The Gearbox Podcast

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:13]:
My name is Jimmy Purdy, shop owner, master tech transmission builder, and the host of the Gearbox podcast. Here I talk with new and seasoned shop owners, as well as industry professionals about day to day operations within their own shops and all the failures and successes that come along the way from what grinds your gears to having to shift gears in the automotive industry. This is the Gearbox podcast. That's usually what. That's usually what half this stuff in the automotive field is anyway, right?

David Boyd [00:00:42]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:43]:
Everyone's just, like, full of anxiety and all the time. Yeah, but big purchases, you know, you just. I don't know. And then you go online and try to, like, get people's opinions, and it's like, that doesn't make it any better.

David Boyd [00:00:56]:
I. You know, I watch changing the industry a lot and. And, you know, other groups, and it proves everybody's got an opinion, you know?

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. And they're not. And they're not wrong. I mean, if that's what they truly believe. Like, so. Well, if that's what you think. Yeah, I don't know.

David Boyd [00:01:13]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:14]:
And you're, like, trying to figure out, well, is that the right way, or am I doing it the right way, or. I don't know, but it's funny. It's funny about the whole alignment, the whole alignment thing. Well, it's a lot of alignments, and it's like. Well, I look at it, like, because I guess a lot of the other places, like, you don't have smogs in Minnesota, right?

David Boyd [00:01:30]:
No, not anymore.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:32]:
So we did years ago. So that's a big expense. I mean, that machine is, like $60,000, and you get $50 a smog. Right? Like, you make $50 for each car on a 60, 60,000. Not just the machine, but then you got to get license, and it's like, you know, three or four grand.

David Boyd [00:01:49]:
Licensing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:49]:
Yeah, three or four grand. And, like, education and going to take the time to take the test and all that other stuff, and it's like, so how many smongs you got to do to pay that machine?

David Boyd [00:01:58]:
But you get to do an inspection on every vehicle, too, that you smog, right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:02]:
Um, some shops do, but typically, no, I mean, if you're trying to do $45 smogs and, you know, race to the bottom, like most smog shops do, because there's no quality smog check. Right? Like, you can't. Like, it's either you pass or you fail. Like, people aren't, like, shopping around and say, you know, like, you can find the best alignment guy, but who are you going to look for the best smog guy?

David Boyd [00:02:26]:
Like, in a smog test?

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:28]:
Yeah. Like, your best small guy is gonna be the one that passes something that shouldn't pass. And I don't think that makes him the best, but you know what I mean? So it's like all you can do is price your. Your price lower so you don't have time to do an inspection. So then you're. Then you're letting that walk away. And. I don't know, it's.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:46]:
It's pretty tough. And then they fail, and no one wants to be told that their car failed, so you're telling their kids ugly.

David Boyd [00:02:53]:
Good analogy, Jimmy.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:55]:
You know what I mean? Like, it runs fine. What are you talking about? It fail. It's like calling their kid stupid or something, you know? What do you mean? My kid failed algebra?

David Boyd [00:03:03]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:03:04]:
What are you teaching, this common core? That's the problem. You're the problem teacher. Yes, again, exactly. And so, yeah, that's what I got out of it. I don't want anything to do with it.

David Boyd [00:03:15]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:03:16]:
But, um. Yeah, when you brought that up, that's what. That's what it reminds me of, is like, the same thing. It's like, so how much, like, when you deal with buying any equipment, like, before you get your ROI on it, like, is there anything really that, like, we get so consistently in the shop that, like, you can really monitor and track an ROI on? Like, you don't get advanced assessments all the time. You don't get, like, I don't know, there's so much. Except for tires.

David Boyd [00:03:41]:
Tires that hunter drive through thing, you know, it's got the two pillars on the. On the sides, and then there's a big plate that you drive over, and it. It's got, you know, lasers all over the place, right? It checks alignment, it checks tread depth, it checks tire wear. All of this stuff. And a customer of mine put that in. I think. I think it was. I want to say it was sixty k.

David Boyd [00:04:03]:
I might have that off. Maybe it was 40. It was a lot of thousands of dollars, right. To do that. And what it really came down to, roi, was measurable because there's a before and after, right? We put this piece of equipment in, we know how many alignments we do, we know how many tire sets we're selling, or, you know, just how many tires we're selling, and then we can measure the after, right. And then really what it came down to was the service advisor and manager at that location needed to buy into. Hey, we got a new process. So the owner spends, just call it $40,000 on a piece of equipment.

David Boyd [00:04:37]:
That's great if the execution happens now. Right? So it's a little. I mean, for that kind of a thing, it's a little bit different than putting in a new two post or a drive on, because, yes, the technician will use that. The service advisor doesn't have a lot, you know, a lot of. A lot of say in. In that part of it, but, you know, it's kind of like, does the technician do the inspection perfect. Now, does the service advisor capitalize on that? So that, from what I've seen, that's where the ROI evaluation comes from. We know, hey, we bought this.

David Boyd [00:05:15]:
It's a very advanced piece of equipment. We're going to use it for diagnostic purposes. Every vehicle is going to have a drive thru on this thing, and we're going to show and share the results with the customer. And they've got a great little display board, you know, and it shows, like, here's your tires, and it. It exaggerates. Like, there's an alignment issue. Like, it shows really duck. Duck toed front tires if it's a little bit off.

David Boyd [00:05:39]:
Right. But that's the point, is it needs to help explain it to the customer as well.

Jimmy Purdy [00:05:44]:
So I guess, yeah, that kind of pushes the envelope a little bit. Like, is that even what they want, though? You know? Like, some of that equipment that's coming out now and, like, the processes that are out there, like, they just don't get communicated well. So if someone comes in and they're like, hey, I got a. I smell coolant. I got a cool leak, right? I'll check it out. And then all of a sudden, they get this whole readout with their tote with all your alignment so screwed up, and you're gonna wear your tire. Like, that's not why I came in here. I came in here for, like, you didn't tell me you were gonna do that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:06:11]:
So I don't know, then you can have that side of the course, right? You have that side of the camp, right, where it's like, don't do something that they don't, you know? And so then you're trying to come.

David Boyd [00:06:21]:
Back and bite you.

Jimmy Purdy [00:06:22]:
Yeah. You're trying to push this roi on this piece of equipment, and then it just goes too far the other way, so.

David Boyd [00:06:27]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:06:28]:
I mean, I don't know. I think. I think it's an awesome piece of equipment, but then again, if you're small enough, you can. I mean, you get it up on the alignment rack. You can kind of, well, here's the tires, and here's your limit. And you kind of visual that stuff. But I don't know. I.

Jimmy Purdy [00:06:41]:
I saw that when I was at Sema. Like, holy moly. Is that even accurate? Is that even, like technology? Tastes like a self checkout in a way, you know? Yeah, I guess the other thing you can monitor, too, since you're here, is adding pieces of equipment to your shop is a phone system. Right. That's something you can always count on as a phone call.

David Boyd [00:07:04]:
Always.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:04]:
Yeah, I think that's step one. Right.

David Boyd [00:07:06]:
What do we need to do to make the phone ring? Yeah, that's where it all begins. Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:09]:
And then how do you answer? Or what do you use to answer it?

David Boyd [00:07:12]:
You know, I had a customer say, you know, that I asked them. I asked several customers, you know, give me a one liner about what we do at inbound. And, you know, one, very much to your point, Jimmy, was we live and die by the phone. And that's the truth. You know, you run a shop. You know that if something's wrong there, it's a problem. So it does begin with the phone.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:39]:
Oh, yeah. I've, you know, so online scheduling is a big thing. What's been big thing for a while, but I think it's gaining a lot more traction here in the recent year or so with different companies coming out with online schedulers. And it. It's awesome. And I think it's awesome as, like, an owner's point of view and service advisors point of view, because it frees up time to answer more phone calls, like, so you don't have so many phone calls. I just want to make an appointment. Want to make an appointment.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:08]:
I've, if anything, noticed a little bit of a dip in our scheduling, maybe. I don't know if it's because of that, but a lot of them will. And you can watch them through the process. Right. You can track them as they click on the schedule and they click on their. Their issue, and they. And then all of a sudden, they bail out a few minutes in, and you're like, what? So you get a follow up? Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to call, you know?

David Boyd [00:08:30]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:30]:
So I just don't think it's there yet. I mean, and I hate to be the one to say maybe not in my area, maybe not my number, but I'm in California, and we're in central coast. Like, we're. If there's going to be a tech area, it's going to be here. And I'm just not getting a whole lot of commitment for new customer leads. I think for, for existing clients, I've. It's been great because they know the process. They're comfortable.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:53]:
But I think new clients coming in, new acquisition, they just. It's like, I just. I still want to make a phone call. I still want to talk to somebody on the phone, you know, to make that appointment. I want. I want to hear a body on the other end, and I do that, too. If I'm looking at a new vendor online and it's like, oh, I got a warranty, or point in case I have a. I just bought this post pounder.

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:13]:
I'm gonna put a fence in the property. It's just mansaver, post pounder, whatever. And, like, the warranty, made in USA. I'm like, wow, this sounds really good, and ordered today. We'll ship it out now. And I just wanted to call. I just wanted to call and, like, make sure somebody was, like, there, you know, like, I wanted to know that there was another body at that. At that place that would answer the phone in case if I received it in the mail and it wasn't what I wanted it to be or whatever, I can, like, call somebody and, like, talk to them.

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:38]:
I didn't want to find out after I spent $1,000 and it showed up on my doorstep that there's no one there to call. So I don't know. It just, it just goes to show, even with all the new technology and trying to make this whole experience coming into an auto repair shop as, like, contactless as possible, it's kind of pushed a little far, in my opinion. Like, you know what I mean?

David Boyd [00:09:58]:
It's a great observation. And, you know, as an owner, you, you see it firsthand as, you know, somebody who deals with hundreds of owners across the country in different markets, it's not something that's unique to your market. I wouldn't say so. I think that's it. You know, it's just the consumer. The consumer wants to interact at times in a particular way. So everybody goes through that, I think, where you can look online and see the tools, I just did that with a, it happened to be a state I was dealing with, and, you know, they force all of that activity online, and there's certain registration activity, and I got to a certain point, and I'm like, I'm not. I don't know if I'm doing this right.

David Boyd [00:10:39]:
That can happen even when we're scheduling for service at a shop. So the customer goes through that process, and I'm not, you know, we're feeding them a lot of information. I love the tools that are out there, and I think that they're great. And it requires a level of education and sophistication for the customer to really participate in that process. So they may, they may want that option because I see the statistics probably like you do, and, you know, the vendors that do that share it, but they, they, the consumer may want that option to do it, but they also, you know, in a lot of cases, are going to default to that phone call. So click the call or they've got your number if they're a long time customer or maybe they're seeing an ad or a promotion that you're doing. So then, you know, if that's the case, we still need to cater to that and not just kind of push them back to the online scheduling experience, but be effective in managing that. There are a lot of touch points, as you well know, when that call is answered to be, you know, efficient and effective in understanding, empathizing with the customer, but controlling the conversation and getting the appointment set, getting them committed to come into the shop.

David Boyd [00:11:53]:
And that, I mean, just that comment alone touches on three or four different process areas that we touch with the phone in the independent repair shop environment. Right. So there's scripting, there's call coaching that goes along with that. We deal a lot with the call recording, so we can go back and use that for training purposes to help educate the service advisors. But Paramount is making sure that the call gets in right. And there are a lot of reasons why a call might not get into us. And then even understanding, like, do we have times of the day or days of the week maybe, where we're getting too many calls? I shouldn't say it that way. Too many calls is a nice problem to have, isn't it? Typically, yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:47]:
Not when it's all at the same damn time.

David Boyd [00:12:49]:
All the same time. Yeah, exactly. If it's spread out over the course of the day, that's great. So what happens if the people that I have in my shop are all talking with a customer? What is the best practice around that? Do I put somebody on hold to answer another call just to put them on hold? Do I let it ring? How do we handle that? You know, that process as well. So many, many process areas as high performing independent repair shop owners that surround the community, you know, the communication and the phone world. Right. And that's where I operate.

Jimmy Purdy [00:13:28]:
Yeah, that's a good point to bring up like. Cause it always happens at like lunchtime when one of the advisors is gone and then everyone wants to pick up their car because they're on their lunch. So they're like, there to pick up because they're convenient for them, but that means they're in a hurry too because they only have an hour, right? And there's a line and then the phones ringing. And then it's that awkward of like everyone in the room can hear the phone ringing, right? And it's like ringing and ringing, ringing. And you're trying to, like, be as patient as you can and make sure that they get a good experience when they pick up their car and that you go through your sale, you know, your presentation of, hey, when would you like to schedule this next oil change, you know, as your phone's ringing behind you? And I. I mean, I I can't stand a phone. A ringing phone. Like, I.

Jimmy Purdy [00:14:13]:
It's contradictory, right? Like, that should be like the sound of money, right? Like, like burnt transmission fluid. Like, I love that smell. That smells like, that smells like vacation to me. But like, I've had all. So we put all our phones on silent. So we just have the vibrate. They just vibrate. You know, we can just hear the desk kind of vibrate a little bit or just a little ping and that's, that's it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:14:36]:
I don't want them ringing. I just, it's overstimulating. I think you bring up a great.

David Boyd [00:14:43]:
Point and I talk about this some, but probably not often enough when we are working with a new customer or even an existing customer. Understanding. Hey, you might have three service advisor desks up front, maybe have kiosks, maybe there's a long counter, but there might be three or four phones. And if those are all, you know, turned up to 50% volume, that can be like. I think the word you just used was overstimulating.

Jimmy Purdy [00:15:10]:
Yeah.

David Boyd [00:15:10]:
What we don't understand sometimes is that that noise carries everywhere. So if some, if an advisor is on the phone, the customer they're talking with hears all of this background noise, right. They hear all of the other phones ringing if they're loud. So, you know, a best practice around that, of course, is just turn them down. You're going to hear the phone. Or, you know, what you've done is use the vibrate feature on the handsets that you have. And that helps because you'll hear that if it's sitting on the desk, you'll hear it buzz, that type of thing. Just like a cell phone.

David Boyd [00:15:45]:
So understanding the environment and we use technology, the equipment, to do some creative things with noise attenuation and, you know, basically trying to hide some of that background noise and keep it a real clean conversation between the advisor and the customer. It's an important consideration for the shop owners to understand. What is that noise environment? We think about the, you know, the air tools and the compressor and, you know, when we're doing the checks, when we take a car in or, you know, honking the horn and stuff like this. So we try to isolate that noise to the shop area but keep it from the, from the front. So if you've, if you have a customer there, they're not going to be overwhelmed by this noise. But this also matters for the technology that we have. What, what noise is my computer making? What noise is the, you know, the phone making? Do I have three or four different phones? Do I need those all ringing just to notify me I have a call coming in to.

Jimmy Purdy [00:16:50]:
Yeah, I mean, there's so many noises, obviously, and I think you get used to it as like a shop environment in quotes. Right. The air hammer, the air ratchets. Everything's kind of gone to electric now, which it really helps a lot. But, you know, I think it depends on what the noise is like subconsciously. You know, if that phone's ringing, there's a lot of unknown, you know. And as an advisor, you're obviously in kind of a fight or flight mode. Like you're in a, you know, you're ready to present yourself, you know, so you got to kind of, like, if you're relaxed, kind of going through an estimate, you know, like that phone rings, you got to like, here we go.

Jimmy Purdy [00:17:30]:
Like game on. Game face on. And if it's ringing all day long, that's like that fight or flight game on all day long. That's a lot. That's a long time to be on. And I think it matters. And, like, the headsets that we got from you or just, they just make the little beep, you know, as it's ringing, it's a little beep. It's a little beep.

Jimmy Purdy [00:17:50]:
And I think maybe, maybe some out there, owners out there look at that like, well, if it's not loud enough, they're gonna miss calls. And each one of those calls, you know, is $800, $1200. My arrow is 1400. So that's a $1400 phone call that you're missing. So they want that thing ringing off the hook, right? They want as loud as possible. And I don't, I don't know. I don't see it that way personally. You know, I think if you have a sales, a pay plan that's set up correctly, that phone call is just as important to them as any other one.

Jimmy Purdy [00:18:22]:
But there's only so many things you can do, you know? And if you're. If you're overstimulated and overwhelmed all day, that's enough, you know? Especially if you have, like, you. Good point. About, like, two or three advisors, you got two or three advisors. You got one of them there that just won't freaking answer the phone all day. Like, oh, my God, dude, answer the phone. Even the technicians out there, they can hear it ringing. Like, dude, what's with the phones today? Like, is anybody gonna answer that? It's like, we're busy.

Jimmy Purdy [00:18:46]:
We don't have time for it. So just put it on on silent. And it's nice to have the queue, too. So when they call into a queue, they can click one, two, or three, and it kind of redirects that whole process as well. I don't know. Have you had any feedback with that? Like, with people not liking that? They like to have it ring right to the desk and not want that prompt.

David Boyd [00:19:05]:
It's a great question, and I think. I think it. It depends on the owner's intention. So if somebody's doing that to try to control spam, where they have. That's called an auto attendant, right? So we hear that you and I call different businesses 100 times a week, and we hear those auto attendants press one for this, two for that, and so on. If your intention is to understand the customer's need when you answer the phone, I think it's perfectly acceptable. If your intention is to cut out spam. I don't like that.

David Boyd [00:19:34]:
And I'll tell you why. Because it creates an extra step or two for the customer to interact with you. So just like when they're going through maybe an online schedule and they pull the eject handle, right, we don't want them to do that on the phone call side. They've taken the time to dial the phone. We want to get that call to the advisor or owner as quickly and efficiently as possible and not necessarily have to require your customer to, you know, choose different options. So that's why I say if we're doing that, to try to cut out spam. Spam plagues businesses. You know, you.

David Boyd [00:20:12]:
You have dealt with this in the past, and we use a technology on my system to filter through some of that, so then we can have a practical conversation, Jimmy, about what's your intention, as the owner, of having your customer press one for service, two for, you know, whatever those options might be. And then if there's some intent around that, I think it makes a lot of sense. But we want to vet that process. And if we measure this against how easy it is it to do business with you, then I think we come up to a logical solution. And I have plenty of owners that have an attendant on the front end, and it works well for them. They might be a multi shop owner and they're trying to make sure that their callers are getting to the right location. They might have different departments within their shop, and they need, you know, if they've got a dedicated parts counter, if they have, you know, if they want to route calls for the service advisor separately from something else, maybe from accounting or bookkeeping, things of that sort, then that does help distribute calls. So it makes sense.

David Boyd [00:21:22]:
But I think it's, it, it is. It has to be purposeful and intentional.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:28]:
Yeah, not, not like you said, not to use it just to filter the spam out. Have you had any, like, statistics in that of seeing the dropout ratio? If someone calls and they, once they hear an attendant, they just hang up the phone, they don't want to deal with that.

David Boyd [00:21:43]:
Yeah. Super insightful question. So thank you for asking. Have a lot of data on what's called abandoned rate. And the abandoned rate can be eight to 10% higher when we have an auto attendant on the front end. So I try not to drop a lot of stats, but because I only work with independent repair shop owners and help them with their communication process, I have a lot of data to draw from. So while the auto attendant is very common in other areas of our lives, like you call for an airline ticket, you're going to absolutely go through, you know, an auto attendant. If you call the cable company, you're absolutely going to go through an auto attendant.

David Boyd [00:22:30]:
When you call the repair shop, it isn't necessarily expected to go through the auto attendant. So that can seem unfamiliar. And actually, you know, if somebody feels like this is cumbersome, they might just hang up. Here's the, here's the scenario that I envision. They've got something going wrong with their car and they're driving to work again, and they forgot to call when they, you know, before they left for work or after they got home last night. And now they're, they're hearing this problem again and they're going to call the shop and they're doing, you know, 80 miles an hour with their hair on fire down the freeway and they think of it. So they voice dial, and now they have to interact with their phone, which might be tucked away. Right.

David Boyd [00:23:16]:
So now they just can't. So they're going to end the call.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:19]:
Interesting.

David Boyd [00:23:20]:
And if we don't have an option for them just to pass through without interacting with their phone, they're not going to complete that phone call. So there are some very, you know, practical reasons why your customer will, you know, self eject. Right. They may call back later, which is great. But that moment when they're thinking about it, we're potentially creating a barrier for the ease of interaction. And those are the things that we.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:46]:
Want to evaluate and not, and not to play the devil's advocate, you can't. But I will.

David Boyd [00:23:52]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:52]:
So, like, I see that, too. And it kind of goes back to the very, when we just jumped on here, the anxiety. Right. And so as an advisor, as an owner, you have to make sure that the phone calls you're getting are the phone calls that are of obviously can be profitable, that we can engage in a relationship where we both get something out of it. And sometimes in those situations when their hair is on fire going on the highway, they make that phone call. It's just to get some advice. It's just to, I mean, realistically tie up the phone lines for some, someone that's wanting to get in. I get definitely the point, like, hey, I want to make an appointment.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:29]:
But I also, like I said, to play the devil's advocate is like they just want to call just to talk to someone, to get someone to, like, calm their nerves. And I get it. Like that's, that's part of what we do. I mean, we all are in a business where we're kind of a bartender in a sense, where we got to, like, ease the things. I hope it. But I don't know. It's interesting to say the least. Like, I don't know if there's a right or a wrong answer.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:53]:
I'm sure there's a camp to go either way. You know, we use the auto attendant. I don't think I've looked into the data enough to see if we have that dropout rate or the ejectoceto whatever you called it.

David Boyd [00:25:07]:
Yeah, the ejection seat. Yeah, exactly.

Jimmy Purdy [00:25:11]:
So I don't know, but I like it. I don't know.

David Boyd [00:25:15]:
And again, we talked through that, in our case, doing business together. We talked through that process at the front end, concluded. Yes, it makes sense. And we're providing some additional insight and information about how those calls are getting routed. There is not a definitive do it this way or do it this way. And I'll tell you, with the hundreds and hundreds of owners that I work with, we start with best practices and grow from there. The best practices help because if you don't have a way that you're doing it, then we can make some informed recommendations. As a communication expert, I can help an owner understand what works well and what works well specifically in the independent automotive repair space because that's my entire audience.

David Boyd [00:26:07]:
That's all I, that's all of the people I work with are independent repair shop owners. So we can look at this from a communication process standpoint and have a starting point and then say things like, typically what we might see in this case is fill in the blank, usually what we're working with. And this could be after hours call handling, maybe voicemail distribution into some more sophisticated areas around using a voice prompt to initiate a text message that would send somebody an appointment link after hours, this type of thing. So we can start from both a position of authority and experience that is helpful because no owner is necessarily going to do it exactly like the others do because it's their business. This is your business. This is your peers business. You're in a coaching group. And everybody there has a little bit of a different way, but there are some similarities around that.

David Boyd [00:27:13]:
That's how we develop best practices. And then that also gives the advantage of a starting point so that we're not just saying, well, here's your phone, good luck, and we'll make it ring. But let's talk about an operational business process that affects the way that your customers communicate with you, the way that your vendors communicate with you, dealerships and parts suppliers and so on. And then ultimately that, you know, the way that you manage your communication platform to be efficient for your advisors. So I said a lot of words there, I'll tell that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:27:46]:
I mean that. No, that's, that, yeah, I mean, that's what it is. And you can hear it from marketers. You care for anybody. Like, sure, we can make your phone ring, but what you do with it is what matters, you know, and there's still plenty of shops out there. They answer the phone, what do you need? Or hello, like you said, hello, y'all, you answered your business phone with a hello, right. Like, or even what? You know what I mean? Like, so, yeah, you can have the best phone systems in the world. You got the best marketers in the, in the world.

Jimmy Purdy [00:28:18]:
Your phone can ring all day long, but if you're not answering it right, it's. It doesn't matter, you know, and it seems a little over the top when you talk about, you know, an independent repair shop, kind of like my own, where we're not real big, we're not huge, you know, my wife and I, two advisors for technicians. It's probably bigger than most smaller shops, but it's not. It's not a big shop. We're not at ten employees, right. So I guess that makes us a smaller. But anyway, the point is, we have the auto attendant, right? Process. And we also have the phone call etiquette.

Jimmy Purdy [00:28:54]:
We make sure we answer every phone call with, this is shifting gears. Auto repair. My name is Jimmy. How can I help you today? Every single time, that's how the phone's answered. Like, there is no if, ands or buts, right? We have caller id. We know who's calling. That's how the phone gets answered. It's not like, you know, hey, Jim, like, oh, I saw your caller id.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:15]:
So they just pick, hey, no, no, we don't do that. Like, I don't care if you know who it is. Like, there's a process and that's how we do it. And it seems like a lot, but it just builds that. It builds the picture that we're trying to paint. You know, paints the picture we're trying to paint, in a sense, where it's like you're calling here because we're a professional facility and we want a process to kind of like, showcase that. And. And that's the front.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:41]:
That's the front of the counter. It's like, that's the first time you make contact. That's your first touch. Point is a phone call.

David Boyd [00:29:46]:
You bring up a very, very good point. And my hope is that your audience hears exactly what you just said. Because what you just said is consistency. Consistency matters. So if you have a script, if you don't have a script, come up with one. That's your prerogative as the owner. But then make sure that every time, even if, you know, based on the, you know, the caller name that comes up on the screen or something of that sort, even if, you know, be consistent with that, because you just never know. You may glance over and think at somebody and then you're like, hey, what's going on? And they're like, who did I call? You know, you throw.

David Boyd [00:30:27]:
You throw somebody off. Now, absolutely now it's now absolutely confusing, confusing situation. And you just don't want to do that. So you just simply take that it doesn't take longer to say, you know, thank you for calling. Shifting gears, this is Jimmy. How can I help you? It doesn't take longer to do that than, you know, Bob's garage or what? You're just saying a few extra words, that's all. Yeah, consistency is important. And then, you know, being able to hopefully have the ability to.

David Boyd [00:30:59]:
You talked about marketers, you know, hey, we'll make you make the phone ring. Even beyond that, you know, you've got the consistency of the way that we answer the phone and how we control that phone call. Things like not diagnosing over the phone, not, you know, quoting over the phone, this type of stuff. Those are important factors.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:16]:
Hey, hey, I didn't say I was perfect. Okay, sure, I got you.

David Boyd [00:31:22]:
I know I'm poking in the eye there.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:24]:
My apologies. Right between both my eyes, where you got me there on that one. That's why they don't let me answer the phone anymore. I just.

David Boyd [00:31:30]:
Sorry, man, I made it personal.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:36]:
But you're right. But you're right.

David Boyd [00:31:38]:
But then what can I do to help? You know who's calling, right? Not just the name, but did they call because of a Google Ad? Did you send out a text blast? Or did you leverage your slow day action plan to generate some calls? You've got a marketing company that's doing, maybe they're doing mailers, maybe they're doing decline service follow ups. There are a whole variety of reasons why people are calling in. And then the interesting part of this is because of the marketing and business development companies that we use in the industry, they're not always just calling your main phone number. So we can use that to our advantage. If they're not calling your main phone number and they're calling what we call a tracking number, you've probably heard of that. Tracking numbers. Marketers use tracking numbers. We can actually leverage that to even prompt you to say, hey, this is coming from a Google adword, this is coming from a mailer, right? Or this is a promotion that you're doing in addition to the caller name information, doing that type of little prompt right on the screen, and then further beyond that, pushing the caller search information right into your shop management platform.

David Boyd [00:32:46]:
So depending on the platform that you're using, pop a search up that says, here's your customer, right? So we know who's calling. We see the name. Sometimes it says wireless caller, but a lot of times we see the name, we know the way that they've called us, and that gives us some information about why and now we can go right into the shop management platform and see, based on the phone number, is this somebody we've done business with before? And then we have more insight to the customer information, their vehicles, maybe previous repair orders, previous to client services. So arming you as an owner or a service advisor, to really have all of that insight information that you need to, again, control the conversation, be effective in the interaction with the customer. Get an appointment. A lot of times, if they're not calling back because we're talking about an estimate, they're calling, and we need to make an appointment with them. These are parts of leveraging a really effective digital communication platform.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:49]:
You know what I think is really hard about kind of doing that process is when your phone's ringing and you have so many spam callers or calling the wrong shop or call, like, and so you're just kind of frustrated every time the phone rings, because it's nothing. Bottom line is not profitable. You realize, like, this phone call is probably going to be another waste of my time, and I'm so busy with so many other things right now. But I've noticed since moving to inbound is that the amount of calls that we get are the calls that we want. So having these systems now are easier to follow because you know that it's going to be a $1,400 ticket on the other end of that line. Like, more likely than not, it's going to be a client that you wanted to shop. So you slow down a little bit, and you can follow that procedure that we have in place. Even for the service advisors.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:46]:
Every time the call is like, they're looking for me. Hey, where's Jimmy? Right? Hey, this is so and so with what and what? And I need to talk to the owner. Like, they don't want to answer that phone call. Right. But it's nice to have that night the system in place that allows it so they know when someone's calling. It's someone that needs help, someone that needs, you know, and an important thing with just. It's one thing to have, like, the script and like, to follow it, but you really, really have to, like, slow yourself down and talk like this. Hey, this is Jimmy.

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:16]:
How can I help you? Like, be, like, real about it, you know, because I hear that a lot, too, when you call it.

David Boyd [00:35:22]:
When you said that just now on the side of the. On the side of the call, it made me feel good.

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:28]:
I mean, it's all it takes, right? It's like, it's the inflection of it. And Cecil talks about it all the time. And I just love that guy. The way he's on the phone is like. It's so, like, perfectly said. And it's not even like what he said. It's like how he said it. You know what I mean? And I think that's.

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:44]:
That's lost. That's really lost, because they have the script and they're doing the thing, but they're like, you know, how can I help you today? Right? Like, nobody wants to. Like, am I bothering you right now? Like, I'm sorry I called, I guess. Sounds like you're busy. Yeah, I am busy. What can I do? What can I do for you?

David Boyd [00:35:58]:
What do you need?

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:59]:
What. What? Like, why? That's. That's crazy. It's a crazy concept. When this person's going out of all the different shops in the area they can be calling. They decided to pick and call your shop. And that's. That's the level of communication they're getting right off the bat.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:14]:
Like, I don't know.

David Boyd [00:36:15]:
I don't.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:15]:
I don't get it at all.

David Boyd [00:36:16]:
How do we get people to buy in on that? You know, not. Sorry to reverse the interview here, but I'd love to know from your perspective the, you know, to take that breath first. Slow down, use the, you know, the calming voice. How. How do I get somebody to believe in that and, you know, realize that. Yeah. I have. I have seven estimates that I'm working on, and I have, you know, four technicians here who are all beating me up for whatever the phone rings.

David Boyd [00:36:46]:
How do I. How do I take that breath, whether I'm the owner or the service advisor, and just slow down for a second? How do I do that? How would you do that?

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:56]:
Listen to Chris Voss on masterclass difference.

David Boyd [00:37:00]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:00]:
The hostage negotiator, Chris Voss.

David Boyd [00:37:03]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:03]:
Yeah.

David Boyd [00:37:04]:
So it's funny because when you dj. Voice the 02:00 a.m. radio DJ.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:09]:
Late night. Yep. I mean, that was for me, though. I think you have to find your own. Kind of. Like, why? But for some reason, that really resonated with me.

David Boyd [00:37:19]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:19]:
I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm on a mic a lot, but. But it's like, you have to just. Okay, if I'm gonna answer this phone right now, it has to be looked at differently. Maybe like, the phone really needs to be viewed in a different light than just. I don't know. Like, the technicians don't need to be answering the phone. The shop owner really shouldn't be answering the phone either, right? Like there should be a dedicated service advisor to answer the phone, right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:48]:
Or a secretary or whatever, and that's who has the script and that. And they're not even involved in all that process you were just talking about. All that stress and anxiety is not even. And that's why the owner shouldn't be answering either, because it's. You can't, like there's some days when every single person has, every body coming at the shop has a question for you. You got two other people that left you a message at 08:00 and it's almost noon. You still need to eat lunch. You know, uh, you're trying to write systems and processes out, you're trying to do this, that and the other thing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:17]:
And then you know what, the phone's ringing. I'm going to just, uh, ignore all my other tasks that I'm doing. Answer that phone call. Like, what are you doing right now? That's not what you should be doing, you know, so, and I mean, I guess I'm speaking from experience when it comes.

David Boyd [00:38:30]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:31]:
Like I'll go ahead and just postpone these tests because the phones ringing and I don't want to do this other stuff, but I'm not in the right state of mind to be effectively communicating with someone. So I don't know, maybe it's that I don't have a good answer for you.

David Boyd [00:38:46]:
I think it's good. I think you, I think you highlighted a lot of things. One is, you know, whose job is it to answer the phone? Among my customers across the country and in every market you could imagine, I'm seeing more and more csrs. So this is somebody who is checking in, a customer answering the phone, they're the first, you know, they're the first line of phone answers so that can be more controlled. And then they're also part of a call coaching process so that it becomes real and they can, I think, you know, independent of who we decide the point person is in the shop to answer the phone, it is important to come back and review some of those calls so that gets into really the cold call, the call coaching world. Are we effective in answering the phones? There's a very powerful moment when a CSR or an advisor or whoever is answering calls, when they listen to the way that they handled that call. Right. We take the noise out of the room for a second.

David Boyd [00:39:51]:
We're going to play this call recording. Maybe it's a 92nd call. We're going to listen through this or something very powerful that happens when they listen to themselves. They hate it at first. Right. And if, if you've ever listened to your own calls. I've listened to my own calls.

Jimmy Purdy [00:40:05]:
Yeah. Well, I've listened to a lot of my recorded voice over the past year or so.

David Boyd [00:40:11]:
Yeah, look who I'm talking.

Jimmy Purdy [00:40:13]:
I stopped listening after a while.

David Boyd [00:40:18]:
So we are, you know, we're probably our own best advocate and in addition to being our own worst critic, but we can leverage that in the shop by simply making a priority to grab calls, listen to them, you know, whether it's a coach and advisor or an owner and advisor. But sit down together and listen to those calls.

Jimmy Purdy [00:40:41]:
Do you find it to be subconscious, too? Like, I've noticed, like, over the, you know, the years of listening to my phone calls and, and whatnot, you. You kind of get this subconscious knowing, like, you hear it, and it's not like you, you read. And I think that's the problem. When people want to hear their own recorded voice or their own phone calls, it's like they want to get a notepad and a paper out and write down all the mistakes that they made. And I don't think that's, I don't think that's the process. I think just listening and listening and listening. You start subconsciously hearing your own inflection. The only way you talk, the way you maybe talk too much or not enough or, uh, you talk too fast, like, and it's just a subconscious knowing that your brain just, like, absorbs.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:25]:
It's really weird. Like, it's hard to explain, but you can't write it down.

David Boyd [00:41:29]:
I agree. Yeah, I agree. And I. You touched on a couple things just now. One is, um, there, there is a process to call reviews and call coaching. I think everybody naturally goes through this phase of, okay, I got my notepad here. I'm going to take notes on everything I did wrong. I'm going to judge myself.

David Boyd [00:41:47]:
We go through that phase, but we get beyond that phase, too, where I can be constructive and listening to the call. I do have one customer that comes to mind in particular, that the advisors, immediately after a call, ends where they feel like they can learn something from that. Now they've conditioned themselves, trained themselves to let the owner know, hey, I just had this call with so and so. Would you go grab that? I want to. I want to review that with my coach. Or the advisor may have their own access to go in and grab that call because they want to review it with their coach. They. This, this is exactly what you just said.

David Boyd [00:42:23]:
There's self awareness so the next time I'm on a call, maybe I'm, I'm recounting some things that I've learned from listening over time and I'm going to be better, but I also recognize maybe when I'm off tilt a little here, right? So where is this conversation going? Am I empathetic? Am I determining the needs? Do I have control of this conversation? Am I short? You know, even during a call, Jimmy, I can stop for a second and take a breath myself, but it has to be self awareness. So this is a very, very powerful component of the call coaching process. And I think just to underscore coaching and reviewing, it's important to be consistent and to do it over time. We can't go in and do it for a week or two and then come back and revisit it six months later. It's super important, I believe, to maintain consistency in that, in that reviewing and coaching process.

Jimmy Purdy [00:43:28]:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, I like, everything you want to be good is consistent. You have to be consistent with, but also it's got to be kind of natural because, like, the scripted stuff, uh, and anybody can tell it's scripted, right? Like, on my radio show, I have a lot of times where I'll, I'll read just a, just an article, right? And no matter how I inflect it, no matter how I tried to make it seem organic, it's very, very obvious that I'm reading it. When I go back and listen to it, I'm like, man, that is so, like, how can I tell that? Like, well, maybe it's just because it's me and it's like, no, everyone can tell that I'm just reading something. I'm like, oh, I really thought I was fooling everybody, right? Like, and it's just something about organic talk and, like, making the mistakes and slipping up and saying, um, and, like, throwing it in and different, like, and you just can't, like, like, AI will never touch that. Like, you can't have an organic conversation with an AI AI bot or have it scripted or anything. And so we've recently hired a new advisor, and the first thing that we did was have her go back and listen to our phone calls for the last two months for, with, with our other advisor, with me, and with Leanne, and just go, I want you to go back through and just spend half the day just listening to phone calls.

Jimmy Purdy [00:44:46]:
I want you to hear how we talk, you know, and how we communicate, and that's what I want you to do. And we gave her a script and say, I want you to pick up and say this, that, and the other thing. But, um, other than that, it was kind of like, like, here you go. Great own. It's kind of shaky. Like, you know, you go back and listen to some of the phone calls and you're like, ugh. But that's part of the process. Like, if we gave her a detailed script, without that script, where would she go? Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:12]:
Like, you got to kind of build your own thing, right? Don't, don't, like, copy it and make it sound robotic, but also kind of have, like, some sort of an outline to base it around.

David Boyd [00:45:22]:
I agree completely. It does need to be natural or it's insincere. And, you know, going back to the customer's experience, they're. They're. They're looking for people when they call. They. They want to know that somebody's genuinely interested, that they're sincere in.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:39]:
So you have to be.

David Boyd [00:45:41]:
Of course.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:41]:
So you have to be genuine. You have to. So the only way they're going to be able to feel that is if you actually. If you are.

David Boyd [00:45:49]:
Yeah, yeah. It's not, you know, here's your box. Right. And go, you know, go answer the phone in this box. You have to give that latitude. So, again, another important part of training and, you know, ongoing reviewing and coaching, the time. The time is real, right. So, you know, this is, as an owner, the amount of time required to do that.

David Boyd [00:46:16]:
It's like investing in your business in a lot of other ways as well. So overseeing the work product that comes out of the shop, minimizing comebacks, and owners do that in a variety of different ways. It's as important in the front office where we have advisors answering the calls to, you know, invest the time and be deliberate and intentional about the call reviewing so that you can find out what is working and what's not working. I love your idea, incidentally, about having a new advisor. Just listen to some calls because there are always good calls and teachable calls.

Jimmy Purdy [00:46:57]:
So I think some calls and teachable ones. No bad ones, though.

David Boyd [00:47:02]:
Yeah, that's right. So I wouldn't say there's a bad call. Right. But doing that and then obviously with context, but then understanding how somebody else does it. Now we're beginning to formulate for a new employee, a new advisor, a new CSR. Formulate what I've heard into my own dialogue so that it doesn't, for me, it doesn't feel like I'm just reading a script, but this is something where I understand our objective. And as an owner, then you can give certain latitude to your. Your call handlers, which are typically service advisors, and give them certain latitude.

David Boyd [00:47:40]:
Here are the things that we want to accomplish in the call, but make it your own conversation. You don't have to be robotic. There are tools out there that help facilitate that. Sales training, the call handling, and things of that sort. You had mentioned AI a moment ago. AI doesn't replace the service advisor. I know that there's even been talk in some of the industry events lately about, you know, does the service advisor exist in x number of years? Yeah, I think so. I don't think AI replaces the human nature of our business in our industry, does it? But we can.

David Boyd [00:48:18]:
We can use that as a tool in helping take some of the heavy lifting, if you will, that the major time commitment. You know, when I'm talking with owners about call reviews or I'm talking with coaches or what have you, it's, you know, we always acknowledge, you know, if you have a three minute phone call, how long does it take to review a three minute phone call? Interestingly, it's probably like six minutes. So you almost. You almost double the time if you're listening to a 92nd phone call, it takes three minutes. And. And if you're just doing the hunt and peck method. So it's great to have the ability to go back and listen to any phone call. You can see them all on a list.

David Boyd [00:48:57]:
I can listen to any one of these. That's all great. But that becomes a little bit of kind of the hunt and peck for the call review process. I need to listen to a call, where is this going? And then make some assessments. Maybe I have to listen to it a second time. And then, oh, that's actually not a coachable call or a teachable call. So now I got to move on to something else. So it, you know, for sitting down on a weekly basis with a service advisor, the feedback that I hear from managers, owners, call coaches is, you know, it's probably 30 to 45 minutes of preparation time to be ready to sit down and do that call coaching session.

David Boyd [00:49:36]:
That can be a real heavy lift for a lot of owners and a lot of time. Yeah, it's a lot of time.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:42]:
And there's a lot of excuses. Like, that's the problem. Not. Not to sit down, but when you are on the phone with somebody and then someone's reviewing that call, it's. It's the human nature to come up with excuses of why he said that. And it takes a long time to like, break that wall down to get them to understand. Look, like, I'm not saying you did a bad job, right? I'm just saying, like, this is a teachable moment, and instead of this, say this, right, but no one's gonna just take that information and be like, oh, of course, boss, I got it. Next time.

Jimmy Purdy [00:50:12]:
Like, no, like, well, I said that because he said this or she said this. It's like, you know, so it takes a long time just to get to the point where even starting to accept that sort of, um, feedback, uh, it's. It's not an easy thing to do. But step one is starting. Is starting to listen. Like, right out of the gate, it's like, that's why we want to do right out of the gate. Let's get you listening to these phone calls, because this is important. And just like you nailed on the head, that's exactly what it was.

Jimmy Purdy [00:50:39]:
So this is our process. Our process is different than most other shops. And so I want you to hear how we have a process built for the clients when they come in. This is what we explained to them. That way they know what to expect. We're setting expectations with this phone call. Set them however you want, but these are the expectations that we want to set. You know, it's important.

David Boyd [00:50:58]:
It is. It's important. And it comes back to consistency. Getting in and, you know, doing, identifying those calls, listening to them, learning, developing, and then the coming. Being teachable is super important. You just, you just mentioned that. Being teachable and having that expectation of. Of the advisor.

David Boyd [00:51:16]:
We're not sitting down and judging, we're sitting down and learning. Right. So we're going to do this together or, I mean, it depends on how you do it. You might just say, you know, take 20 minutes and go listen to the calls. And here's what I'd like you to learn out of that. Maybe you do it with them. There are a lot of different ways to be effective. It's important to do it.

David Boyd [00:51:35]:
And then, you know, being able to quickly identify those calls and that, that's where I think the technology does come into play. Like AI, you know, machine learning, some of the predictive intelligences, taking all of the calls and then filtering that down to three or five. Just like, maybe there's. The service advisor handled 40 calls in a day, but here. Here are three that are coachable or teachable.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:03]:
That'd be awesome. Yeah. Or find trends. What's the most commonly asked question? Right? Because you asked your advisor that and, like, I don't know. I did 20 calls today. I don't remember what they asked me. Like, you're just moving on, moving on, moving on. And how cool to have the AI integration to be able to capture those commonly asked questions.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:23]:
And then, like you said, we could focus on how to answer that more effectively or have that be on the website. Like, here's our comment. You know, here's the answers to your questions. Yeah.

David Boyd [00:52:33]:
And using that insight, then if we, if we can't handle a call, maybe we give the option back to the auto attendant. Hey, if you need information on this, press this button. We can send them a link. We can send them an FAQ document. We can send them information. We want to try to anticipate, predict, and understand what people need when they're calling. So that even if we can't handle the call, which, that speaks volumes to our after hours call handling process, but that happens during the day sometimes as well. What happens in this call? Identifying the things that are talked about.

David Boyd [00:53:10]:
Right. What's the trends? What are the common questions, this type of thing? Utilizing technology for call review, call coaching, sales training, we do that at inbound. I had one owner say that you should talk about automating your sales training. And there's a component of that that's real, which is we want to quickly get to, you know, three to five calls that, that we can use for training purposes. It, like, literally log in. Boom, here are my three calls. But that's, I think, probably the extent of automation around that because there's still, there's still the human learning part of what we need to do to learn and train from those calls. So if we can quickly get to them.

David Boyd [00:53:52]:
And then also to your point, Jimmy, is, you know, quickly understand what are the things that are spoken and what are, you know, when, when a customer calls, what are they asking about and what are the top two or three things that are the common questions? Right. And they're, they're probably pretty consistent in the industry, but it could depend on your specialty as well. How can we use that to benefit our customers and feed them that information proactively when they call this type of stuff?

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:18]:
So be one step ahead. So, David, getting down to the end of this, I wanted to, wanted to ask you for your phone system. It's automotive based or automotive targeted. What's the story behind that? What's the background with using. Obviously, the phone system can be used for anything in the world. How did you end up in the automotive industry?

David Boyd [00:54:49]:
That's a good question. Thanks for asking that. I've been in the communication world for about 16 years now. Just a quick subtext on me. I grew up in corporate America. I was in a couple of few different Fortune 50 companies and learned process engineering. That's not what my academic training was, but that's really my professional training is process engineering. So I got into the use of technology when I was working at GE.

David Boyd [00:55:22]:
The use of technology to remove defect from business process. Usually removing defect from a business process means removing people. So that's where technology comes into play. And I think it's kind of a funny perspective is like, you know, we want to remove defect from a process, so we got to remove the people from the process. Well, that's not entirely true, but we have to understand how to measure that. So I got into technology, and I used that in, you know, a couple of other steps in my career, and then I wound up at a large manufacturing business and was part, you know, part of. Well, I redefined the manufacturing process. The order handling process, created a call center.

David Boyd [00:56:05]:
This manufacturing company produced an infomercial, and the company exploded. It went from hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per month to millions and tens of millions of dollars in revenue per month. Quite a roller coaster ride. And that's where I got involved in communication. So now fast forward. I started my company almost eight years ago now. And shortly after I started, I was kind of like, well, okay, I've had a couple of different businesses. They've been successful.

David Boyd [00:56:44]:
I've done phone service. I'll just, you know, I'll create this company, and I'll sell to anybody and everybody. And then I was invited to. Well, sorry, I don't mean to skip around on you. One of my customers, who's a very successful independent automotive repair shop owner in the Twin Cities here, when I started to set up the phones in his six locations at the time, now 14, I was in there, and I was working through and getting to know the managers and service advisors and seeing them work, and I started to identify that there were some, you know, some gaps in their effectiveness. So I started to bring these things back to the owner, and he said, you know, that it kind of, you know, after a while, he kind of gave me the stop bringing me these problems and bring me a solution for this. Right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:36]:
That's what I say all day, too. Like, so what's your. What's your question, and how you gonna fix that?

David Boyd [00:57:41]:
Yeah, so what? Yeah, great. You found a problem. What's the solution to this? Right? So stop bringing me problems. Bring me some solutions. Yeah, we have a great relationship. And so I started to, you know, work in kind of a, not just do the phones for them, you know, I was running my, my company inbound at the time, but I started to work alongside in an operations capacity for this multi shop owner and get involved in their systems and business process and technology and so forth. He then began to bring me to his peer group meetings, which at the time was a bottom line impact group. And then that training organization was acquired by Cecil over at the Institute for automotive business excellence.

David Boyd [00:58:27]:
And that being around that group of owners, I wasn't there to help them with their phones at the time. I was there to be a real subject matter expert in the systems and process side of what we do operationally in the independent automotive repair industry. So I started to make more connections, recognize there was a huge, huge need for somebody to be a real communication process expert in this industry. So yes, I'm running my phone company on one side and I'm working in really an operations capacity on the other side. I married those two together and decided I'm going to focus here and made that, frankly, a mission. And what I say now is I'm the number one solution provider. I think this is important to understand. It's a solution, not just a product or just a phone.

David Boyd [00:59:23]:
Number one solution provider focused on high performing independent automotive repair shop owners. That's how I got to where I am today. And I made a decision very early on after I started inbound that I'm going to focus on exclusively independent automotive repair shop owners. It's turned out very well. There's a big need in the industry. My customers are mostly friends now. I make a point of getting to know people and understanding their business. And my first conversation anytime I meet somebody is tell me about you.

David Boyd [00:59:57]:
Tell me about how you got to where you are, because that, that really is important. I think that sets the stage then for what we want to accomplish in, you know, making the communication side of their business improved.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:12]:
Well said. And until you, until you, until you get it, you just don't get it. Yeah. And I think you're right. I think it's like it's taking, it's elevating the industry. Right. And elevating it at the first touch point, which is that phone call. And I say as it's just a phone call, but it's not, it's, the phone call is the touch point, the communication is what happens after that.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:38]:
Right. And that's what sets the stage and sets the expectations. And as long as you can back up that expectation as the shop owner, with trained technicians, trained service advisors, quality control processes, deliver the car fixed, cleaned, and effectively communicated, then it's a whole package. Right. But it all starts with that first touch point.

David Boyd [01:01:04]:
So, yeah, it's an important first touch point. And I think there's, you know, there's a lot of opportunity for, you know, the adage is all, you know, all ships in the harbor rise with the tide. So I feel like being a piece of that to move the industry that I'm passionate about. I tell my customers I'm in the industry and I serve the industry. Those are super important aspects. So I'm not just on the outside looking in. I'm in the training sessions. I'm learning what's going on.

David Boyd [01:01:36]:
I'm very close to many owners, and I've got my thumb on the pulse of what's happening in the industry. And we spend a lot of time, Jimmy, and you're part of this as well, talking about, really elevation. Right. So what is this overall experience, and how do we. How do we understand what the customer expectation of the service experience is and then meet them or exceed them in their own expectation? So that's where we're, you know, we're bringing up the water level in the harbor and the ships that are in that harbor horizon with it. And you're one of those ships.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:09]:
Yeah. You're either going to float or you're going to sink.

David Boyd [01:02:11]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:12]:
So I'd rather. I'd rather. I'd rather not be in the box.

David Boyd [01:02:16]:
That's right.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:18]:
I'd rather go up with everybody else. You know? You do. If I can give someone come into the shop and they. And. And legitimately wow them, and when they leave, they said, wow. That was, you know, I haven't been in a shop in a long time. That was quite an experience. And I get that a lot with the way they answer the phones and.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:35]:
And the way the whole process is communicated to them. You get a review that is true and genuine. You know, a lot of people ask, how do I get more Google reviews? How do I get more Yelp reviews? Run a better shop.

David Boyd [01:02:48]:
Yep. You know, and then ask for them and then ask.

Jimmy Purdy [01:02:53]:
But typically, you don't even need to ask.

David Boyd [01:02:55]:
If you. If you wow somebody, they. They're eager to put that out there.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:02]:
Yeah. They want to tell. They want to tell everybody else what an experience they had.

David Boyd [01:03:06]:
Part of the way we're wired, I think, is to have everybody, you know, everybody do what we do. Right. So if I. If I had this amazing experience. I want other people to feel like I feel, and I want them to know about it. So I might tell my neighbor about it, or I might go put it on Google or Yelp. And it's an important part of our psychology as people. So, yeah, you know, make it a great experience.

David Boyd [01:03:31]:
Every time they call, every time they.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:32]:
Walk in the door, that's it. Well, David, I appreciate your time.

David Boyd [01:03:37]:
Thank you, sir.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:38]:
David Boyd with inbound. Give him a call.

David Boyd [01:03:42]:
Yeah, give me a call. Callinbound.com is the website. If I can be so bold as to plug that call. Inbound.com. love to hear from you and really appreciate you, Jimmy. I love what you're doing well, and.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:57]:
I appreciate the service that you've given to us in our shop. So.