Is AI and New Technology Good for Auto Repair? Sunil Patel and Kieran O'Brien

If we can, if we can give them the same, if not a better experience, ideally a better experience than the dealerships are giving them, then there's no reason for them to go back. If we can keep that car on the, on the road even longer, we save the customer money and we give them a better experience through the process.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jada Mechanic podcast. We're sitting here still in Sunny Las Vegas, Nevada for the SEMA Apex Show. I'm sitting here with two new friends, Sunil Patel from Techmetric and Kiran O'Brien from Techmetric and Shop Genie. How are you guys today?

We're doing great, Jeff. Thank you for having us on the podcast.

Thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having us.

This is, this is exciting stuff. I'll tell you right now. The shop that I was just my last place of employment, first time I'd ever seen techmetric. Never been exposed to anything like that in my life. Every place else had always been either the dealership software or handwritten paper.

Wow.

So, you know, what you guys do is a pretty cool, vital thing. Now that I think I don't understand how every shop doesn't already have it. So where does it come from? Sunil, where did you.

So I ran a repair shop for 11 years and we were always printing out repair orders for technicians then they were, there was a lot of disconnected processes that we had at the repair shop.

Right.

And ultimately Tekmetric is born because of not having solid systems and tools that we could use at a repair shop. So after 11 years I'm like, you know what, there's got to be something better out there. This is 2000. So in 2007 I started my repair shop and I sold it in 2016. And iPhone was already out.

Right.

2007. And even up until 2016 there's really nothing out there. Cloud based, everything is on prem on server, workstation, CDs, updates, downloads. And I'm like, why has nobody done this before? And that's how TechMetric was born, essentially.

Right on, right on. And you kind of have a pretty interesting background because you, you didn't grow up the traditional way of like a lot of shop owners. You didn't start out as a tech. Can you kind of share? Because I know a little bit of the story, but I find it kind of fascinating.

So I was a physician in, I finished my medical training, was in Detroit. My wife got residency there and took my car in for an alignment at a repair shop that's in Commerce Township in Michigan.

Okay.

And the guy was a physician and the owner of that shop. And so he and I started talking and I came home, light bulb went off, told my wife, I'm done with medicine, and ultimately went down the path of opening a repair shop in Houston. And, and then I did become the technician at the repair shop. So it was like a one man show for a very long time. And then I hired a technician eventually and then I got out of the weeds. But we predominantly did European and Italian vehicle service.

Cool. And I'm, I'm not as familiar with your background and you're, you're a younger, younger than, certainly than myself. Yeah. So, yeah. Share with me, Karen. Where are you from?

Yeah, I'm 25 years old. I grew up in Virginia. It's my hometown, Northern Virginia, right outside of Washington, dc.

Okay.

And I became exposed to the automotive industry at a pretty young age. So I was, I think I was 16 years old. And this guy named Matt, Matt Curry, he owned Curry's Auto Service in Northern Virginia. He was really successful. He had I think 11 locations and he was a high school dropout and had ADHD and wrote a book about his struggles with ADHD and becoming an entrepreneur and a business owner through it. And he kind of became a mentor of mine. So his son actually went to my high school and that's how I kind of knew about him. And my dad also was friends with Matt as well.

So at a, from a very young age, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to own my own business. I didn't, I didn't want to go to college and kind of follow the traditional route.

Right.

And again, I'm from like a, you know, middle class town in Virginia. There wasn't many entrepreneurs. Everybody in my town being outside the D.C. area, everybody in my town growing up, all my friends, their parents just worked for the government.

Right.

You know, just like a job in a cubicle in some office building in D.C. and that was pretty much all I was exposed to. Right. You know, I, I never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. We didn't grow up poor by any means.

Right.

But you know, there was, I was never exposed to business or wealth or, or money or any of those things. Like, my dad drove a beat up 2006 Honda Accord my whole childhood. And so this guy Matt always had cool cars. And I remember he, he was driving around town in a Ferrari one time. And you know, my, my, my hometown in Virginia, you just, you didn't see cars like that, right? And so as a 16 year old boy, I had the, you know, the posters up on my wall, like one day I want to own a Ferrari. And I just being, you know, naive and immature, I was just like, this guy has one. I'm going to just do whatever he's doing. I'm just going to follow suit.

And so I, I emailed Matt and come to find out, you know, he's like, hey, I just, I own a bunch of auto repair shops and I just sold them, you know, a few years back. And so when I met him, it was kind of interesting because right around the time that I met him, his non compete with the company that he sold his chain of repair shops to was coming to an end. And he was, you know, quote unquote retired at the time, but he wanted to come out of retirement and start buying up failing auto repair shops and turning them around. And so fast forward to today, he's got now seven locations again, his second chain of shops. They're now on Tech Metric and Shop Genie, which is, you know, full circle moment for me. But you know, I got to give credit to him. He's the one that showed me the ropes of not only the automotive industry and automotive repair, but also business and entrepreneurship and business ownership. And that was kind of the early inspiration for me.

So I ended up helping him out with his marketing back in 2016, 2017, when I was still in high school. And ultimately that led me to, you know, not going to college, not pursuing a degree like all my friends did. And I, I built a couple companies and, you know, tinkered with things over the years and eventually found the idea for Shop Genie.

So, so what was it like for you then? Was that a major shift to go from? I have to think it would be to go from medical to, to going into a shop and starting to, to wrench on cars.

It's sure. But you got to understand that. So when I was growing up as a kid, I would always work on a station, an old 1978 Ford Z for station wagon with my dad. And so like, I was always inclined to wrench.

Okay.

I only went to medicine because of my parents. Like there was something that was aspirational for them, but I really wasn't into it. I did complete medical school, but it wasn't something that I really liked doing. So, you know, my entire time, even at med school, at home, I'm always tinkering. I'm very mechanically inclined. I love wiring, diagrams, retrofitting, coding. So it's just it was a natural fit for me.

So you didn't. You. You didn't find it. The stumbling blocks ended going into the automotive repair as a career was. What were they for you?

I'm going to answer that a little differently. I didn't find any stumbling blocks because I was too naive, and I didn't think about how much money am I going to make owning a repair shop or am I going to be able to feed my family or. All I did was just focus on building the best repair shop with transparency for the vehicle owners out there in Houston. And how can we give a better level of experience than all of the franchise dealerships?

And it worked.

Yeah, it worked.

Sometimes it really is that simple. Just advocate for the customer in the right way. You know what I mean? It's not terribly complicated. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And I got to give, you know, one more shout out to Matt. I think that is one of the things that he really ingrained into me when I was. When I was younger was customer service. His repair shops were kind of known in my hometown as like, the shop to go to if you wanted the best experience, the best customer experience.

Right.

And I think I brought that with me through my different entrepreneurial endeavors. Shop Genie especially. I mean, I think that the biggest thing that we nailed at Shop Genie was the customer service. And, you know, TechMetric does that also very well. I think that's why, you know, the, you know, the merger that just happened makes so much sense is because, you know, just like when Sunil was running his repair shop or when Matt was running his repair shops, you know, no matter what business it is, whether it's an auto repair shop, a software company, doesn't matter. If you just obsess and focus on the customer, everything else will fall into place and the money will come 100%.

100%. It's really that simple. Right? It's. It's. I hate to always. Sometimes where people, they always. The restaurant and the auto repair analogy always come up, but, I mean, successful restaurants are successful because the number one focus is the customer goes out of there feeling like they had a good meal and they got their value. Right? It really is that simple.

We can transfer that to. To our industry every day, and we should be trying to do that. You know, you need those people coming back, and you need those people to tell five other people that I had the best steak I've ever had at that restaurant and works the same way. I had the best oil change. You know, service should have been what people look at as an inconvenience. And go. It was flawless. You know, it was hardly an inconvenience.

It was. I got in when I was supposed to and I got out when I was supposed to. Like everybody, you know, everybody treated me well. That's what we need to be working towards. Yeah, yeah. What? So how did. Because I'm trying to unlock how you in the business then developed the tech metric thing.

So running a repair shop, not having great technology, I'm like, there's got to be something better out there. So I hired a local dude development firm to help me build the software. It ultimately failed after a year and we had to make a decision of do we just pull the plug on this or do we actually continue? And we decided to continue and we decided, decided to hire our first UX designer and we spent six months at least with him on just screens of what this potential product can look like.

Right.

And then we hired our first engineer, which was a referral from that designer. And he is now today our Chief Technical officer, Taylor Fuqua. So you've been with us since the beginning and we've just slowly focused on delivering best in class service and products for our customers. And that's essentially one us more customers than anything. If you look at like just some of our lead flow funnels, half of our referral, Half of our lead flows, referrals from existing customers.

Right? Yeah, yeah. DVI is such a. Like I'd never done one till I started with a tech metric shop. And it completely stood me on my ear of like how much more effective this transaction should have always been between customer and, you know, motorist or if you want to say customer and technician, shop owner, whatever, like it. Why we didn't have that so many years ago or weren't embracing it. I wish we had so many things would have been so much more effective early on in my career if we'd have had that available to us. So, you know, and then I can remember having to like just pencil whip inspection sheets right at the dealership because that's what was expected. That's the time frame that we had allowed.

And what I've loved about the DVI is it slows things down to be able to show to the customer so that they come in expecting to see the same inspection every time. And the evolution of the aging of the vehicle, I guess if you could say that, right. Like, you know, we don't want to see obviously require more and more and more, you know, but it is a natural progression of a car as it will Degrade. I want them to be more familiar with the processes. Guess what I'm trying to say where it's like, look at that going. Okay, good. It's still, you know. Yeah.

That I think is so key because otherwise consistency is some things that in a lot of our industry it lacks. Right. One person says that that's red and should be repaired immediately. Somebody else says that's yellow, it can wait six months. I always struggled with that, you know, because it was like, I don't know their particular habits, their conditions, what the road is like, all that kind of stuff. It may. That tie rod may be only yellow to you. I've lived in some neighborhoods where that tie rod was going to break if they drove it around in that tie rod in that neighborhood for another week.

Like it need, it should have been in red. You know, those kind of things. We can't always. There's no book that says exactly like this is how you must do it by this date. But I always looked at that as like, if we just are transparent with the customer, ultimately we're leaving the decision in their hands anyway. But the more tools that we have to be able to show them the situation that's going on, just the better. So what, so how, what is the Shop Genie? What does it bring to the industry?

Yeah, so when I was again back working with Matt Shops back in the day, I just recognized that similarly to Sunil, that software in this industry was so outdated. And the analogy that kind of like the software world uses is this concept of control points in a business. So if you're able to run either the front of house or the back of house of a business, then you'll have a successful software startup if you can do that well. And so the, to use the restaurant analogy, right, you've got Toast or something or Micros from Oracle or something like that running the back end of the shop. And then on the front end you've got something like OpenTable. Right. For example, for, for online booking and things like that. And so in the auto repair industry, it's very similar.

You've got your back of house, your shop management system, and then you've got your front of house. But what I discovered is, you know, there was companies, this is two, three years ago, there was companies like TechMetric that were doing really well and becoming very successful with the back of house, the payment processing, the DVIs, the workflow management, all of those things. And the front of house was being neglected for two reasons. Number one is companies like TechMetric were super busy and had their plates full with all the things on the back, back of house, helping the technicians do their jobs better. They didn't have time to focus on the front of house. And then the other aspect of it, what was that there was so many vendors on the front of house that were just fighting for the business from these shop owners and they were all disparate, disconnected, independent companies, right? And so that's what I saw. I would talk to these shop owners that I was working with because I had a marketing agency before I got got into software. I was doing marketing and website development and Google pay per click and those types of things for shops.

And I would talk to them and they'd be like, oh, well, you know, I have a, I have a mailer company and then I have a website company and then I have a Google pay per click company. Then I have a scheduling tool through acuity and then I have, I have a CRM here and then I have a texting platform and then I have a reviews platform and then a phone system and the list would go on. And none of those companies were under the same roof. They were paying, they were paying one or two vendors on the back end, usually a shop management system, maybe a payment processor, and TechMetric has already kind of consolidated those things. But then on the front end they were paying six or seven or eight different vendors sometimes. And it was just madness to me. And I said, not only do I think technology could do this better and just purely have a better outcome for the shop owners, but it could also save them a lot of money because they're paying all these different vendors every single month. And then what's worse is all these vendors are trying to take credit for everything, right? So the website company is trying to take credit for the guy that came in and spent a couple thousand dollars on, you know, a tie rod replacement or whatever it was.

And then the, the pay per click company is over there, the CRM companies over there saying, no, no, actually that was us. We sent this text message out. And so all that noise goes away when you have one source of truth and one vendor, right? And not to mention the thousands of dollars that you're saving the shop owner, the small business owner. And so I recognized this and the other big kind of trend that we were spotting was that online scheduling was becoming extremely popular in other industries, in the H Vac industry, in the restaurant industry and all these places. And it was not catching wind in the automotive industry. And I kept asking myself why? And the reality is it's because the workflow and the information needed prior to a vehicle coming into the shop is so, so unique and nuanced for auto repair as compared to a restaurant. Right.

For sure.

You want to come in and get a table at a restaurant, they have a certain amount of steaks in the freezer. They know how many tables they can seat, they know how many steaks they can sell. It's, it's relatively simple compared to automotive where you're talking about diagnostics, you're talking about, you know, thousands of different makes and models of vehicles that are out there. You need parts availability, all these question marks. Yeah, that, that you don't want to show up at the shop and have a terrible experience because the shop's unprepared for you. And so we realized we're like, you know, technology is at a point now where we can solve most of these problems. And so Shop Genie's first ever product that we built was our online scheduling tool back in 2021. We pilot tested it with a few shops that we were working with at our marketing agency and we started to solve some of these problems.

And the first one was like, well, how I can only take a certain amount of waiters per day.

Okay, check.

We've solved that problem. It's like, oh, well, I want, when a customer comes in, I want to be able to upsell them declined services before they get to the shop.

100% check.

We built that functionality and then the list goes on. It's like, oh, I only, I can take five oil changes a day, but only one diagnostic job per day because I only have one tech that can do that. So technician skill level based availability for the, for the end consumer online. Check. And so we just kept checking off these boxes for the shops that we were working with and just again kept listening to our customers and had these feedback loops very similar to how techmetric built their early products. And that was it. That was our first product at Shop Genie was that booking tool. And then we expanded our product suite from there to start integrating more and more vendors and consolidating for these shop owners.

Love it. What is the. So what's the biggest frustration that you see most shop owners? Technician shortage taken off the table for that particular moment. But what's the biggest obstacle that you always see? Like if you could say the one thing that they all seem to have in common when they get to you and say, I need something to do this, what is it?

I think for us at techmetric, I won't speak about shops, you need us at techmetric probably building jobs efficiently and quickly and our smart jobs tool solves that with one click. And we've hybrid been hyper focused on that, devoting a lot of resources toward it and expanding the number of jobs so that, you know, typical job takes about 60 to 80 clicks to build by the time you're done building an oil change. Looking up quartz, how many, what type of weight of the oil it is. Do you have it in stock?

Yes.

What's the filter? Yeah, do you have that in stock? Shopping for the parts, is it a package price? Like think about all of that whole workflow and we managed to do in one click. So that's probably what of the areas that our shops love.

Yeah, that's, that's cool because I know that's the same thing. Like, you know, there's so much just what seems like a simple oil change. But like every car that comes in now, you know, has a different. Nobody wants to overfill, nobody wants to underfill. You know, nobody wants to put the wrong oil in. Like, that's just all bad. You know, reset processes. Like to get the oil life monitor reset, all that thing has to be built into it, right?

Yeah.

And it's tricky. It's tricky. Like, and that's just an oil change. That's a basic service. You know, when we multiply that by we're going to do a water pump on this particular car and you know, it's a timing belt driven water pump. So now what else are we doing while we're in there? A lot. It just keeps adding up and adding it up. Whereas Lucas has shown me how it's like, he's very good at being able to go back and find that same repair done on a different car.

Immediately pull that work order and that's your baseline to where you start on what you need to do this repair. I think that's just when I think of how that was common when I worked at the dealership because we working on one line, you get to be like, how many steering racks are we putting in a caravan this week? Four. Okay. Like we know how to build that job. We've already built it three times. But when I think of it when I go back into the aftermarket and nobody thought to even, well, Mrs. Smith has the same car. Let's pull up Mrs.

Smith's RO and see exactly what that part number was. Right. Does it still fit? Same car. Cool labor. Cool. What did we run into on that job when we did it that maybe blew the efficiency off or you know, the screw the margin up. Nobody ever did that. And as a technician, I'm just like, how do you guys not do that? So I can, I can appreciate where you guys are coming from because it's like a lot of people just, I think we put our heads down and we treat every RO like it's another ro.

But yet some things, if we look to see what's in common, we can really speed up the process. Right?

Yeah.

That's cool, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And on our side, so full transparency, I don't talk to a lot of technicians because technicians don't use Shop Genie.

Right.

I talk to a lot of service advisors and a lot of shop owners. The thing that we see on our side, your question was kind of like the biggest issue thing that we see on the Shop Genie side is close ratio and sales skills and sales training to enhance those sales skills. Right. And you know, most technicians understand this. Right. The amount of hours that you're able to turn is entirely dependent on how good your Service advisor is.

100%.

If they can sell more work, you get more hours. And it's as simple as that. And you know, people, a lot of people outside the industry don't realize that auto repair is a sales game. Oh, you're there as a service advisor, you're there to sell work at the counter. And if you're not good at it, the business suffers, the owner suffers, the technician suffers, technician's gonna leave and go somewhere else. Right. And so training service advisors to be good at their job, to be good at the front counter and taking mundane activities and work off their plate is super, super important. So that's the thing that we focus on at Shop Genie is number one, giving them their time back.

So using artificial intelligence and the online booking platform and all these things to keep the mundane conversations out of their way so they can focus on high impact tasks and activities, meaning they're not worrying about telling a customer where they're located. You know, sending, calling them to remind them of their appointment, calling, no shows to try to get them back in the shop. Shop Genie handles all of that.

Yeah.

And then with our, things like our phone system, for example, we're auditing calls using AI and giving feedback to shop owners and their advisors and their managers and basically telling them, hey, like this is how you could have done better on that call. This is why that call didn't close. This is how many dollars that that call turned into from a, from a repair order standpoint. And here's why it was Good or bad.

Yeah.

And using that as a feedback loop to constantly help sharpen the knife of that service advisor so that they can become better at their job, sell more work and give more hours to the technicians.

See, I've always found, and it's been an unpopular opinion and I've said it a couple of times in different the online groups, you guys have probably seen it is that I've said that right now like everybody is screaming for training, training, training, training. We got to train our text and I've argued we don't like. Yes, technicians need to be trained on the, on the forefront of the newest technology. But not every tech out there is hitting the newest technology every day. Right. We have a lot of people that are just doing the, the B level, C level kind of stuff. If we can't sell that work because we're not, we have a limited training budget. We apply it on technicians and we teach them like this is an EV training class.

We might never have an EV customer coming, but this is an EV training class. If you had $5,000 in a budget, you're going to send your text to that or you're going to send your advisors to a sales class. Send your advisors to the sales class because that's how you get to the next level of even getting that next level of car and client into your shop is being able to sell the work that comes in. It's unpopular, man. It's always and especially coming from me, my perspective, like I get challenged all the time. Why are you as a technician so running down service advisors, shop owners on their sales. Who are you? You don't even sell them. It's like because I know, I've seen cars that leave unsafe cars that need repair not perform because somebody at the counter just didn't feel like having a conversation, you know, or didn't want to have the difficult conversation.

Yeah. And it takes a special type of person to be able to get up there and give bad news in an effective manner. It's.

And you know the worst part, Jeff, is most shop owners don't even realize it's happening. It's happening. Especially multi location owners. You lose that, that grip on your business over time. Right. And it's natural. Any, any business that grows, you can't be everywhere all at once. And so you need to rely on your systems, you need to rely on your software platforms to help take some of that load off your shoulders so that you know that your guys are doing the right thing.

So Sunil, when you came in and you Start on your shop. How did. Was it. Was it. Was it. Were you okay with selling work or like did. Did. Was it an uncomfortable process at first or.

No, because authenticity is something that's super important for me.

Right.

And you know, high integrity, authenticity and transparency. So what we did was we used a Sony cyber shot digital camera. I don't know if you guys remember that, with a gum stick, memory cards.

Yeah.

So we would take pictures with that, upload them on the computer, attach them to an email, write comments between the pictures, send them to the customer, and then get approval on the repairs. So we did. That is a very manual process and it was just a normal thing that we did every day.

Yeah.

And so it. Once you did that and send it to the customer, we didn't really get involved in the selling process. It was just sells itself. Sells itself.

Amazing. Eh? But you were. That was pretty groundbreaking stuff for you to be doing that.

Yeah. That was in 08.

Nobody else in 08 was doing. I'll tell you right now, like, I guarantee it. Right? No one.

Yeah.

And that's, that's the beauty of this. Right. Because it, like, I can tell how you're. You're very good about what the advisors need to be doing. But I mean, like, I've seen the DVI when it gets to that level where it's effective and you've got the right customer base and everything, they're not really doing a whole like the, the advisor is just like forwarding.

Yeah.

You know, and then taking a, an email or a messenger or whatever. A click, a region screen to go. Okay. It's brooding like it's not in the traditional way. Where I used to go up to the. My, My advisors, they'd have 20 work orders on their desk and 20 customers to call. Right. And.

And it's no wonder by lunchtime, they've been there since seven. That they were frazzled for the day. And it was no wonder. And now because they didn't have this. It's amazing to me. I, I've struggled with the, the advisor thing because it's like we can implement DVI in a shop. We can follow a 300% rule, but it still comes back down to the person if they're not preparing the, The, The. The conversation that has to have.

Right. As to why. Because that's the thing. Somebody can look at that dvi and if they have value in the dvi, they go, okay, yeah, but if somebody doesn't value it and they've already said, I'm not interested in Getting anything more than an oil change here today, it's, we still have to give them the dvi. There's still a liability there of showing them that hey, there are some things that need to be addressed. But it's tough because like it doesn't help. Sometimes I think some people, I'm scared that the over reliance on this can take some of the, the people skills out of it. That where they develop, you know.

Do you understand what I'm coming from? Like it's, I've. Because I've worked with people that over relied on the DBI and if it didn't sell, oh well, it didn't sell. You know what if that person that's looking at that still doesn't really understand what they're looking at. You know what I mean? That was the trick for me. So it's, I'd like to see, I wish that people find a happy medium where we don't have to call every customer, but that we can have enough people that are still experienced, familiar and can have the conversation if we didn't have the dbi. Like look, for instance, if the system went down tomorrow, how many people could still go back out there and sell their table at work for the day? You understand what I mean? You're smiling. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah.

It should be a consultative process. And I'll say this, the shops that have the most revenue, highest aro that we work with at Shop Genie, like they're the ones that sit down with their customers on the couch in the waiting room and walk them through the DVI together.

Okay.

And those that like that human touch combined with technology is in my opinion the way that work gets sold most efficiently.

But you're so, but we don't want everybody to be a waiter though, right?

I mean when they come into, when they come in to drop off the vehicle or they, they ask for enough even over the phone, like walking through it in a consultative way and, and giving examples as to why this thing is yellow, why this thing's red. The, the ones that, the shops that do it in a consultative manner and they kind of help like get guide like their trusted advisor and they guide the customer through the process and understanding exactly what it means for them and their, their family, their vehicle, like all the things that it impacts. Those are, those are the shops that, that have the best numbers.

I think that's what's where it's so important again to know what was recommended last time and declined when they making their next appointment for you that needs to be at the forefront of your brain and what that was declined for and what they're coming in for and the pitch needs to be made. Hey, you know, and it, I've always said it doesn't have to be if it was done somewhere else, like you're going to punish them for that, you know what I mean? Like, say they were somewhere else. You haven't seen them in three months. And last time you told them and say somebody, you know did the job, so they went somewhere else. Right. You still have to have that conversation about, hey, last time you were in, we noticed X, Y and Z. Are you interested in doing that? And they say, oh, no, I had that done. So and so.

Cool. Okay, great, thank you. And move on with the rest of the transaction. Right. Continue to follow the process. Nothing drove me crazier than when the car comes in. There's all this recommended work from last time it was in. And I have to go and find all that recommended from last time.

Table it now with the same plus more that we find and the customer just to say no. And then it just becomes where all of a sudden now after your 18 months of dealing with this customer, we're trying to sell them on $5,000 worth of work. You know what I mean? Like at that point, for a lot of people, it's like, I'm just gonna get another car, you know, and that was always so for me, there always has to be a follow up, you know, And I love the process, but I still feel like some people are slipping. They're not getting the full effect of what you're trying to teach and what you guys are trying to teach. And it's. I'm just a technician, so it's hard for me. But I mean, as a technician that worked commission a long time, I knew how the conversation could go. I've stepped up to the counter more than once and had a conversation with a customer with the state of their vehicle and everything, and sold the work.

And maybe it's just because they trust me, because I'm the tech, but I don't feel that that should be. It shouldn't matter. They should trust the person at the counter who's not a tech or the tech just be trusting the whole business. You know what I mean?

Yep, I agree with you, Jeff. Yeah.

Yeah. I. Because I catch flack. Why are you so, you know, why do you care? Because I want everybody to succeed. I mean, it's, it's my betterment for the business to be successful, you know, if, if it's not, how am I long am I going to be employed here?

Best shops out there where the advisors and techs work in harmony together and, and they work as a team. It's not, you know, one side versus the other.

Yeah, that's, I lived in that line of work for so long because you know that it can become that rat race where it's all competing, competing, competing, competing. And advisors need techs to sell the work to get their commission. Technicians need the advisors to sell the work to get their commission. Like it works hand in hand. So what's the question I want to ask? So when you go out there, then you get a lot of resentment or kickback of people that don't want to adopt this now, or is it kind of coming where it's like a lot of people industry are really on board with this idea.

For us at techmetric, it's, it's a lot of people are on board with the idea. I think it's just making sure shops are adopting the best tool for them. There's so many different, you know, there's a lot of competitors out there too.

Right, right.

And ultimately making sure that shops find the right solution for them. But I do see that the, the transition from pen and paper, at least to a point of sale system is happening quite a bit.

Right.

But at the same time, consolidation is happening in the marketplace and some of these companies that are consolidating repair shops are looking for a single point of sale solution with better reporting and insights across their suite of stores.

What's, and what do you see? Like, where do you like, do you see any kind of like, is this is ever gonna stop?

Yeah, I think, you know, shop owners and service advisors and technicians having their preferences and opinions on this stuff is one thing. And I think that is certainly part of like, what's driving more technology into this industry. But the reality is the consumer is in control, the customer's in control, and we are at the mercy of customer thoughts and feedback and preferences. And so the reality is in 2024, if you're a shop that has a tech metric or a Shop Genie type tool and you're able to provide a modern customer experience to your customers, and the guy down the street isn't, guess who's gonna get the business, Guess who's gonna get the referrals? Because what we are starting to realize is again, back to the restaurant H Vac analogy. These customers are ordering everything on Amazon same day delivery. They're getting Uber Eats sent to their front door. They're going, they're having their, their plumber come to their house because they're booking everything online. They're booking their, their dinner reservations on OpenTable and they're paying with tap at their table through toast and.

All right, so all these other industries are being modernized by technology and that's creating a new standard, a new baseline of expectation for the American consumer. And so when they walk into their local auto repair shop, they're expecting that as well. And so again, if one shop has it and one shop doesn't, it's, it's over time. The one shop that has it is going to rise to the top. And that's just purely, it's the free market. It's how, it's how consumers are expecting to be treated in, in this day and age. And so I think there's, there is definitely, you know, owners and techs and service advisors that are pulling the industry forward. And I love that.

And I think that is, that's the ideal way for this to happen, for this modernization, digitization of this, of this industry. But the reality is the consumers are also pushing it forward.

Yeah.

And so both things are kind of happening at the same time.

And that's a trippy thing for me to deal with. Right. Because I'm 48, so I grew up before our cell phone and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, now it's, it's a big part of my life. Like it's, we're all sitting here with them right within hand reach. But I have had clientele who they don't even. Like my own father, he never turns on his cell phone unless it's for an emergency. You know, the rest of time, like when he takes his truck into the dealership, it would need to be something.

He would be sitting there waiting for them to come out and see him or he would expect a phone call at home. You know, I mean, he would never open an email at home. Now granted, he's 81 years old, but is there, there's an age demographic to this, I think guys where it's like, how do, is there, is there a way that we can push the technology towards the, the elder class? I guess without, I don't want to say in a manner that would be offensive to somebody, you know, I mean, the less tech savvy people, how do we still get them into this kind of platform? Because we don't want to lose them as a, as a proponent of the business. Right.

Yes, there's. I'll spin this in two different ways, yes. One of the things for 2025 that's super important for us is CX, which is customer experience. And when I say customer experience, I'm referring to our shop owner customers. And one of the phrases that we're using for that is every interaction counts. And because CX is not tied to age, demographics, race, religion, it is just providing the best experience for a user regardless of anything. And so that removes that bias of age in this instance. So we have to work extra hard as a company to ensure that we meet our customers where they want to be met.

Yes.

And so we are going to be heavily focused on that next year. But on the flip side, today what we do is, you know, we do have aging population of shop owners that do want to try and adopt technology. So we'll, we'll take it a step further and we'll, we will provide optional in shop training, handholding. We want to make sure they're very comfortable with a new point of sale solution in case they were using something older or on pen and paper.

Yeah.

On the consumer side too, you know, when we launched our online scheduling tool, this was a kind of a common misconception, I think, in the industry was like, oh, this is for Gen Z. This is for young people because they're used to just doing everything on their phones. And so to your point earlier, you know, the older population that maybe doesn't have a cell phone or what have you, there's certainly truth to that. There are definitely a lot of people out there that are in that world, in that camp. But you know, my own grandparents, right, they're not the most tech savvy, right? But they have iPhones and they book their, their airline flights on, you know, booking.com or whatever it is, and they make dinner reservations on OpenTable. Like they've, they're learning how to use this stuff. And so I do think there's a level of, you know, like there's a lot of people that think that this is, this, these technology trends in automotive or any other industry are just the young people. But the reality is it's trickling down to every age demographic.

And there are a lot of people in their 70s, 80s, 90s that are starting to adopt this technology and starting to expect it across all these different industries. And of course, the young people now becoming adults and starting families, they're, they're pushing that forward as well. So I don't think it's actually secluded to one, one age group or, or, or anything like that.

So the shop owner then that has a predominantly older. Older clientele shouldn't be disregarding what you guys are bringing to the table.

Definitely.

And sit there and say, oh, that would never work. My people, my age group is this. Yeah, that's. That's baloney then, obviously.

Definitely.

Yeah, I. I love it. I mean, I'm so. I'm excited for where this is going because, I mean, if it can speed up, you know, the process for so many technicians and so many shop owners only everybody within the building, if it can speed it all up, we all get more work done. And that's what this is all about for me is it's just like every technician out there just wants to fix as many cars as possible. We just want to get through, you know, we want to do it well. We want to do it right. Want to have the customer not be dissatisfied.

Like, this isn't an us versus them. I think never. It never has been. It's just always been seen that way. You know, technicians are against advisors, advisors against technicians. That's a culture thing that, like, so much more of these kind of tools can just improve the culture as an. As a after effect. Not even like a.

That's the main goal, but it just happens that way. It's so cool. Yeah.

And, you know, you mentioned the technician shortage earlier, and you're kind of an example of this, Right. It's if. If a shop owner that refuses to adopt technology because they think that their customers don't care about it, or they think they're too old to learn it, or whatever the case is, whatever story they're telling themselves, if they are trying to hire somebody like yourself, for example, who knows and loves a tool like TechMetric, and they want to get you to come in and, you know, let's say the money's the same. One shop uses TechMetric, one doesn't. They're on pen and paper writing estimates. It's a pretty obvious choice for you, right? As a tech.

Yeah, I want to use the tech metric. I don't want to go back to pen and paper.

Exactly. So you're. You're cutting down the talent pool instantaneously by not adopting tools like this. Same goes for advisors.

Yeah. And that's the thing. But, like, you wouldn't believe how, as a technician right now I'm, like, interviewing employers. I'm between jobs. I'm looking for jobs like you wouldn't believe how many people are still not using a shop software program like this. Well, what do you do? Well, they come out and tell me what I need. And then I build a work order. Okay, what do you do? What's he doing or she do in the meantime while you're doing that? Well, they wait.

Yep.

How's the waiting work for everybody's efficiency? Not worth a darn. Yeah, you know, like, that's, that's the struggle that I have now. But it's like, you could leave one shop and culture wise, could be really good, pay could be really good, but you could be going somewhere else and, like, it's not so good. And then how do you bring them into that fold of, hey, like, have you thought about doing this? That's a tricky thing for me as I age up as a, as a technician. When I, from experience, I start to bring to them more. Do you know there's businesses that do this, you know, and all of a sudden they look at you like, who the heck are you trying to tell me how to run my business, son? Like, and I'm not trying to tell anybody how to run their business. I'm just like, hey, I network with all these cool people with these cool programs. Have you ever heard of it? They've never looked into that.

Why do they. What's, what's the resistance, guys, to that?

I think change is difficult. It doesn't matter what it is. Like, point of sale, system, software, cell phone, car. Like, change is just something difficult to go over. It's just human nature, okay? So we have to come up with processes to help people overcome that difficulty and change.

And you just seem like just a very confident young man where you're so, like, you believe you're 1 million percent convinced whatever you put your mind to, you're going to be able to do.

I mean, I appreciate the compliment. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think in terms of the, you know, the topics that we're discussing, I think it's just undeniable. If you are a business owner and you look at the trends and you look at what's happening in other industries. I think ignoring this stuff is just, you're just delaying something really bad for your business. But yeah, to your point, I mean, this is a very antiquated industry. It's an industry that's always historically, you know, I think the kind of the adage is that the aftermarket is, you know, five to seven years behind the OE dealerships, et cetera. And so dealerships, a lot of the technology that Shop Genie has built, dealerships have had for years 100%.

Right. And it's just, we just lag behind as an aftermarket And I think that's one of the cool. You know, we talk about changing the industry podcast and you know, the stuff that Shop Genie and techmetric are doing. And like, we're trying to level up the industry as a whole and help close that gap. So we're not so far behind the OE dealerships and we're not so far behind the restaurants and the H Vac companies and all these other industries that are moving faster than we are. I don't particularly know why we're so far behind, but I think that gap is closing and people like the three of us and David and Lucas and everybody, like, we're all working to help make more progress there.

I think what happens too is a lot of time a customer say the car's under warranty and they're going back to the dealer for warranty work and a little bit of service model there, and they're used to a particular thing like this, these, these techniques that are always already happening. A DVI, the 300% rule, all that kind of stuff is being presented. And then they walk out when the car is not under warranty. Or maybe they just make a service provider change for whatever reason and they get to somebody that has a really good reputation, but they're doing everything on paper in a phone call. Like. And then we wonder why sometimes customers never they, they always are a dealer customer for life, even when the car's in a warranty. Or they're always an independent shop customer for life. That's sometimes wise.

The familiarity of how the system is. I think for years we never talked about it. I think for years a lot of customers that left the dealership and went to an independent all of a sudden are like, I didn't get called. I called at the end of the day, nobody had called me back. That can happen in a dealer too. But I mean, it's. Why. Why is that? Well, they had 18 work orders ahead of yours.

And it wasn't until after lunch before I could call. Where these processes and this, these kind of programs, they. That eliminates that a large part of it. And then so that customer gets treated with the exact same service that they would got the dealer from a standpoint of punctuality and all that kind of stuff and probably get a better result at an independent store. Yeah, but it's because they're there. We drop the ball in the aftermarket sometimes because we're not thinking that way. We're thinking we've always done it this way. And it's just the Way it is, I have 18, you know, you're number 18 of 17 ahead of you.

Nobody wants to hear that, you know.

And cars are more reliable and lasting longer than ever. Right. So there, there's way more cars out of warranty on the road today than there ever has been. The average vehicle age, I might be misquoting this, but 12 or 13 years old right now, that's about right. And so they have to go to the aftermarket shops. We have to service them as an industry. And I think that if we can, if we can give them the same, if not a better experience, ideally a better experience than the dealerships are giving them, then there's no reason for them to go back. If we can keep that car on the, on the road even longer, we save the customer money and we give them better experience through the process.

The dealerships don't. And they don't want 15 year old cars in their base, no matter what they say. That's like we sold Lucas's famous thing is like I forget who he spoke to. It's like we might, we sold that gm. That's always a GM customer. No it's not. They're just driving a gm. They're not your customer anymore because they were.

You guys would be working really hard to keep them in your bay and you're not. Because if somebody brings you a 15 year old car too many times on the phone call, they go, it's a what? Oh gee, I don't even know if I can get parts for that. Oh gee, that's going to be expensive right over the phone. It's not. You don't tell them that. That's just like you can be transparent without scaring them away and making them feel like you're not the best choice to come in and see. You know, I think that's where the aftermarket sometimes has been much more welcoming at the expense of getting in over their head a lot of jobs, right? Because I mean, can you get parts for it? You know, can your technician even understand some of the older technology now that's going on in cars, right when they're used to the new things, you know, like we talk about all the time, like communication problems in the car. We just grab a certain scan tool and we hook it up and the topology is all there.

A lot of us that grew up, we didn't have that available to us. So it was like we had to go interrogate it the old fashioned way, you know, so these guys, they don't even know. So that's where I think sometimes the, at a dealership. Well, I can remember like if you still went to Chrysler dealer and say, I have a 1994 caravan, they're not even gonna want to look at that car because the software that you might need to get into it, they don't even have it in the building anymore. Right. And then who are you going to find in there that's going to maybe know that weird wonky symptom that is doing and what it where they go back to? No one. No one. So whereas somebody in the aftermarket can go, oh yeah, okay, I got a tool for that.

Yep. You know, is the car worth doing the repair on? Well, that's where it now comes into. We have to be the advocate for the customer and look the whole car over. You know, the dealership, they don't care if it's, if it's, if it's really the best investment for the customer to do that repair. And I'm not trying to advocate and say that we have to tell the customer, no, you should not fix this. That's not what I'm trying to say. But we have to give them the whole condition of the car, not just look at what it came in for. Dealerships, just look at what it came in for.

Advocates for cars, independent, aftermarket, we're much better looking at the whole car and go, wow, gee, okay, cool. Right. That's what I think is most important when I think about advocating for my customers. Looking at the whole car, not just the problem that it's there for.

Yeah, agreed.

Yeah. Gentlemen, anything moving forward? Any suggestions? Can you give us any tidbits on what's coming up or for us?

Jeff, like I said, next year 25 is going to be big for us as far as tightening up our relationship with Shop Genie. Having an embedded all in one platform and then the customer experience piece, we're just going to take that up a notch and yeah. To, to give our users a whole new level of experience with our company.

Right on.

Yeah.

I mean that's the name of the game is, you know, TechMetric and Shop Genie are both customer obsessed companies and we're just going to continue to work for our customers and level up the industry.

So I love it. Well, gentlemen, thank you for dropping by real quick. I appreciate it. I've been looking forward to meeting both of you. So this has been really cool.

Thanks for having us, Jeff.

Thank you guys.

Thank you, Jeff.

We'll talk to you soon. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like comment on and share this episode. I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.

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