermarket. Especially. Right. So we had a joke. The BMW 5 series is called 5 series because it takes five hours to reprogram the BMW.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:35]:
Yeah. Or five years.

Uwe [00:04:40]:
Now.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:40]:
It's a.

Uwe [00:04:41]:
Technology has changed all of this. And I'm glad we have Elon and a few others who basically have leapfrogged the traditional carmakers.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:54]:
Yeah. I think that's.

Uwe [00:04:56]:
Go ahead.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:57]:
That's like a human thing, you know, Once you do something for so long. So. Well, just in your brain, new information is not where you want to be, and you just want to keep doing it a certain way. Even. Even if the Christmas lights are way easier on you than having to go plug them in and unplug them or be there at the exact moment you want them to turn on. Even if it's just. There's something in your mind that's just like, oh, this is how I do it.

Uwe [00:05:29]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:05:30]:
I'm not going to change.

Krista Erickson [00:05:31]:
You know, why reinvent the wheel? This is an actual thing.

Braxton Critcher [00:05:35]:
I know. Even if it would make your life so much easier, you still don't. You just can't get yourself to go there.

Uwe [00:05:41]:
But it hit me when. Before auto Idols, Actually, with auto Idols, I also visited some collision shops and one Specialized in Tesla. And I was just trying to figure out whether the software we built would also apply to collision shops. And the guy told me that for the same Tesla model, he has to check which one of the doors it is because they have changed the door twice within 18 months. Remember, Tesla thinks of a car As a software and wheels, they just think and act like it is software and wheels. You can change software anytime. So just build three different doors and. And forgetting what logistical nightmare that is.

Uwe [00:06:42]:
Right. Whereas. Yeah, whereas the traditional car makers, they would look at changing a software version as the most difficult thing on the planet. Because the moment you are responsible for the change of what's called a bill of material where everything is listed in the car, if you're responsible for a change of it, you run the risk of getting fired.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:08]:
Right.

Uwe [00:07:08]:
Because it's a mistake. Right. Not. Not something good. Right. It's really. It's not just something new. It's a paradigm shift of the highest order of.

Uwe [00:07:23]:
Yeah, we haven't even grasp it yet, in my opinion.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:27]:
I mean, it's just cars aren't cars anymore. They're computers with wheels.

Uwe [00:07:32]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:33]:
And that. That takes a whole different type of technician, a whole different type of shop owner, service advisor who is willing to go to the. Because, you know, a lot of people 20 years ago got into this industry because they didn't like computers, didn't like to have to learn about tech and stuff. You know, they were. They wanted to work on cars because it made sense. And now they have to figure out how all this programming works. And it's. It's very different from just a handful of years ago.

Braxton Critcher [00:08:03]:
You got to. You have to learn those things.

Uwe [00:08:06]:
Yes. And recruiting the new generation of technicians, it helps if you, you know, bring some nice tools, starting with a DVI on your tablet with you. Right. They know how phones work, and tablets will say, oh, wow, this is now auto repair. I want to know more. Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:08:27]:
That is true. In a way, it makes it easier to hire. It does. You know, it's. So this has always been an issue in the repair industry, but, you know, educating yourself enough so that you can do your job, great. But educating yourself enough to then learn how to educate the customer is a whole different story. And it's an issue because with all the changes in the repair industry and some of them are needed, you know, there. A lot of the shops that people still continue to go to are so outdated with training and technology that they can't even physically fix the newer cars in the first place.

Braxton Critcher [00:09:18]:
But customer care, but also attention to detail and how they explain what's happening with their car and then why certain repairs are needed is very difficult. And it almost complicates things because of the technology aspect. And I know you guys do a lot of that, and it's important for me because I'm Inside the automotive repair industry now. But previously I wasn't. And so I'm learning a lot. It's drinking with a, you know, fire hose, whatever. But it's really important for me to know things about my car and why I need to do things. But I don't get that kind of education from technicians or most shop owners.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:11]:
Some are great, but most understand it in a way that makes sense to them, but not in such a way that they can explain it to me, the customer, you know, explain it above my head. And it's not on fourth grade Braxton reading version.

Krista Erickson [00:10:28]:
Well, and we found that most people are like consumers today, want to educate themselves and we have everything at our fingertips now. Right, Dr. Google.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:38]:
Right.

Krista Erickson [00:10:38]:
As they call it.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:39]:
But that's, that's a good thing and a bad thing because you can get, you can get lots of bad information out there too. Nick can further confuse 100%.

Krista Erickson [00:10:51]:
And then that's why you kind of rely on, yeah, sure, do all the research, but bring the information that you found to your service advisor because that is supposed to be your trusted ally, you know, in your car's health. Right. So it's great we have all this knowledge that's available to us. But you know, you, you still want to talk to the doctor, you still, you still want to trust the professional that, you know, they know what's best, right?

Braxton Critcher [00:11:20]:
Yeah, yeah.

Uwe [00:11:22]:
And that's really a cool starting point, I think because in the past, most auto repair shops understood educating their customers from an authority point of view. I explain to you what I know. Believe me, I'm right. I'm the expert.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:47]:
Right.

Uwe [00:11:48]:
That has changed. Now we, to your point, we want to make decisions as consumers on our timeline, in our control. We just want you to give me the information I understand at my level.

Braxton Critcher [00:12:06]:
Right.

Uwe [00:12:07]:
And so when I found this out way back actually with a shop owner crank, and we had this, he became an involuntary case study, unfortunately, or fortunately for Autotech IQ, I have to say, because he had two service advisors and one used a different DVI process than the other one scored 10 minutes average research time, meaning his customers studied the inspection results for 10 minutes on average. That's out. That's so long. Right. It's unbelievable.

Braxton Critcher [00:12:54]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:12:55]:
The other, the other service advisor, and remember, they both had the same text during the inspection. They both used the same inspection tool, but the other service Advisor had only three minutes customer research time. And the guy with the 10 minutes scored on average 3,000 more dollars per week with less cost.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:19]:
Wow.

Uwe [00:13:21]:
And when I saw that I said, frank, same tool, same metrics, same text. Listen to the phone call. That's my only explanation. And one guy just used the traditional process, right. Explain everything on the phone, talk down to the customer almost. And it's a huge download of info. Number one.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:49]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:13:50]:
I mean, just put yourself in consumer shoes. You get a phone call.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:53]:
I don't have to, I am.

Uwe [00:13:56]:
You get interrupted and then you get this fire hose of info. Half of this luck if you're lucky, you understand? And then you're pressed to make a decision in the same phone call of yes or no.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:11]:
Right, Right.

Uwe [00:14:14]:
And so my favorite analogy is imagine you go to Amazon, look for a product, you find it, you find the page, the web page, but you can't decipher the picture. Not that it's blurry or anything. You just don't know what it shows. And then you get a phone call from an Amazon salesperson explaining to you what's on the picture and asking for the buy.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:44]:
Can you imagine that Amazon wouldn't be where they are today.

Uwe [00:14:50]:
You would never use Amazon again.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:53]:
No.

Uwe [00:14:54]:
You feel violated in your autonomy to make decisions.

Krista Erickson [00:14:59]:
And back to that service advisor, the process was different. The high scoring service advisor was clear pictures circling. What's wrong? Putting in notes in the DVI where the other one was still back in that I need to take pictures, but not, I mean, I don't know how much information he was actually giving them. He just felt like he still was gonna do everything like in the past. Then why do you have a DVI tool if you're not gonna use it to your fullest potential? I mean, it's been proven time and time again that you can increase your aro. And that's what everybody talks about. Who is a DVI software provider these days?

Uwe [00:15:41]:
Yeah. One of my favorite coaches, Mike Bennett, said once, this is a belief system you have to change. Right. Going from be the authority in explain to meet the customer, pick them up where they are in the knowledge, and give them the ability to educate themselves.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:05]:
You want a friend, you want to, you want somebody to talk, to talk through stuff. You don't want to be sold all the time.

Uwe [00:16:13]:
100%, yeah, we want to buy, we sold.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:17]:
That's why we save numbers in our phones. So the one that you don't know, you don't answer because it's probably a spam call. Nobody, I mean, nobody wants that. It's very, it's, it doesn't work. Maybe it. To me, I'm, maybe did it used to, but, you know, not now, you know, we, we've, we've learned how to.

Krista Erickson [00:16:35]:
Avoid too much information, right? Yeah, there's just too much. It's coming at us from all directions and.

Uwe [00:16:42]:
Yeah, but, but there are other information examples. Right. You go to the mall because you still want to buy maybe something you want to test or you know, choose to try it on.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:55]:
Right.

Uwe [00:16:57]:
So you enter the place the moment the sales guy, a salesperson approaches you right away and says, can I help you? 99% of the people say, I'm just browsing, I'm just looking around until you have developed in your head what you're looking for. And then you go to them and ask questions. Yeah, same thing here. The service advisor should just lean back, wait for the phone call and put time in making the picture self explanatory at the layman level. Then it's like googling your own vehicle. Right. And then you educate yourself and then you ask questions and then you get a higher approval rate. It's really simple.

Uwe [00:17:41]:
Yeah, simple in theory, hard to change.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:45]:
I was about to say that, I was gonna say that sounds so easy. But why don't we do it? Yeah, because it is hard.

Uwe [00:17:54]:
And so that's what we, that's what we teach to the shops. And I give you another example because you brought it up with the addresses and the phone numbers. Most tools who send out a DVI inspection use a phone number which is not the shop phone number.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:16]:
Right.

Uwe [00:18:16]:
And although you have been told a drop off, we will send you an inspection result. It's just one little piece of information amongst a lot of other information that drop off. And then you get a text message claiming to from a phone number you don't know it's not in your address book, claims to be the shop. And you are asked to click a link. What do you do with text messages you don't know the sender of which is asking you to click a link.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:51]:
You're told not to touch those. Yeah. Then you never get to shop on Amazon because you have no money, because it's all gone if you click those links. Exactly.

Uwe [00:19:05]:
Anyway, so there are many little things which.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:08]:
And so you guys are helping, helping repair shops fix all this stuff and.

Uwe [00:19:15]:
Yes.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:16]:
Okay.

Uwe [00:19:17]:
And then we measure it. So we measure, we found that declined job rates are the best metric for finding out whether the shop's DBI process works well or not. And so we just got from all the certified shops, the database standardized all the jobs so they are the same. And then were shocked.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:48]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:19:49]:
Because the highest decline jobs by Numbers not by value are filters. You should think using the DVI makes a filter sale easier. Doesn't seem to be.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:06]:
Yeah, because you can clearly see how dirty it is.

Krista Erickson [00:20:08]:
Exactly, exactly.

Uwe [00:20:11]:
But then stuff like what is dirty, right. When you check your AC filter at home, is that dirty? Do you change it because the timer told you, or do you remember? And then look up, oh, it's not dirty. I can leave this. Same with the car. So we, a little trick is just have always clean filters ready in a Ziploc bag for the text. And then when they pull out the vehicle's filter, hold the other filter next to it and then you know what's dirty. Yeah, right away. No matter how dirty is, it is dirty.

Uwe [00:20:52]:
Right. Because you have the contracts to contrast to clean.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:56]:
But there's definitely something in the customer's mind because I've been there. You're sitting in the car, you got an oil change, tire rotation, some minor stuff done, whatever. And then the tech or whoever's doing this comes up to you. And sometimes they'll. Now, I've never seen a tech that's a, that's a good thought to compare contrast. But sometimes they'll show you the filter and you can see that it's dirty. But somewhere in your mind you say, oh, that can wait two more months.

Uwe [00:21:27]:
Yes.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:28]:
And.

Krista Erickson [00:21:28]:
Or they'll say, I'm going to do it myself.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:31]:
And right.

Krista Erickson [00:21:32]:
Never gets it right.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:32]:
And then you don't.

Uwe [00:21:34]:
Yes.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:36]:
And I mean, I've been there, I've done that. And so there's this thing in our minds as consumers of everything, you're always trying to, out trying to find the scale of, of, you know, is it worth the cost? You cannot do I have the money right now. What? And usually filters are not expensive. You know, they're, they're relatively affordable. But I, the customers, and this is what I was kind of talking about earlier, was there needs to be better education from repair shops to customers of why things need to happen and why they need to happen. Now because the chain domino effect of bad filter that causes other repairs down the road. If you don't keep it clean, you don't rationalize. You rationalize it in your mind of, I can put that off, you know, two more months, but in two months, the type of damage that could be happening, that hurts your car in the long run, you don't think about that.

Braxton Critcher [00:22:39]:
So that's why the technicians and shop owners need to have a better way to explain that to customers, you know, because you're always going to want to say, no, I'm not going to do that right now.

Uwe [00:22:50]:
And the interesting thing is we found, and we're not quite at the end of the journey yet is there are now so many technical videos out there which are being attached to the DVI result.

Braxton Critcher [00:23:05]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:23:06]:
Focus on being technical. It's some or two minutes, some or 30 seconds. But it's all about how the car works. Right. And we don't find them very effective. The click rate on those educational videos is not as high as everybody likes it to be.

Braxton Critcher [00:23:29]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:23:29]:
And so we have now taking a different approach and are testing it. And Krista and Frank did a little interview. Right. So we want to try to go into the customer's mind and ask the shop the typical questions. Why do I need to switch out the filters? Seems to be not necessarily not important. Right. And so we really have to pick up customers where they are and not overwhelm them with technical details.

Braxton Critcher [00:24:05]:
Yeah. And that's why, you know, the first thing that you see, I love when you go to autotech.com it helps. And you explain this better than me, so please do. But it helps a car owner, myself, go onto your website, educate myself to the extent that I want to be educated, and then find a repair shop that is transparent, that I can trust, that educates customers the right way. And then you can choose. You have a list of these shops on your site. So I think that's super important as we try to talk about change in the industry. And I've talked about this industry needs to, needs to change, needs to improve, needs to progress, all these things.

Braxton Critcher [00:24:53]:
And, and there, there are a lot of shops that are doing that, but the, the industry itself, the more it grows, that's fantastic. But somewhere along the line, the customer base and the public have to come along too to understand these things. And so there's a lot of education happening and things are improving, but we've got to somehow help the customer base too. And I think that gets left out a lot.

Uwe [00:25:23]:
And the other way around, I have to tell you, was really interesting with other idols. In the beginning, it was all holy grail, was what the shop owner told us. And then when we started measuring the interaction of their customers with our product, how long they were doing certain things, we started educating shop owners how to build the inspection result simply because we had the data and were surprised ourselves. Right. And this Amazon example shows to me, at least customers are already there. They don't want to talk to somebody on the phone, at least not until they have a question.

Braxton Critcher [00:26:07]:
Right.

Uwe [00:26:08]:
Right. And we just need to pick them up where they are because we buy on Amazon. We buy whatever. When stuff doesn't work in my household, I Google it. I don't pick up the phone and call the hvac guy.

Braxton Critcher [00:26:25]:
Right.

Uwe [00:26:27]:
Yeah. But to your point, I'm not a millennial.

Krista Erickson [00:26:30]:
Yeah. And to your point, I mean, I think there is still a lot of education that needs to be done, and that is part of our mission is to educate the consumer about a digital vehicle inspection and why it is important. And also the crossover with that is, as you were saying, is preventative maintenance. Right. Super important. We are firm believers in, you know, not the customer that shops around for the cheapest oil change job. That's not your lifelong customer. Right.

Krista Erickson [00:27:05]:
The guy that's price shopping. We don't do any of that on our website. We just want to link up consumers with shops who have great Google reviews and use technology and the transparency technology. Like a digital vehicle inspection. Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:27:28]:
And I, I think obviously if you have an issue with, like you were saying, UV is. You have an issue with something, you Google it, you have an issue with your car, you Google repair shops near me, whatever. You'll find, you know, the top hits of good review shops, you know, ones that spend money that are recommended to you, things like that. But I mean, I. This is just me. But I think more people need to know about what you guys are doing, because autotech iq, when you go there and you can find a shop with the trusted shop locator that you guys have, because some of the shops that have good reviews still aren't good shops. They're just well liked. And so if I, as a consumer know about autotech iq, I can go there, I can educate myself, or I can find a good shop.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:23]:
And you guys kind of do the work of filtering out the shops that I don't want to go to as a consumer. And so more people need to know about what you guys are doing because it's a. It's a revolutionary idea, much like DVI was back when you first came up with it. But I believe this is one of the things that I've talked about a lot is what I was saying a second ago was need to help the customer base just as much as we're helping ourselves. Got to help the customer base. And that's exactly what you guys are doing with this. I think it is fantastic. We just got to get more people to know about it.

Krista Erickson [00:28:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. There's no other online directory that vets out shops like we do. No OOVA certifies the shop to ensure that their process is up to par. And if not, then we have tools to help. And if it is, then you get certified listed on the top in your area. But you have to meet those qualifications of having a website having a high Google review because we kind of want to be known as a directory for the best of the best shops.

Braxton Critcher [00:29:30]:
Right.

Krista Erickson [00:29:30]:
Which doesn't exist.

Braxton Critcher [00:29:31]:
Yeah, well, this is, it's a circular conversation. But Chris Cotton, who is with Auto Fix, Auto Shop Coaching, and Cecil Bullard with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, both in the coaching realm. And they have a similar conclusion but different starting points with the conversation. But about the tech shortage. And Chris Cotton always says, well, we don't have a tech shortage, we have a good shop shortage. And Cecil's like, well, we kind of have both. But it's, it's true. Going to your site is so helpful, but it also is kind of hard to find that shop that is good because they are hard to find sometimes that does everything right.

Braxton Critcher [00:30:27]:
And maybe your website and things like this will help weed out some of the bad ones and we can get some more good shops out there.

Uwe [00:30:36]:
And there's one more element I want to talk about if that's okay. And that's how Google works. Google. If you type in brake repair, Google thinks you're looking for a shop. If you type in brake pad replacement, Google thinks you want to do it yourself or you want to know how.

Braxton Critcher [00:31:04]:
Much it is it brings up like.

Uwe [00:31:06]:
And so all of a sudden no auto repair shop shows up on page one.

Braxton Critcher [00:31:12]:
Right. It's all like just DIY stuff.

Uwe [00:31:16]:
Yes, but so Google calls a search based intent. Right. So they have figured out based on your click behavior and the other billions of clicks they have collected over the years that if you type in certain combinations of terms, oh, you're looking for a shop and oh, you want to be educated. Right. And we autotech.com shows up for both.

Braxton Critcher [00:31:49]:
Right, Right.

Uwe [00:31:49]:
So shop websites have have it hard to show up for educational intent because it's nationwide, it's not local. Brake repair is local.

Braxton Critcher [00:32:03]:
Right.

Uwe [00:32:05]:
And autotech IQ collects both clicks.

Braxton Critcher [00:32:09]:
Now trying to El Gato stupid technology. Tell me about. So Krista, you sent me a press release a few weeks ago about job UIQ and we've sort of talked about that a little bit, but explain more about job view IQ and how that synchronizes with everything else that you're doing.

Krista Erickson [00:32:40]:
Well, as OVA explained, we found out that declined job rates were really high, low, super high. Super high at some of these shops. And so they needed a tool to. There's not really anything integrated with software that integrates what we put in. So we have all of our shops information jobs. First of all, we're not standardized. So what one shop calls something, another shop calls something else.

Braxton Critcher [00:33:12]:
Oh, that's a big issue.

Krista Erickson [00:33:13]:
Having jobs standardized and having all this information in one place is super helpful. And basically it's a dashboard. Dashboard where you can monitor over time how they've improved, but you're not on your own. We have two shop owners on our team, Frank Skandura and Brittany Schindler, who assist in that process and give you things to work on. So there's check ins with the trainers and you monitor over time your progression.

Braxton Critcher [00:33:51]:
How long have you been working on this?

Krista Erickson [00:33:57]:
It's about six months old. Totally. Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:34:02]:
Okay. That's pretty quick turnaround on something as big as this.

Krista Erickson [00:34:06]:
We have amazing engineers on our team.

Uwe [00:34:09]:
Engineering team is the best.

Braxton Critcher [00:34:11]:
It sounds like it. Yeah.

Krista Erickson [00:34:13]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:34:14]:
There's no comparison.

Braxton Critcher [00:34:15]:
Yeah.

Krista Erickson [00:34:16]:
The stuff come up with and turn around. Yeah. It's amazing.

Braxton Critcher [00:34:19]:
You know, you guys are just doing so many things that nobody else either is doing or wants to do, but you're, you're tackling issues that I think are so important for the future of the industry. So I think it's almost like you have a bit of a crystal ball for what's happening. And DVI obviously was a big part of that. And so I guess what, what uvo, in your opinion, what's, what's the biggest things this industry needs to focus on now to, to move forward in the future?

Uwe [00:34:56]:
I don't think.

Braxton Critcher [00:35:00]:
I mean, pick, pick the brain of the wisest guy in the room. Right.

Uwe [00:35:05]:
I mean, it's all, it's to be proven in the future. But I believe like you said already, mechanics have become technicians and the, and the portion which needs computer knowledge is growing every day.

Braxton Critcher [00:35:24]:
So. Wait a minute, let me just pause. You're saying that I'm relatively smart even though I look at. I just got a compliment. Did you hear that, Kristen?

Krista Erickson [00:35:34]:
I heard it. I heard it. And it's being recorded.

Braxton Critcher [00:35:37]:
Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Thank you.

Uwe [00:35:43]:
The trend which excites us is what we have been talking about. Empower customers to make their decisions because everybody else does. And people have figured out that if you empower your customer and make them smarter so they make the decision instead of you talking down on them with authority is, is gonna create an, a much better outcome for the shops and for their customers.

Braxton Critcher [00:36:18]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:36:18]:
And I think that's the, that's the, that's the transition we like to be part of.

Braxton Critcher [00:36:27]:
Yeah, Yeah. I, I'm interested to see, you know, because I think that's going to take some time, but I'm interested to see as that starts to happen, what kind of effect the industry sees. And I think it could be a big one. So.

Uwe [00:36:44]:
But we have seen that through the approval rates of shops who follow the process of empowerment. And that's why those metrics are so important. Right. This customer research time was just one of many KPIs, right.

Braxton Critcher [00:37:01]:
Yeah.

Uwe [00:37:02]:
And then when we noticed how it's directly correlated to AO to average repair order value, we couldn't believe it. I mean the longer, the more, the higher the arrow. It's that simple. And so we put it in the tool that a service visor could actually see the number ticking up. And then we would say to the service advisor, don't call the shop until it stops because they're still educating themselves. Don't interrupt them educating themselves. Right. And then you can't even wait for the phone call to the shop instead of you calling out because they have no questions.

Uwe [00:37:46]:
They now want to buy. They want to buy.

Braxton Critcher [00:37:49]:
Right, right.

Uwe [00:37:50]:
Because you have to equip them with the information they needed to make a decision and they still have some questions.

Braxton Critcher [00:37:56]:
And there's plenty of cars on the road.

Uwe [00:37:59]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:37:59]:
I mean, you know, what is it now?

Uwe [00:38:02]:
The Latest number is? 12 point.

Braxton Critcher [00:38:04]:
12.8 or 12.8. Yeah, it's going up quickly. It's. Yeah, I think it goes up a month every month because everybody's keeping their cars. So.

Uwe [00:38:16]:
No, it's, it's exciting. And I have to tell you, I was really, in the beginning, I had, I didn't know whether it's a good idea to do auto tag iq. You won't believe it. So I went to shops because I thought they'd tell me, buddy, stay away. We educate our customers, not you. Right. That was my expected reaction and nobody said it. They all said pre educated customers approve more, go ahead.

Uwe [00:38:49]:
And some of them even wanted to invest in the company. Right. I mean, I was blown away about the reaction.

Braxton Critcher [00:39:00]:
How long ago was that?

Uwe [00:39:02]:
Two years.

Braxton Critcher [00:39:03]:
Yeah. Well, that's great. The things you guys were doing in just the two years too. Your engineering team is pretty good.

Uwe [00:39:11]:
It is, yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:39:14]:
Well, thank you guys. I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of this stuff. Really encouraging.

Uwe [00:39:17]:
Thank you.

Braxton Critcher [00:39:18]:
As we try to improve the industry, we're all, all a part of it. So thankful to kind of be on the same team here.

Uwe [00:39:25]:
Thank you very much for having us.

Krista Erickson [00:39:28]:
Thank you.

Braxton Critcher [00:39:33]:
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. Show. And you know what? While you're at it, slap on a review too. If you feel like this content is helpful for the industry, don't forget to follow us on all your favorite social media platforms. We're on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Braxton Critcher [00:39:59]:
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