Building a Winning Scoreboard For Your Auto Repair Shop [RR 1098]

Building a Winning Scoreboard For Your Auto Repair Shop [RR 1098] Remarkable Results Radio Podcast · Jun 30, 2026

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Concept

gamification

Turning everyday work tasks into a game with scores, rewards, and friendly competition to make the job more fun and motivate employees to perform better.

Term

average repair order

The average amount of money a customer spends when they bring their car in for service. Shops track this to see if they are successfully finding and fixing all the issues on a customer's vehicle.

Part

PicoScope

A super-advanced electronic testing tool that mechanics plug into a car's computer and wires to see exactly how electricity is flowing, helping them find tricky electrical problems.

Term

billable hours

The hours of work that a shop actually charges the customer for a repair. Mechanics try to complete the work faster than this standard time to be highly efficient and profitable.

Term

ASE certification

A special certification that proves a mechanic is highly trained and knows how to properly fix cars. It is like a diploma for automotive repair professionals.

Term

digital vehicle inspection

A digital report card for your car. Instead of writing on paper, the mechanic takes pictures and videos of what needs fixing and texts them directly to your phone so you can see the issues yourself.

LIVE

This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Hey everybody, Karm Capriotto,

Remarkable Results Radio.

Good to see you as always on a weekly basis

with the Remarkable Results Podcast.

And of course, each and every Friday afternoon,

we do the Town Hall Academy with me

and a multiple bunch of guests.

And we actually broadcast that out at 2 p.m.

on social media every Friday.

And of course, you'll find it

on our wonderful listening app.

Anybody know about that?

I hope you do.

My God, it's the coolest everything in one place

for your smartphone,

the ultimate professional automotive playlist

that I love to call it.

We got this really neat new URL.

How about this, arpn.app?

What's arpn stand for?

The Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Please put that app on your phone

and have fun with it just like I do.

We have a really cool episode picked out for you

that my friend Jerry Frank is gonna be with us.

We're gonna talk about gamification.

We've done episodes on this before

and I think you've heard a lot about it.

Jerry's got this really unique way to look at it.

And since Jerry is a coach,

I'll introduce him in a sec.

This is Coffee with Karm and a Coach.

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Contact your Napa representative today

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Hey, did you know that Napa Tracks

has on-site training plus six days a week support?

It all starts when a local representative meets with you

to learn about your business and how you run it.

After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice.

Let us prove to you that Tracks

is the single best shop management system in the business.

Find Napa Tracks on the web at NAPATRACS.com.

Let me introduce Jerry Frank to you.

Hello, Jerry.

Hi, Karm, thanks for having me.

Oh, I'm glad you're here.

He's from serviceadvisortraining.com

and also maverickshopowners.com.

And we sure appreciate Maverick and Service Advisor.

Maverick Sponsors is a partner with Hunt

and you're a partner with Craig O'Neill on our network.

We appreciate that.

And before we even get going,

let me give just high fives and kudos

to your wife, Laura Frank,

and of course, Leanne Best, who created Breaks for Breast.

And I know that the amount of money over the years

is 2.4 million to the Cleveland Clinic.

We were there just about a month ago.

I missed you, you were busy doing stuff.

Yeah, I had a ball joint, I called it,

actually my hip replaced not that long ago.

So, yeah, I was kind of in a little pain back then.

You didn't want to hold us up.

I get it, okay.

Well, anyway, Jerry's here with us

to talk about gamifying your business

for maximum results and profit.

So anyway, before we get into that,

what's on your mind?

What's going on with shop owners today, Jerry?

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of different things.

There's this thing called AI

that can be a good thing or a bad thing,

and that's out there.

So, I see a lot of that.

Sometimes people want to delegate everything to AI,

like answering their phones.

I'm not a big fan of that

because we lose the relationship in some of that stuff.

I think that that's super important,

but shops are doing great, well.

Our members are really crushing it.

And after, Karm, I've been doing this for 35 years.

We have a wonderful industry that we're in.

It's recession-proof, good economy, bad economy,

low gas prices, high gas prices.

We always tend to thrive.

So what a wonderful industry.

Yeah, we have our ups and downs, no doubt,

but the people that pay attention deeply to their business,

I mean, they're engaged with it.

They're on the deep end of the pool with their business.

They see the trends,

but they're never as deep as some other people.

Actually, their highs are pretty high

when they get there, I know that for sure.

Oh, you sold your shop, what, about a year ago?

It's been three years, just recently,

three years in March, yeah.

It seems like only yesterday, you know,

but yeah, after 35 years.

I miss counting on that.

Well, look, let's jump in.

You were telling me about a great story

about a bowling night that you had.

Yeah, so, you know, I guess that's where the light bulb

kind of went off with me at the time we had two shops.

And, you know, we always like to do some fun things

with the staff and the employees.

So maybe four or five times a year,

we've done all kinds of things from, you know,

Goat Cards and ball games,

but we had a lot of bowlers.

I like the bowl.

Sometimes when the boss likes to bowl,

that's where we're going, right?

We're gonna go to the bowling alley

and we're gonna have some fun one evening.

And we did that.

And what really struck me was, you know,

we had maybe 15 folks there from our two shops

and the competitiveness just kind of the light bulb went off.

I mean, with every strike, they're high fiving,

you know, the guys, the gals, everybody was really into it.

And I guess they don't like to lose.

They like to win.

But driving home that night, when I saw that,

I asked myself, you know, how do I bring this to the shop?

I can see how competitive they are.

How do I bring a little bit of that back into the shop

and kind of make a game out of some of it?

They have some fun too.

What you did is something that I talk about a lot

and that is from my mentor years ago,

always told me, every time you saw me,

beginning of the conversation,

at the end of the conversation, calm, pay attention.

And I think it helped fine tune my intuition, Jerry.

And what you're telling me about this is you saw something,

you felt something and you said,

how can I make this a part of our culture

and how can I bring that competitive nature to the shop?

And I think if more of us concentrated

on paying attention to the things around us,

the same kind of things will happen to them.

For sure, yeah.

So keep your eyes open, you know,

and sometimes I think some of the problems with,

at least it was for me as a shop owner,

sometimes you're, you know, knee deep in it

and you don't see what's happening around you.

So before we get into gamification,

we really need to stop and figure out

what's the real problem.

Yeah, and I think that's a mentor of mine told me once,

you know, often we want the prescription, right?

Imagine just walking into the doctor's office

and, you know, they've got a garbage can full of pills

and say, here, take one of these, that's gonna work.

It doesn't work that way.

I love Mike McCallowitz, the author, Mike McCallowitz.

I've had him on the show, you know.

Yes, I remember, but in one of his books,

he said the biggest problem most business owners face

is they don't know what their biggest problem is.

And that always stuck with me.

You can't give a prescription to a problem

you haven't identified.

I want our listeners to think about that sometimes

because, you know, often we jump to the problem.

Yeah, I know what it is,

but we haven't really thought about it

to really kind of dig deep into it.

Wait a minute, are you telling me

that two aspirins call me in the morning?

Doesn't work?

It doesn't work, no.

All right, I love it.

So obviously a lot of the problems

that people may have, low car count,

maybe billable hours, you know, an ARO issue,

you gotta stop and look at that.

Yeah, all of that, you know,

I can give you just a few examples, you know,

low car count, right?

I mean, as soon as we have, you know,

a shop struggles with car count,

right away they jump to conclusions.

Again, not diagnosing the problem.

Right away they think maybe it's the economics,

bad economy, I got a, you know, bad location,

you know, I need to spend more in marketing,

and the problem could be right in front of them.

You know, have you been listening to your phone calls?

I know for me a quick story,

we were spending money trying to get the car count

up in the shops, and one day my CSR called off sick,

and my lovely wife, Laura, went in

and answered the phones in the shop,

and guess what, for that week,

we didn't have a car count problem.

You know, plenty of cars.

Lo and behold, I found my service advisor

was kind of throttling the car count, right?

We're too busy, don't take anything in,

and here I am as the shop owner,

spending money trying to get the car count up.

So that's a great example of what I mean,

you gotta really try to diagnose the problem

before you offer the prescription.

Too bad there wasn't some kind of device, you know?

Like a PicoScope you can put on the business.

Yeah, don't we wish.

There are, but that's maybe for another episode,

there's some things I really watch closely.

Hey, wait, wait, love Jerry be your PicoScope,

I get it, I get it.

Yeah, you know, and another great example

is low billable hours, right?

Everybody tells me, I hear it as a coach,

you know, I gotta get my hours up, you know,

and they tend to wanna blame it on the technician.

You know, I've got a lazy tech,

this guy's just unmotivated,

and often it's not that at all.

Again, not being able to really kind of dig in there

and diagnose the problem.

The question I always think or I kind of chuckle about,

you know, maybe they are always hiring tax, right?

And they've got these texts that are stuck

in that 30 to 35 hour a week billable hours a week mode.

You know, and I say, doesn't it seem like

you keep hiring and firing the same guy?

Maybe it's not the tech, you know,

maybe there's something else going on at the shop.

Totally get it, and you know,

how do you deal with a person

who doesn't have any net profit?

Oh boy, yeah, well, again, I'm a numbers guy

and you know that, Carmes.

I like to kind of look back at the numbers

and really kind of get a look at what's going on.

Great example, I can remember years ago

I'd get my P and L in the mail.

Back then email wasn't around or not so much.

My accountant would actually email me,

you know, the financial statement.

Mine would deliver it to me.

Oh, that's nice, that's better yet.

You know, right away we jumped to the bottom line.

Hey, what's on the bottom net profit?

You know, we went there and it's like,

I either made money or I didn't make money.

Well, you should know that long before your P and L

ever comes, the real answer is way above the line.

You know, what's going on in your business?

How are the margins?

You know, the car count, the average repair order,

all of that, there's a lot that goes into net profit.

And sometimes it's not doing more.

You know, usually we try to fix it by doing more.

More cars, you know, more tax, more bays.

And sometimes the answer isn't that,

it's just kind of focusing maybe on that profitability side.

Imagine having an efficient, well-running,

high-speed horsepower engine.

I actually mean shop.

Wow, all cylinders, good gas.

Wide-open carburetor, I'm aging myself.

And on both sides of that equation, you know,

I mean, I can remember years ago working,

you know, 60 hours a week and barely eking out

a living at this business.

And then, you know, you fast forward a little bit

as you start to, you know, figure things out

and kind of really understand what's happening in business,

you know, to working, you know, I don't want to say very little,

but working on more building the business,

you know, than working in it.

All right, so once we know we figured out

what the problem is, then how do you build a game around that?

When I think about any game,

a game needs a good scoreboard.

I'm a football fan, I know you're a Buffalo Bills fan,

I'm that Cleveland Browns fan,

kind of stuck in limbo all the time.

Oh, but to stop Jerry for one moment,

currently at this moment right now,

I'm a Buffalo Savers fan.

We're in round two as we record this, but go ahead.

But, you know, you look at a football team

and, you know, the players are there on the field

and all of them look up and they can see everything

they need to see in that scoreboard.

Are we winning or losing the game?

You know, what do we have to do?

In a hockey game, you know, they can pull the goalie,

there's things they can do to try to change the odds.

So you need a scoreboard,

it's got to be visible to everybody.

I think there's some key pieces in that.

But, you know, the first part is you got to have the scoreboard

and put it where they can see it.

The second part, you know, a lot of times

when I think about a scoreboard is,

can the players influence the score?

Can they do something about it?

You want to improve cart count?

Well, that's maybe not something a technician can do.

She doesn't have control over that number,

so the player's got to be able to influence the score.

And then lastly, I think, and it's a big one,

have the players record their results.

Write so many times I see a business owner keeping score.

That defeats the purpose.

Have your service advisor write down the score.

Have your technicians write down the score

for what they're responsible.

Something magical happens when they write it down.

Because they're hunting for a number

or a level of proficiency

or something that they are supposed to do

in order to get the score to work.

Shop manager can manage that.

I don't want to jump too far ahead,

but right now, I'm thinking that they need to know

their role in this scoreboard.

In a game, if I'm a defenseman of a man on offense,

whatever my role is, the kicker, the goalie,

I've got to solidly know my role.

Now in sports, getting paid all kinds of money,

they're rehearsing and practicing every single day.

Now, in a shop, what is your role in this gamification piece?

Or actually, what is your role in the shop?

And how do we take that to a new level

because we're going to actually pull numbers for it?

They've got to know their role.

Yeah, for sure.

And the other thing I think about,

like when my team goes home,

when that technician goes home at the end of the day,

did he win?

Does he even know?

Often that's not the case.

Is there a level of satisfaction that they could feel?

You know, entering that vehicle, driving home,

God, he had a great day.

We met our goals.

We didn't meet him 100%, but we're on our way.

We've had a couple of stumbles today.

Tomorrow will be better.

I mean, those are positive attitudes to have.

Yeah, for sure.

I think sometimes when you talk about the roles,

you can't be that jack of all trades.

Sometimes we want to do that,

but who's responsible for what?

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Let's go back to the shop.

Again, you guys were very instrumental in Breaks for Breast

and it was always that October month.

Did you ever publish the Breaks for Breast's goals

or how many break jobs you did that were counting toward that?

Breaks for Breast is a great example

because it's so much deeper than just an activity

at the shop or sales in the shop.

I think it's personal to so many people

but we would have a giant thermometer in our shop.

We wanted to do a hundred break jobs.

So at the top, we would have a hundred.

That was the goal.

And then along the left side, we would have the dates.

How many weeks are we going to do it?

The whole month of October.

And then every day we would write down

when we got a break job.

We would write it down and ring the bell.

Everybody in the shop heard the bell ring.

We hit the break job.

We sold the break job and then we recorded it.

We had one of those giant fat head posters.

I think it's what it's called right on our office store.

It really gamified everything.

Everybody could get behind it.

And then of course, there was something in it for everybody

if we hit our goal.

So no kidding.

Well, that's kind of cool to hear that.

I like that.

Did the client see the scoreboard?

The clients didn't in that particular example.

It was more for the team.

But often what the clients might see is, you know,

we would have them fill out a little paper represent

all over the office.

Yeah, all over the office.

Yeah, I've seen them.

And the really cool thing about Breaks4Brests.com

is that all this marketing material is available there.

And zero money is taken.

Zero money.

I don't mean to be labor and do an advertisement

for Breaks4Brests because I'm so honored

to be at the Cleveland Clinic too

for the check presentation.

But zero, 100% goes to the Cleveland Clinic.

And there are trials, first trials are over with

very, very successful positivity.

They've gotten ready.

They're going for phase two of the trials.

This thing is on fire.

And if you guys hadn't found this wonderful laboratory

inside the Cleveland Clinic 11, 12 years ago,

wow, it gets me emotional to think about it.

Got nothing to do with me.

It's all of the...

I know, it's the girls.

Ladies, that got it all going more and more.

So just walk me through specific numbers

that you would put on a scoreboard as an example.

For my service advisor,

we would put various numbers on there, big whiteboard.

We would have things like car count, margins.

What the goal was, car count, margins, average repair order.

I'm gonna talk a little bit about something

with average repair order in just a moment

because I think it's huge.

But again, if we hit the number,

we wrote it down for every day.

What were the results every day?

Service advisor would write it down.

If we hit the number, we'd use a green,

right on a dry erase board, a green marker.

If we did, we would use a red.

So it was very obvious.

But so many times what we would uncover

is maybe the advisor would say,

man, we had a slow week.

We'll define slow.

We took a look at it.

Maybe it wasn't a car count problem.

Maybe it was an average repair order problem.

So some things that we might wanna do with that

for the technician, I had the technician

record their hours every day.

When they were done every day,

they knew kind of what was expected of them

and they would record their hours.

We would even have a top dog trophy

at the end of the month, whatever tech.

Same trophy, we just moved it from toolbox to toolbox.

But it was a little bit of a bragging, right?

So there's a lot of different things to track.

But one of the things I always feel like

you have to kind of start with is stories.

I think stories around everything,

that's the why in a business.

And a quick example, if I might use a quick story

that I, and I've used this with the shop owners

that I coach and all of that,

but the light bulb goes off for folks.

So billable hours, I mentioned billable hours.

How the heck do we get our billable hours up?

And one of the stories I use in the shop

to start this whole thing, maybe track and technician hours,

I take a nice little Amazon box, four sides,

just a plain old box.

And on one side, I write $150, right?

Talking about this in the meeting,

here's this box, 150 bucks.

And I said, let's say this box represented

a $150 part that's gone missing, right?

Core, alternator, you know, whatever it is, right?

It got delivered, I'm reviewing the invoices and it's gone.

I know we would be what I call dumpster diving for it, right?

What happened to it?

We'd be looking for it and I get everybody to agree.

Now I turn the box around and guess what's on the other side?

It says one hour, pretty much the same dollar amount, right?

$150, maybe your average labor rate's $150.

I'm just using that for an example.

Why don't we look for that?

Yeah, you also lost the cost of the part

plus maybe the hour that it took to put it on, right?

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, I think the why is always important, so.

Absolutely.

We try to do that.

In fact, the why, that three letter word in my mind,

you know, after I've read Simon Sinek

and we've done shows on why and so many coaches come on

and talk about why, every time I look at an issue

or talk to people, I always think of why.

So why?

And if you keep drilling down into the why,

you will find something that will finally be relatable

to the individual who may not get and understand

because there's always a why behind things.

And another comment that I have and I'd like to know from you,

if in these scoreboards that say there's one for back of shop,

one for front of shop, I believe that the back of shop people

that know what the goals or the scoreboard is

for front of shop and front to back makes them more engaged

in creating a total comprehensive business.

Yeah, most definitely.

We reviewed all of that on a weekly meeting.

And, you know, weekly meetings are very, very important.

You know, often we would have the,

even a team member lead the weekly meeting,

but that's what we would go over the results.

What else is, I don't want to say what else is there.

Maybe that's not the right statement,

but think about a sports team.

We talked about gamifying this business, right?

What happens?

Your football team, your hockey team, they're watching tape.

They're reviewing their performance.

What did we do well?

What do we need to do better?

And your shop should be no different.

Absolutely agree.

In a lot of our people that are in back of shop

may not necessarily know why the goals are set

for front of shop.

And maybe some of our newer people on our counters

don't really understand what the hell

we're trying to do in the back of shop.

One of the things that I think about a lot

is in these scoreboards and it's public to everyone.

Does there end up being some competition that isn't healthy?

Well, I like healthy competition.

I think that that is good, but of course there is.

And, you know, when I say unhealthy,

you can't always expect everybody has to have different goals.

So if we're going to use those technician hours as a goal,

I may not be able to expect my entry level tech.

I know, Karman, I've got to go to your rise document

to find the proper name for that, right?

Every time I hear you say the word technician,

I think of the word specialist in my mind.

Yes, yes.

Specialist, I know, yes, I know.

I got to wash my mouth out with soap.

I forgive you, my friend.

But I can't expect the same for every tech,

you know, an entry level specialist

isn't going to be the same as a high level technician.

Absolutely, and in those meetings,

you can handle that overview.

Listen, Bob, you did great this week.

I know you're just a couple of years in this business.

You've got a great career path in front of you.

And don't be upset that Charlie,

who's been in this for 20 years, is the board leader.

You're going to get there.

Yep, nope, absolutely.

And again, diagnosing where the problem is,

it may not be an underperforming technician.

Sometimes I feel so many of those technician productivity

problems are a shop problem, a shop efficiency problem.

Well, that technician may be there, you know,

40 hours a week, but I only got him

underneath the hood of the car, 32 hours a week.

You know, eight hours, he's missing in action.

Listen, you got any stories to tell about,

I've done the scoreboard, and you go back in your mind

or talk about a client that you have,

that they start seeing a behavior change.

Yeah, that's it exactly.

You know, the word behavior change is really important.

I'm going to give you an example for average repair orders.

You know, in my opinion, the most important thing,

if you're going to increase an average repair order,

is to focus on a couple of areas.

Hours presented, in other words,

how many hours are we finding per vehicle?

Before I reveal what I feel are the good numbers

in that area, let's take a look at the cars

coming in our shop today.

The average vehicle in the US is approaching 13 years old,

12.8, 12.6, something like that.

You know, how many average miles per year are driven?

You know, call it 10, 12, 15, but you know,

100,000 miles or more, you know,

we often find what the vehicle brought it in for

and maybe the safety issues,

but how many of those cars are running around

with batteries that are four or five years old,

original spark plugs, all of that.

So we always preach, tell the customer the whole picture,

tell them everything.

So back to those hours presented,

a lot of shops are finding eight hours or more per vehicle.

That measures the quality of the inspection.

So if I focus on eight hours presented per vehicle,

I'm gonna present all of that to the customer

with good photos, good images that the DVI tells the story.

We've seen average arrows, you know,

go from 45 $600 to doubling that,

approaching $1,000 and more, focusing on behaviors.

So is that something you wanna create

a scorecard for you, Beth?

Okay, so let me go down another lane here.

I'm gonna make a right on you, okay?

Gonna make a right.

You've got this incredible digital vehicle inspection,

this thorough comprehensive vehicle review,

which I like to call it.

And you're listening to phone calls as an owner

or as a coach and you're seeing

where the missed opportunities are.

When you do this or you're working with an owner

that's listening and looking for lost opportunities,

how do you turn that around into a positive

for a client advisor?

Years ago, I can remember going to listen

to some motivational speakers

when they were doing those tours, you know,

I listened to Lou Holtz and a famous football coach,

you know, championships with Notre Dame.

I think he just recently passed, not that long ago.

He did and I've read a book of his, yes.

Yeah, but man, one of the things he said

that stuck out with me is when you're trying

to change behavior results,

criticize the performance, never the performer.

And think about how powerful that statement is, right?

When we're looking at numbers,

we're not looking at the person saying, you know,

why didn't you hit the numbers?

We're looking at the performance, the score on the board.

How can we change that?

So when you have somebody, you know,

maybe underperforming a little bit,

the first thing that goes through my mind is,

let's get it diagnosed, right?

Diagnose the problem and how can I help?

Makes all kinds of sense.

Any owner who's listening to this,

we've all been in a situation where, good God,

you get criticized and you really get down for it

on a personal basis.

You can do better.

I know you.

You're not having a great month here, Bob.

I saw you do this and, you know,

the performance wasn't quite up to the specifications

that we've always expected from you

and that you have inside of you.

That's a completely different way.

Yeah, help me help you.

To walk away and say, I can be better.

You turn the I that you were told to the I can be better.

You know, you, you, you instead of I, I, I.

Anyway, that is such a profound statement.

And I think we as leaders of our industry need to figure out

how is it that I'm going to lift people?

I have to lift them in a positive way,

not in a negative way.

That's your point.

Yeah, that's for sure.

That's for sure.

Yes, and you know, if you're always there,

just like a parent trying to help your child,

you know, get better and better.

All right, got any great challenges

for the shop owners that are listening here?

Yeah, I would say pick something.

You know, I pick one things that you got to start somewhere.

We mentioned a few things like make sure

that you've got a scoreboard that's visible.

Make sure that the player is the one

who's actually recording the score.

I mentioned stories.

I think you got to have a story with everything.

Make it interesting.

That's how you got to gamify it.

You know, so, you know, pick one, start somewhere

and start to create that game into your shop.

No doubt you can lift your culture.

You can make this almost segregated

individualistic thing into a much better whole.

Yeah, involve them in the solution.

We started off with that.

I mentioned...

Yeah, and I was just thinking,

I don't want anyone to stop and think

since the scoreboard is up

and it's an individualistic thing,

I think, and again, to your point,

if everybody is listed

and there may be a little competition,

it's still part of the whole success of the business

and the contributions that they make for that.

Absolutely.

Look at any sports, you know, they're not one person.

It takes a team.

Everyone knows their role.

Everybody works to their highest level of competition

and they win for the team.

Wow.

All right, hey, this was great, thank you.

I think this was just a wonderful episode.

I think there's a lot of stuff

that are going to make our listeners think

deep, long and hard about how to bring gamification

into their business and you told us a lot of great stories.

Wow.

Say hello to Laura, Jerry Frank

from MaverickShopOwners.com

and ServiceAdvisorTraining.com,

former shop owner for how many years were you in the shop?

Longer than I can count, you know, 35 years, yeah, long time.

Another Coffee with Karm and a Coach episode.

Thanks, Jerry.

Thanks, Karm, for having me, appreciate it.

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 Karm Capriato YouTube channel.

Karm is all for advancing the professional automotive service

industry.

Until next time.

About this episode

Jerry Frank joins Karm Capriotto to discuss how gamification can transform auto repair shop culture and boost profitability. Inspired by a highly competitive staff bowling night, Frank shares how shop owners can channel that natural drive into daily operations. The conversation highlights the critical step of diagnosing root business problems—like service advisors throttling phone calls or inefficient processes—before implementing solutions. By building a clear, visual "scoreboard" for key metrics, shop owners can align their teams, increase billable hours, and turn daily targets into an engaging game everyone wants to win.

ASE certification average repair order billable hours digital vehicle inspection gamification PicoScope

Original notes

Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS Watch Full Video Episode

What if your shop operated like a championship team, where everyone knew the score and was motivated to win together?

Gerry Frank, business coach and former shop owner of 35 years, joins Carm Capriotto to explain how gamification can transform an auto repair business by increasing profitability, accountability, and employee engagement. Rather than relying on pressure or incentives alone, Gerry shares a practical system that turns daily performance into a shared game built around visibility, ownership, and teamwork.

What You'll Learn

Why diagnosing the real business problem is more important than applying quick fixes.
How visible scoreboards create accountability and keep the entire team focused on shared goals.
Why technicians and service advisors should update their own scores instead of management.
Which key performance indicators matter most, including car count, billable hours, margins, and hours presented.
Why aligning the front and back of the shop creates stronger teamwork and better customer outcomes.
How storytelling helps employees understand the importance behind the numbers.
A leadership approach that improves performance by focusing on results instead of criticizing people.

Gamification isn't about making work feel like a game, it's about giving every employee clear goals, measurable results, and ownership of their performance. When leaders diagnose problems correctly, track meaningful metrics, and connect the numbers to a larger purpose, they create a culture where accountability, engagement, and profitability naturally grow. Gerry Frank, former shop owner, trainer and coach for Maverick Shop Owners Want a more profitable shop? Start with your service advisor. They are the face of your business, the voice on the phone, and the key to every approved repair. Download 'Words That Work - The Service Advisor's Complete Phone Scripts Playbook at https://serviceadvisortraining.com/ Learn more about NAPA Auto Care and 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 onsite training and six days a week of support and local representation. Find NAPA TRACS on the Web at http://napatracs.com/

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Remarkable Results Radio Podcastwith Carm Capriotto:Facilitating Wisdom Through Story Telling and Open Discussion.https://remarkableresults.biz/
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The Auto Repair Marketing Podcast: Marketing Experts Brian & Kim Walker Work with Shop Owners to Take it to the Next Level.https://autorepairmarketing.captivate.fm/
The Weekly Blitz: Weekly Inspiration with Business Coach Chris Cotton from AutoFix - Auto Shop Coaching.https://chriscotton.captivate.fm/
Speak Up! Effective Communication: Develop Interpersonal and Professional Communication Skills with Craig O'Neill.https://craigoneill.captivate.fm

Remarkable Results Radio Podcast

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