Auto technicians are busy by nature — even without today’s technician shortage piling on the pressure. Many older techs are retiring out of the business faster than they can be replaced, and while demand for new positions is high, it’s difficult right now for shops to find new applicants. According to TechForce Foundation, there was a talent gap of over 200,000 technicians in 2021.

Increasing staffing is difficult right now. So rather than only fighting to acquire new talent, why not also optimize the talent you already have? Digital tools are a key starting point to help maximize technician work and make their lives easier on the job, by providing clear insight into assignments and helping them move quickly through their work. Think through the tasks your techs have to do over and over, like estimates, inspections, and parts inventory management. Where can you help them streamline? Here are three ways to set up your technicians for efficient results:

1) Speed common tasks by going digital. 

Vehicle check-in in the past would require technicians to write down a VIN and license plate and do a manual search to locate a customer’s vehicle information. With today’s technology, the right software allows you to simply use the camera on a mobile device to scan a VIN or license plate and automatically pull the vehicle’s information. This makes it lightning fast to check in a vehicle.

Inspections can be a time sink, but they are important not only to assess the car and what work needs to be done, but also to document any pre-existing damage to the vehicle to protect your shop from false liability accusations. Digital vehicle inspections are way faster to perform and ultimately more detailed and complete because they can have photos and videos added instead of just notes.

Parts ordering and price comparison can also be a time-consuming process that often involves in-depth research across multiple websites — especially as part availability continues to be impacted by supply chain issues. By using our auto repair software with integrations, techs can quickly search for available parts across all of their preferred vendors*, compare prices, and order and track parts directly from vendors —  all without leaving the platform where the vehicle’s service information lives.

*Shopmonkey specifically integrates with WORLDPAC, Epicor, PartsTech, Nexpart, and American Tire Distributors. 

2) Eliminate repetitive estimate creation.

At some shops, technicians are heavily involved in the estimate creation process. Estimate creation is another perfect example of where technology can step in to lift a load off your technicians so they can focus on physically working on vehicles.

To minimize the time your technicians spend on estimates, implement a digital estimate creation tool. Not only will it be easy and fast to build an estimate from scratch with built-in access to parts and labor lookups, but you can also create pre-built jobs for your most commonly performed services. With software that can store pre-built jobs, complete estimates for common services can be created with a single click instead of being hand-created over and over again.

As a bonus, top estimate creation software will automatically track previously declined services. This means that it’s fast for your technician to locate previously declined services and add them to an estimate to ultimately increase the cost of the repair order so that you’re not leaving money on the table.

3) Increase access to essential vehicle service information.

Many technicians are likely familiar with what it feels like to crowd around a shared computer in the shop to access the details they need to properly and quickly service a vehicle. By allowing technicians to access things like diagrams and procedures, service history, notes, and more directly from a mobile device like a phone or tablet, you’re giving them better access to what they need to actually perform service work correctly without ever having to step out of their bay.

4) (Bonus tip!) Provide developmental training for your technicians.

Start tracking the time each technician takes on any given service. This will help you to see what services they perform quickly, and which ones they could use some training on to be able to perform them faster. This not only you to use time clocks to boost efficiency for all of your technicians across all services, but will also help to retain technicians who want to grow and develop their skills and career.

The Shopmonkey Solution

Is your shop prepared to streamline technicians’ time? Adding these tools may sound daunting, or expensive, but they are all available through Shopmonkey and can be accessed in one place, making these processes both easy to use and convenient for your business.

Not only will implementing these solutions make jobs go by faster in your shop, but it will also stop day-to-day tasks from getting stagnant, ultimately helping to boost technician satisfaction and retention. Your techs can quickly accomplish their routine tasks, so they can focus on the hands-on work they love doing.  Learn more about workforce management tools for your service techs.